3:35 p.m. - 03/20/03
build higher walls around me. ]*[ change every lock and key.
Not feeling so swell right now. Mentally, I'm at say five (on a ten scale- which is pretty impressive, considering) and physically, I'm all queasy and not ok. But I screwed up med-wise last night, so that's kind of my own fault. I've gotten some work done today but really need to do more. I'd like to study two more chapters for this cumulative psych test I have coming up and do some work on Frankenstein for my gothic class. Those are the easy things to say. The hard ones are probably the real explanation of my queasiness...
I had an appointment yesterday, of course. I slept the entire way there, trying to feel well enough to talk with him, which I wanted to do. The first twenty or so minutes of the appointment made very little sense to me. He was trying to communicate an insight, one of the ways he thinks about things, that he thought could sprout a little in my mind, and help me. To begin with, the volatile nature of something at this time may not be a reflection of the greater picture. As in, the daily drama with my parents does not suggest drama over the long term. They do things like storm out and scream and cry, but that doesn't mean they aren't going to wake up the next morning, and love each other, and go to counseling, and stay married until the end of time. They will. So I have the right to recognize drama that is not a good indicator of the true reality of a circumstance, and stay out of it. Though of course, with my parents, I have the right to stay out of it no matter what.
I couldn't really make myself hop onto the intellectual caboose, though, so we ended up going onto other things. I was feeling homesick, and upset about Tracy, and low on energy. I failed to mention the shame and struggles lately with food. (I've been doing so well. But with such effort.) He asked if I'd been breathing, and I told him that I'd had to remind myself a few times. Then, for no reason whatsoever, I told him that when I was in choir my instructor made a big deal out of whether or not she could see us breathing. Obviously, you're supposed to breathe when you sing, but it's supposed to be from your diaphragm, so if she saw shoulders or chests moving, she'd get a little riled. I told him that obviously that's not why I have trouble breathing, but it's probably why I have such trouble focusing on breathing (getting my breath back, etc) when other people are around. It's something- like eating used to be- that I can't imagine doing around anyone (though obviously, I have to.) I'd run laps in gym and make sure not to pant afterward. When doctors listen to my lungs, they always ask me to take deeper, deeper, deeper breaths, imitating what they mean, in hopes I'll mimic it. And I never can because they move their shoulders, and breathe audibly, and all these other things I learned not to do...
And then the doc started to think this was a big deal, and I felt bad for having mentioned it. This is so entirely not a big deal, which I kept trying to explain. He's talking about trauma and not protecting the mental health of students, and I'm thinking, "She was supposed to teach me how to sing. She wasn't supposed to be clued into whether or not I was crazy and manage around that." I told him that obviously what she did was not wrong because no one else was bothered by it, (i.e. I am the problem) and he asked me how I knew that, which made me sigh and admit that I don't. Then he said that if I were the only one in a class of people allergic to bee stings, and a teacher kept taking us on field trips, and we were stung by bees, and when it happened to me my arm swelled up like no one else's, if the teacher had just said, "Well, no one else's arm is swelling up like that, so I'm not going to change how I do things" it would have been wrong. And I explained to him that she never had any way of knowing that I was injured. It was just my own insane "I have to do everything and do it perfectly" perspective. He still thought she was responsible, though he understood that her she did what she did unintentionally. I told him that I don't want to do this; I don't want to go through my life and point fingers at all the people who supposedly wronged me, which he said we don't have to do. Maybe just looking at a few of them will help. Then he said that there's a grayscale between entirely innocent injuring and malicious sadism. We don't have to choose whether she was innocent or sadistic. She can have hurt me without being evil. She doesn't have to be my geometry teacher, who continually dehumanized me until I had panic attacks, and then left - or my guidance counselor who pretended not to know that I had an eating disorder, that I was suicidal, or that said geometry teacher was abusive. My guidance counselor who was around just often enough to make me keep going back to her, and not enough to do anything good. Who not only didn't help, she did huge damage. My guidance counselor who should not be allowed to work with kids until she gets her own shit together, which unfortunately, would require stripping away the thick layers of her naivete and admitting she has shit to get together. {end rant.}
I told him I hate Neverland and I hate D!@#$%^, and that's all I have. I hate my story, and I don't want it, and he said that my reality was mine to own, and I could feel however I wanted to about it, and that feeling could change. (Just like the way my parents' feelings moment-to-moment are different than their feeling, and action, overall.) He said that his first promise when we started working together was that he would completely respect my reality and hold onto it, so no one could make it un-happen, the way I'm so terrified they will. I told him complete respect is more than I give said reality myself, and I didn't care that it was mine, I didn't want it. He said, "what would be wrong with walking away for a little while? We meet again in less than two days- why not just let it rest until then?" I told him I can't let it rest; it follows me. I told him I don't want anything to do with it, and I want to go home. He told me that we were meeting in less than 48 hours (he can't meet over the weekend...and I ask you...how am I supposed to make it from Friday to Wednesday on my own?) and I didn't have to work on it during that time. I was crying, my head spinning on the axis of that homesickness.
He said he needed to talk to my mom for maybe twenty minutes (read: one hour) and stood up to leave. I started bawling and curled into my tightest ball. My head was going: Don't leave, don't leave, don't leave. And he said, "So I'll leave you here and meet with her in the other room." And I choked on the words, said, "Please- don't - leave. Don't - leave. Please." When he said, "Alright" it sounded like he was saying it to himself, the "ok then" before he walked out the door. And I was sobbing *so hard* - it was so not about him going into the other room. Leave meant so much more than going away for five minutes. But I was wrong about his "alright" and he sat back down and talked to me for a few more minutes before asking where I wanted him to meet with Mom. I pointed toward the other room, and he touched my shoulder lightly as he went...
I put my arm on the arm-rest and my head on my arm, and cried. I'm down to the last resources here. I miss the people I have worth missing so so so so much, and I don't know how to make my life work anymore. I don't know how to do this, and I can't do this alone, and obviously I'm looking at it again like I'm alone. Who knows why. My response to the end of the session was, "You're leaving forever and ever and I'm going to die." I'm acting like I have no one in the gap between Friday and Wednesday. I'm acting like I'm alone, and I'm not anymore. I'm not anymore...
Sometimes emptiness- nothingness- is the hardest thing to convince yourself has gone.
He came back after they had talked, and he sat down again, and asked how I was. I told him I was ok. I'd stopped crying and composed myself fairly well. I'd stopped thinking over and over, "At Rogers you never cry alone unless you ask to; there's always someone there to hold you when you cry. Someone hold me, someone hold me, someone hold me." I told him I was sorry, as much as I was trying not to say that. And he did what I needed; he said, "There's nothing to be sorry for. This is your safe place" - the second part of which was just a little devastating. I don't want a safe place to be a wreck. I want home and it doesn't exist here. It doesn't exist here.
Maybe I should renew my lease of the white room...
chord
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