6:30 p.m. - 04/25/02
when will you come rescue me
It's been a long day, and I feel lonely. The house is so quiet when hours pass with only me here. At the same time, I dread the sound of tires in the driveway, the squeak of the garage door rising. I'm hoping this is just a rough patch in the midst of an upward trend because I really did feel better after I started taking those new meds. That night I ran into my Euro teacher at the book fair, I was the calmest I've been "out" in a long time. So calm, actually, that I started to get scared. I realized that I'm not only afraid to go outside; I'm afraid to not be afraid. If I stop being anxious all the time, I might let my guard down, and then I won't be protected when (inevitably) someone hurts me. I still think it's inevitable that I'll be attacked somehow.
In many ways, it's getting worse. I realized this afternoon that if someone were to come home and 'encourage' me to leave the house, I would probably really snap at them. It's so instinctive, so animalistic, that I'm afraid sometimes I'd become violent in order to protect myself. I know that people are just trying to help, but when I tell myself (rationally) that there's nothing to fear, I no longer believe it. I know what can happen out in the real world. I don't want to re-enter it.
At the same time, I hate this house, and I hate being stuck here. The best part of the new place is the property: woods and a lake - neither of which are ours, but we're allowed to go walk by them. When I can't even leave the tiny little house, the despair starts to kick in. I know the air would be helpful and I would love to go out in it, but I can't imagine doing 5 minutes today, let alone the 20 I'm prescribed.
I think my teacher, Mistrandy, realized something was wrong today. We kept it all pretty low-key. I took two sessions of our state's school-assesmant test, and we didn't joke around much. She gestured to my notes and asked how the research paper was going. I told her it's a mess, but I know what I'm doing, and she checked to make sure it wasn't taking me into any tough places. When my dad asked me about that, I got so irritated, but when she said it, it didn't really bother me. I guess it's back to my old inability to forgive my parents for the past or the present. I don't understand their right, or need, to be parental now when they've dropped that ball so many times in the past. But- another day.
Despite the worsening agoraphobia, I'm more and more compelled to leave. Or maybe it would make more sense to say that I'm grieving more and more my inability to do so. I still feel like if I really wanted to, I could fix this, but I'm trying to let that go. I've been down this road enough times to know that will power is about as effective a solution to mental illness as dairy to a stomach flu. It's just been hard the past few days. My old high school did their spring musical last weekend, and I realized: it's been a year since I did theater (other than writing it, of course.) I haven't been onstage in *a year*...and even though the very thought of going into an auditorium, preparing an audition, rehearsing, or performing makes it hard to swallow at this point, it's still painful to think that I could do something at 11 that's impossible now. What happened to me?
On top of it, I had to determine courses for next year. My senior year. That's still a "holy shit" concept for me. Most days, I have no sense of how old I really am. I think I stopped comprehending my aging process at about 13 or 14 because I'm completely incapable of remembering or comprehending my own age. 17. How on earth am I 17?
Looking through the course booklet was not an easy task. I signed up for the most social studies courses I've ever taken in a year (it's like 5, some full year, some semester), and I got to choose my English and science courses based on what interests me rather than what's AP, which is nice. I'll be a little screwed if I don't go to my please-god college, since I'm planning with that in mind, but...I can always suck it up and re-take a history course or two. I mean, seriously, it won't kill me to review. I'm taking a replica alg/trig course this year (because of the move) and it isn't so horrible...
The horrible part, I guess, was when I finally gave in and flipped to their fine arts section. They put my old high school to shame: drama courses, several arts courses, all kinds of instrumental and vocal music opportunties. I kept going back to it, even though I knew it was impossible to take a drama course homebound; even though imagining myself going into a classroom where I was expected to regularly get up in front of the class and perform would basically be the equivalent of psychic torture at the moment. Still, those pages enticed me. I finally wrote Drama I and II on the seventh line of my schedule. I only need six classes, so if I'm homebound next year, I can drop the course without penalty. If, for some bizarre reason, I'm not - I won't be penalized for not signing up in time...
I told Dr. R about it on Wednesday. We were talking a lot about school, or I guess, about my old hometown. I made some comment and he asked me if I could really imagine going back into that high school (the building) and I said no, not really - but I wanted to see my friends so badly, and they're such a diverse group, the only real way to make it possible was to shadow someone for a school day. And I told him that I wanted a chance to get my dignity back, but at the same time, I didn't want to have to deal with the pre-regaining dignity period, and he seemed surprised. "Do you really feel like you've lost your dignity?" he asked, and I smiled a little shyly and shrugged. I told him that I didn't feel like I'd lost it inside myself, but yes, I did struggle with some shame about being "superficial" enough to have an eating disorder [hello, stereotype]...and that I was preoccupied with the way people's perspectives flipped so fully after they found out.
He didn't know that the newspaper published an article about it, let alone that they did so without talking to me. He didn't know that people used to come up to me and say, "Why do you starve yourself?" before I'd even been diagnosed. He didn't know that when I went out with my friends, girls I didn't know well would turn to me and say, "Oh, God, don't tell me you're another one of those 'dieting' girls...I'm so sick of this." I think he caught the picture, though. It was painful- all of that was painful. What was I supposed to say, "No, actually, I'm one of those 'anorexic' girls?" Even if I could have admitted that to myself, anorexic is a dirty word in high schools. You're simultaneously subhuman and arrogant. You judge everyone based on weight, and you think you're the best because you're so thin. ...I wanted to say to them, "Don't you remember *me?* Don't you realize that the description you just gave is completely incompatible with who you always believed I was?"
Maybe that was the problem. It was incompatible. So they chose, and mostly, they chose the stereotype. Which isn't to say I didn't struggle, eventually, with the 'need' to be thinner, or that I didn't have friends who stood by me and asked the questions they needed answered to understand. Brooke is my prime example of that. She had even struggled with food in sixth grade (trying to lose weight for cheerleading) and she still asked me how it happened. The idea that someone who has *been through* it would still keep their experience separate and say, "I don't see how it can be about for you what it was about for me. So can you tell me how this happened to you?" just amazes me. It inspires me to be better than I am.
He asked me if I were to make-believe about going back and speaking to the student body or the faculty what I would want to say, and I just smiled because he's so completely omniscient. I mean, Jesus, how many times have I talked about that? So I told him how I'd want to be honest about my story without putting emphasis on things people could use as 'tips,' how I wanted to give people permission to respect their friends and turn them in, how I wanted to break through some of the stereotypes while still respecting that for some people social pressure *is* a large factor, so on and so forth. And he said, "It sounds like your message is basically to remember the person. They have an illness now, but they're still the person they were."
So I told him about all the books I've been reading for my essay, and how irritating it is not to feel represented in them. On the one hand, I don't want to feel a relation to them because I don't want my identity to be my eating disorder; on the other, I feel completely alone, and I question my own reality based on what they say. I read about the 'quest to be thin' and the driving factors of "distorted body image" et cetera, and I start to think, "I must feel this. I must just lie to myself and think I don't feel this. This is what an eating disorder is; if I don't feel this, I can't have one." And I start to force those thoughts onto me. For awhile, we talked about whether my not-relating them was a defense to keep from being triggered by it all, but I told him that I felt more drawn to be eating-disordered because I didn't relate. Not being like those represented in the books made me feel like my case wasn't important; I wanted to be important enough to be in their statistics and their case studes and their indeces. The nice thing about him is that after we talked for awhile, he said, "So, really, it doesn't sound like it's a defense at all" which is completely different from my relationship with Harriet, in which she would lay forth some bizarre suggestion, I would think up things to support it (or not talk at all)- in hopes of pleasing her, and any disagreement would not be tolerated. I guarantee you that, to this day, she still believes I have an attachment disorder.
Yesterday was the first time I cried in awhile, and definitely the first time I've cried at Dr. R's in ages. Oddly, I used to cry almost constantly at Harriet's, but with him, it was different. I was talking about wanting to take drama and being afraid that saying that would make people be like, "Well, then go do it" and even though I wanted to, even though I kept having these images of shows and listening to musicals pretending I had auditions to prepare for, I was far too terrified. I started to cry, and he told me that there are still a lot of steps to take before going into school, which is odd considering a few months ago he tried to put me back there. He said, "Try not to think too much about the future. When you do, and it overwhelms you, try to really focus on the moment you're in. The feel of the kleenex in your hand. The feel of a water glass." The kleenex felt rough and comforting, and so did the words. They've worked tremendously (surprisingly.) I think when I worry about the future, I tend to try to fix it, which means focusing more energy on it...this way is pretty much the opposite. I just get to focus on something so simple as a sensation- say, the weight of a blanket over me. It helps.
He also told me, in response to my "I'm not in any of the books" struggle, that I am unique- and it is possible that my eating disorder is very unique. He said, "The diagnostic criteria are based on strict behavioral aspects, restricting for a certain period of time, purging so many times per week," and since I hate that, I kind of crumbled. "Since it's so behavioral, it really makes sense that people could do those things for different reasons."
"But," I argued, "I didn't even have all those things. All those criteria."
"You're right," he said. "You didn't."
So? So where does that leave me? "You're unique, Mary. It's hard. You choose not to read the personal stories because of the risk they'll trigger, and the more general medical literature ignores you." He asked if I'm putting that into my paper; I told him I'm trying to put as much as I can. I want to represent myself, yes, but I also want to represent myself the best I can. When he told me I was unique, I put my head in my hands and sighed. He was already nodding when I told him, I don't want to be that unique. It's lonely.
It wasn't like this at Rogers. At Rogers, you were surrounded by people who didn't fit into the wholes and categories; it wasn't so easy to get overwhelmed by your own separateness. He told me that the diagnostic criteria are there as a guide, but the therapist is still there to make a judgment call. I have an eating disorder. I asked him about being atypical, and he said the only eating disorder he could imagine that was atypical was the one that fit all the criteria. I asked him why *that* wasn't in the books, and he lamented with me about people wanting so badly to clarify, they simplify instead.
So, here: all you doctors and therapists and researchers and kin...ask *questions,* dammit. Years of observation only reflect what the observer wants to see. Maybe some day I can offer my distorted, incomplete perception to the world. Maybe some day, I can have a microphone big enough that more than a handful of friends will hear.
I want to turn the heads that make mine spin. I want to have them listen until they need to take a moment, to sit down.
The first (very shitty) issue of my zine is available. E-mail me or leave a note if you want a copy. (The first issue, at least, is totally free.) I made the cover for the second issue today, and it's a million times cooler than the first issue's cover, but I resisted the urge to throw out the whole issue and start over just because the front picture was pretty. Warning: I have never made a zine, and each issue will contribute to a the work-in-progress of my experience with them. If it sucks, please word that nicely. I don't always check my e-mail at a good time to be mauled.
danke/gracias
chord
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