9:50 p.m. - 09/16/02
////it wouldn't be make believe+if you believed in me{}}}}
I know I'm in here somewhere. Give me the right quiet and the familiar music I've never heard before. Give me a moment of my own without an interruption. Then give me your slightest attention; I will make it through.
When I think about Wednesday, which has come to mean when I think about going into his office, sitting down on his couch, trying to talk with him, and discover myself...I always think with a bag over my shoulder. I always, always see the scene as me sitting down and slowly pulling the bag from my right shoulder, setting it at the side of my foot. I feel myself move it so its comfortable, quickly maybe, more slowly if I feel hesitant. I don't know why I do this, if in the past I've had to put something down (other than my defenses) before talking with someone or if it's just a random thought. I've gotten very attached to this bag. I want it. It's not even very specific, though I do have a much more specific sort of bag I want to make/ find. And maybe they could be the same, but it just comes down to how weird it is to miss a daydream. Or a night dream, like I have been since the teacherish-aide-instance arose. I just...would really like it...I would really like something to carry around with me, something to hold my importance in, something to whack would-be attackers unconscious with.
When I was in school, I never left my backpack in my locker. I carried my books around on my back, no matter how heavy they were, because it was so nice to have a bag to pause with, a way to stall at the end of a class so maybe that Nicer Teacher would give me the slightest bit of personalized attention, the smallest smile or hello. A way to hold onto myself, keeping my fingers at the straps, shifting the weight of it. A way to keep myself contained.
I get scared to change things. Being surrounded by observers makes me feel like the slightest alteration in my manner, dress, action would be a cry for attention. And I know that's ok; it's ok for me to need attention. But is it also ok if I'm trying to express who I am and I don't always feel that who I am is expressed in how I present myself (visibly speaking)? Is it ok if some days I am oh-so-obviously an activist and somedays I look like a hippie? Is it ok if some days I border on conformist and other days mothers take their children by the shoulder and lead them away? Can my indecisiveness be represented in my clothing without making me look like all I want is to keep people guessing? I do want to keep people guessing, I guess, which is part of the problem. I like to throw people off, which is what makes it so hard when I don't mean to. Which doesn't really have anything to do with a bag, unless the bag was me. Unless it was a sort of gray-oldlady-fabric meets paper-boy shoulder bag covered in symbols and patches and keychains. Covered in me.
And then there's this box in my head. This box that goes back and forth between being the things I need to know who I am, and a way to keep Rogers in me. Maybe they're separate; maybe they overlap. Maybe what I know of who I am starts with where I've been, or maybe not. But I know that on the inside are things like Marigolds which taught me about atoms, little poems I forget I've read until the rhythms trigger the echoes of old music, and even I don't know what else. I want to know who I am again, which is odd because I feel like I know myself now the best I have. But I feel, I always feel, like I'm trying to get back to something. Like progress is moving forward on a line that circles back. Like life is cyclical and progress eventually leads you to wear you started.
"And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time." -TS Eliot
Except it wouldn't really be the end then at all, would it... because, you're back where you were. You're home again. And home is the beginning of everything, it's where it starts. It's where you start to live. Beyond the veil or in a residential hospital or somewhere not yet seen. I keep coming back to these places, in my sleep, in the kitchen watching the leaves change. I keep finding things I used to know, collecting truths that got forgotten or quieted in all the noise.
I want it back. I want to be able to document it all, to keep track of it, to put it all to use. I believe very strongly that the purpose of life is to live, that my life enables the growth of my soul. So I hope that soul is taking notes, scribbling frantically; I hope that's how moments like deja vu and body memories are able to occur. That all of a sudden, the soul says, "Hey. You don't have to wonder. Remember? We already learned this one..."
You don't have to worry. You've already been loved, and it will not end there.
I know I'm rambling, but you don't have to read.
There is still the sadness, and the sort of self-piteous anger that comes with being in the presence of my parents and no one else. My dad was in Narnia for over a week this time, and even though it was really good to see him, I didn't realize how much quieter it's been until he was here. I don't think they were together five minutes before everything started up again. I don't live in a Story of Us world. My parents hearts are not more fond for their absence. My dad seems to be trying really hard, but my mom just snaps at him for no reason- which isn't always the case, but it's not completely unfamiliar. He's home until Wednesday morning, and tomorrow she'll be back by 1 for the second day in a row. I looked up from my homework at one point and said, "Who are you people? What are you doing in my house?" It was nice, to some extent, to have forms and voices in the house again. I haven't already forgotten the loneliness of the other night. But it was still...intrusive, in a way. I have energy. I have the right to good energy. I have a routine that depends on my ability to play the right music at the right time, to not retreat into my old bedroom, where things are dark and hole-ish. I need the opportunity to live my life, even if it is within the same to floor between the same four walls.
I'm glad they're here. I am. It's just late, and it was a long day.
Dr. R., who I'm sure will never tell my mom another thing if the fact that he told her the slightest little thing got back to me gets back to him, told my mom the other day that the survey he gave me (which she'd also taken, and which they were discussing at the time) said that I did not have absentee parents. That really hurt me, in a way. I mean it hurt me that he told her anything, even if he was just reassuring her, "you didn't neglect your daughter, Jane" and that he used the test to do so. He told her that I wasn't neglected. Maybe that's where some of my sadness is coming from. I've minimized the moment in my head, but the tears are closer to surfacing as I write about it. How could he do that? How could he tell her that, when he promised not to tell her anything, and when he tells me my perception is ok?
It wasn't right of them. To take jobs in other states, to go to school on the coast. It wasn't right of them to stop wanting kids after only raising three out of five, and it wasn't right of them to focus so actively on keeping John alive they forgot I still was.
John came to visit the other night, and we made the mistake of doing a school rant in the presence of my mom. We talked about all of the hell of the faculty at Neverland, and my mom just sat there looking more and more pale. In the day following, I think she came up to me, apologizing, three times, until I finally told her (a bit harshly) that I didn't want to hear it. I knew she was sorry, and I didn't want to talk about that time, or even think about that time. (Or rather I did, but I'll be damned if I wanted to talk about it with her.)
I don't want to tell her it's ok, and I'm scared that's what she wants, even though she'd never say so. I'm scared that's what I think she wants. It's not that I want to keep being angry and self-piteous about what happened, but I don't want to *pretend* I'm not. And you know, it's not fair of her to apologize because she feels badly. I want her to work through all of her feelings of failure and all of her feelings of "oh, god, I neglected her" and *then* want to apologize. No emotion, just words. I don't want to redeem her. I want to know that my mother is actually sorry for all the times she didn't act, and all the times she's said she didn't know. I want to know that my mother actually feels, when all her own guilt is resolved, when she no longer needs that from me, that I still deserve to be compensated for my pain with her apology.
I'm not usually a fan of no-emotion. But this is legitimate. I want her to apologize because I desere an apology, not because she feels guilty about it, and I know she probably believes I deserve it, at the same time she feels guilty. But all I can see is her pain. And I have enough pain of my own.
That is not callous, that is not callous, that is not callous. You know, callouses build from blisters, from abrasions and pressures on the skin. If I'm becoming callous, it's because I can't take anymore. And it's not that I won't work through the callousness, too; it's just...I want to be able to love without all this pain. And I know that's probably impossible, but until I have the resources to be ok with this pain, I'm afraid to risk the love.
I need to tell "him" that. And I need to tell him that I know what he told her as well. Not because I caught him (though I need to hear that nothing else will ever go between)...but because...I have pain in this. I was neglected and I *am* alone here. Damnit. My dad is in Narnia and my mom is insane, and that *means* something. Or does it only mean something during my hour??
See. This is why I didn't want him to see them, and this is why I don't want him to see John, even though I want it so badly for John...because I need him. I need him to be mine. I'm not on their team right now, and I need an ally who is all mine. And I just. I need someone who will let me loiter...even when I don't have a bag to toy with the zippers of...I need someone who will say to me, "you're special."
Please. Just make me believe that I am worth your time. Not just the money but your time. Make me believe you care about me for more reasons then you must.
Make me believe they might have cared as well. That it's possible for someone not to hate me.
and...beyond...
chord
�
�
