10:05 p.m. - 12/20/02
*`~threads that are golden..:**
Christmas has been moved back to the twenty-fifth, where it's supposed to be, as one of Joe's colleagues was kind enough to take his shift for him. I don't know how I feel about it completely; I'm not all that flexible about plans that are painful to make. If I'm comfortable in the first place, throwing things up in the air doesn't bother me, but after mulling through such a wretched process to determine How Christmas Will Happen, I'm kind of cranky about the change. I mean, I didn't exactly want to experience Christmas the day after the anniversary, but the majority of my family will still be in, and now we'll be waiting days for the actual event. Anti-climatic? A bit. Not that I consider the actual event something other than my family coming in. I don't. Maybe I'm just worried I'll procrastinate even further about Christmas presents. I'm not really sure where my head is at.
You can probably imagine how the day has been. Something like stress, something like frustration, something like the rage of grief. I woke up this morning all too early, but I didn't realize it was all too early because my head was already running full-speed and I went to bed prematurely the night before to escape a migraine that was stealing all joy. I prepared for my final final, (which was so gloriously not difficult) and considered going back to sleep. I spent some time with Tracy yarn, making a little fabric scrap to send to Sara and trying to get my head around what I had to say. There is so much in what Shannon said that I feel, too. A big part today has been the reality that Tracy as I knew her, before she was gone, before she exemplified anything but her own individual existence, is far greater than any of those representations. The individual, now serving as a symbol, is more powerful than what she symbolizes. And I struggle so much with the fact that today has been about the larger issue, maybe just because I didn't want to get down to the personal grief, maybe because I watched the second half of The Laramie Project. I don't know. The movie gave me chills again and left me without words, but I don't think it was a good move to watch it. Listening to all these people talk about the Wrong in the world, the wrong that we perpetuate, and those people who should not die but do just left me without words. I really don't understand what has to happen. I know how deeply rooted the problems in our culture are. I know how far back they go, and how much social upheaval would have to take place in order to achieve any sense of healing. But I don't know why we still refuse to take steps toward progress. I mean, my family has some traits that suggest complete insanity. There are some deeply embedded issues that make a person feel like they're spinning at high speeds. And yet- we're getting better. My family which has all these fucked-up ideas, perpetuated through so many years, are getting better. And I know we're a smaller organism with less variables, but the point is we're motivated and we're taking action. I don't understand what it will take to motivate the world to change. I won't even ask how many people have to die because it simply can't be an issue of that. One is far more than enough. One teaches you everything you need to know. There isn't any way that people could go through this even once and not be changed. So why do we sit around pretending this is normal? Why do I stay at Something-Fishy until I almost believe that everyone in the world has an eating disorder? I'm just flabbergasted. Frustrated. Terrified. This didn't have to happen. That's what I keep coming back to. This wasn't something inevitable, like the end of our old age, and it wasn't something random, like the meeting of two speeding cars along an icy highway. This was something sick and preventable, something that goes so far beyond Tracy, and so why didn't anyone protect her? Why didn't anyone teach her how to shield herself? Why didn't anyone tell her that the words in those magazines just weren't true, and that she could be anything, that so long as she stayed true to herself, she would remain our everything? I know that in order to have this illness she had to be expressing personal issues. But the way she expressed them is what killed her. Not the issues themselves. She was a strong, amazing, capable girl. I never doubted once that she would overcome. If she had been given the time to do so, she would have made it through, and yes I'm working to establish in myself, a faith that she still has a similar capability, a similar path that she can take toward healing, but...if she hadn't been given so much shit and so few ways to filter it, she would not have expressed herself this way. I believe. Her vocabulary would not have been food and weight and ugliness.
It's not about taking away people's ability to communicate. It's about understanding that this *is* a form of communication and giving them another way to speak. A way that is even more effective, without leaving them so fragile. I will never believe the pills killed her. I will never believe she killed herself. One thing I am grateful for is that she was stabilized the night she overdosed. She was, as far as all medical records testify, out of the woods. And I'm grateful for that because it proves, as much as I need proof, that her action did not lead to her death. Her physical frailty at that point, and whatever cosmic forces were at work, were what took her from me. She didn't choose this, and I know that. Anyone who talked with Tracy, or even had a conversation with her eyes, knew that.
...But she didn't deserve it, she didn't deserve it, she didn't deserve it...Even just to think about her eyes- her eyes- and remember the days in our bedroom, when she'd be quiet in the corner, when her sparkling amazing green-contact-covered eyes, would have gone dull, depressed, unaware. She didn't deserve that. And God, none of us deserve to miss her this much. One is enough. One is so much more than enough to teach you lessons you don't need to know. And I wish, I really wish, that we could certify now that it will stop at one. It's too much, in the pain of raging and the pain of grief, to know that the phone can ring again at any times. They don't kill gradually, these illnesses- or rather, they don't kill in a way that is visible. It's a shift in pressure so gradual it's invisible until physical strength is collapsing. It's a domino in slow motion, and once it's pushed, we're done. I shouldn't have to be afraid I'm going to lose those people that I'm closest to, those people who are thicker than blood. I shouldn't have to; no one should. I think of Sara, worrying this way, and worrying that it will be her, crying terrified tears because it's out of her hands and she doesn't know what to do. I think about that night nearly two years ago, when I shook and cried for hours because I was convinced if I went to bed, I wouldn't wake, and I know, I know this isn't right. So why doesn't it *change?*
I want...so badly...to be able to feel her presence here. And I don't feel like it's an issue of her not being around, so much as my inability at the moment to let her in. Maybe tomorrow can be simpler- just about me, just about her, none of this social-structure bullshit. Maybe tomorrow I'll stay away from that world where this starts to seem acceptable just through the number of people suffering. There's a lot of good in that community, and there's a lot of not-good. There's something to be said for the fact that when I go there and only there (the "can't venture out of D!@#$%^" days), I start to feel suffocated by the illness and not want to identify myself as having it, even as one who's fighting it. Then later- like tonight, after my sister had been here awhile, and we'd talked perfectly normal talk, and things were going well- it was comforting for me to see the title Anorexia/Bulimia Recovery. Because I am doing that, and when it's a facet of my life, it works...
But like I've said so many times, it's only worth it if you make it. It's only transforming if you survive. And maybe that isn't totally true, but I know I'll never feel this sort of grief for a friend who overcomes the disease in a way that I can view it. I know that much.
Today, Mistrandy came bearing gifts (damn procrastination on my part)- one of which was a senior t-shirt to signify my status. It's this cheesy school shirt, but I'm still wearing it now, hours after she has gone. I remember how excited Tracy was to be a senior, to go to school dances, to have that sort of status, to graduate. We made her a poster for her door like might have graced her locker, something to show her she was still a senior even if she couldn't be in school at that time. And wearing it today, I felt again that helplessness, and that sort of responsability. I don't feel I have to live for her, but I'm influenced by the fact I can do things she cannot. And I'll do as much for her as I can; I really will. I struggle with the fact that I couldn't do more when she was here. I've been wondering today if I ever told her I loved her. I don't think I knew back then. I was so scared about not saying those words so often they lost meaning, I waited eons to say them at all. But I know I love her now, and I think she knows I'm sorry I couldn't say it then.
I've been thinking about when I was seeing Harriet, and she used to say she was getting to know Tracy through my stories, which I never liked to hear. It gave me too much responsibility, and it was one I couldn't live up to- which I knew. I couldn't introduce them. She couldn't know, hearing me talk about Tracy, who Tracy was, anymore than she could know who my parents were through my accounts of them. I could talk about my relationship with her from my perspective; that isn't an introduction. But I think about that Tori line "she goes through your heart"- and that is something I very much am accept. It's fine with me if I can be her portal, her way into this world. It's fine with me if the love between us gives her a way into this world, but I don't want her confined to me. I don't want her so restricted as that. I want her to be able to live freely, more so than she could when we were together. I want to be able to believe.
It was nice, in part because of that, to feel that Shannon is somehow connected to her. I don't know if it has to do the experience I had with Paul sophomore year, but I believe Shannon knows Tracy, somewhat. Not the way you can know someone when you experience them here first, but all the same. I'm not going to say which way I've known her better. It helps me to realize that I have memories of Tracy that take place after her death. Interacting with her. And I don't care whether or not this is real, so long as I can believe it is. I don't care what other people's philosophies are so long as mine is one that allows me to love endlessly. There have been far too many truncated attachments in my time.
There are so many things that don't help me, that hurt me, to hear. Heaven in a fluffy-cloud/ golden-harp sense. The afterlife is boring. At the moment, any death talk...but there are things that help me, too. There are about a thousand Tori Amos lines that feel like psalms to me, ones that keep me safe right now. There are realities that I have experienced and ones I've borne witness through via other people's words, and I feel like I can piece together faith, somewhat. I feel like she's here, if I'll let myself believe. I feel like I just need some time, upstairs with my yarn and my dogs and my girl I couldn't say I loved when I could see her hear. I'll take it if I can. If I need to, I'll find ways. And I'm so glad, I'm seeing the doctor tomorrow, on what is no longer Christmas Eve. I'm so glad that I can sit there with him; I'd still do it all day if necessary. In a world where professionalisms were looser and he didn't have other patients, I would sit with him all day and teach him to crochet. I'd write poems and fall asleep with someone there to make sure I woke up at the end.
I think someday it will be really beautiful...to live in a place where I almost never need someone that thoroughly- but it's perfectly acceptable when I do.
chord
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