7:58 p.m. - 04/30/03
..:slowly unravel.::-
I want to cry for her tonight. I can't seem to find the right sort of emotion for tears, though. I have the rawness and the cutting inside; I have the quiet whispering and sympathetic desperation. And somewhere I have the tears, also; I don't doubt they'll come. Grief rises like mercury in a thermometer; it's temperature marked by degrees, never nothing, always there.
And me? I guess I want to cry for me as well. When I left, the doctor told me to seek out some self-pity; I seem to've picked that up again now that I've returned. I minimize the pain of it, though. I minimize the absolute paralysis that comes with zero stimulation, especially following nearly two weeks in New York City at the speed of Sarah (which is greater than the speed of sound). I minimize the tears I did cry, under the guise of a shower (still deciphered), when I realized Tuesday that I did not leave home nor return to it. I've felt that pain before, but it's still a blow I can hardly hold myself against. It's still unsettling, to have so little grief in leaving, so little joy in the return. When I got "home" last night, I received the most beautiful package from perdiendome, in part because "everyone should have a home." And I'm grateful, for the sweet words, unthinkable genorosity, kind friendship; I am grateful. But I'm grateful, too, for the recognition of reality: everyone should have a home, and I do not. I had one, which I do not now. I have one, which I cannot reach, which doesn't fit into its old illustration, or evolve into one I can access as well. I have one with a family, dispersed to parts unknown, made almost unfamiliar by wall-like silences, and letters unreturned. I have a sister I will never again touch, and she isn't the only one- simply, the only one I know. And there's where my tears will spark tonight, if the engine behind them can bear to roll over. There's where my pain, as always, lacerates.
I'm supposed to take my own pain on and face my own right to feel better. I see the logic in that; I even crave the kindness I could know from myself. But instead, I'm filled with other people's stories. The young actress my sister roomed with her second summer at university and the way, at the yelp of a timer, she'd interrupt a meager meal to go running. The tendons in my two-week sister's feet that were cut by the boys who raped her so she could not run away. The gang and independent who chose, on different occasions, to assualt the same girl I love now- and her adopted brother who tried to kill her mom. The sister I will never again touch. The sister I try to hold tight only to guess more sharply the pain I'll face should I lose her (not to mention present pains) - the sister who taught me that gravity. I keep thinking of dancers and diarists and people I barely know, holding onto their stories, slipping under the burden which is more than I can know (it is), and avoiding my own. Sometimes, it seems like this is my story. I am the blank book with the enticing cover, filled with other people's words. I have images burned into me, read/ viewed/ heard once, remembered always. And I can't manage myself, I can't manage the load of my listening, I can't manage the pain of this love. I have a life that extends like nerve endings, like plugs in search of outlets, that connects, feels breaks, feels the electric joy and shock of other individuals. And I don't know how to repair myself. I don't know how to heal the raw, exposed wiring abandonment's made dangerous. I don't know how to pull myself safely away from connections I'm no longer served within. I don't know, fully, even how to want that.
My dad called to tell me he'd locked himself out of the house, one day when I was in New York. He said I had mail (plural mail) and that it was on my desk. It included the package addressed to Mary Brave, and other things he didn't detail, and I didn't ask him to recall. I wanted so badly to believe (and to quit hoping) that I'd find a reply from Jenna; I came home to mail from school, from Rogers, mail that doesn't even know my name. And I want to be ok, of course; I try to be ok, but it isn't long before I'll have to face (again) that she might not respond. That it might really be ending. I remember how hard that was the last time I gave up. I'm scared to go through it again, and I would, of course, do anything to keep from having to - because I would do anything to have her back.
Stupid, infantile, - all these synonyms I want to say. But how can I keep judging it when I want to look after myself? How can I keep disclaiming it, when it holds fast across adolescent centuries? This. Is. Real. - including the parts I wish were not. This Is Real, including everything that breaks my heart. It's real. It's real, it's real, it's real. I love her, and I love them, and I love there, and I love me, and I want, I want, I want so badly to go home.
It's not stupid, it's not infantile; it's necessary and unavoidable and so overwhelmingly strong...
So what is my story? Where are my broken tales and mended endings? Where is my voice, and my worth, and my right to sympathy? This is it, yes, but only part of it. There is a part of me that exists entirely independent of the world. No matter how small that part, there is a part that's not reactionary, not a supporting player or a second fiddle, not an understudy. I'm here. I'm here, too. Just me, without you, you who I love and love and love and hate (sometimes) loving. I'm here, too; what do I have to say, to bear?
I don't ever want to hear it again, and that makes me guilty so I switch it to something similar: I don't want it ever again to be real. I don't want to hear this, I say, and that's cruel somehow, so I wish there were no story to be told. I'm nerving webbed; I can't seem to keep from caring, can't seem to keep from entangling myself (however "safely") in those I stumble across. So I wish there were no one sore to stumble across, no lack of safety in connection, no transport for vicarious pain. He says, "Remember. The pain is not the gift. The pain is built around the gift, by all the ways it's been misled, mishandled, misunderstood. The pain is not inherent to your ability to connect," he says, and I beleive him because his hopes secure for me what seems like steady ground. But then, this is my story, yes? At least largely, at least somewhat significantly- tangled as it is in other people's pain? That tangling is so much of what needs to be told. But how do I heal damage that took two to inflict, loss that cannot be restored into relation, or pain from stories I did not personally endure? How do I heal the scourge of empathy, of abandonment, of loss? I can't fix other people's pain; I can't seem to forget it. The lines and the truths and the images stay with me, and I can't seem to free myself or even know I want to. I want to be free, don't I? - but not alone. I want to be free, conditionally. I want to be free with the understanding that Dr. R is right, that stitching up my pain will not disconnect me from the gift which made it possible. I coax this one wound to the surface; it's my pet injury- I choose it over any other. It tells me, "yes, Mary, you are still alive, you are still real, you are still tied with love" so I can live in spite of it. I deal with the pain through the pain; I connect it to the gift so I can't imagine healing it. But what about me? What about me? I don't know who I am or where I'm going because I'm too busy noticing the sub-surface realities that other people miss. I'm too busy trying to save a girl I met for five minutes from a fate my instincts recognize. I can't be safe if everyone else is not safe, so I will save them first, and after find my happiness. This is a line from my own story; this is a conversation recorded from my recovery. "If you could have one wish granted, what would it be?" asks Tammy, when we first meet, but when I say, "that no one would suffer this" she asks me to pull it in to only me, not realizing my recovery means...little...without the recovery of every other person on earth. How unfair is that? Self! What are you doing? What stakes are you putting us up against? What impossible goals have you set so thoughtlessly? Why? I know best how hard I've worked for this. Why can't it be enough? Why do I have to feel the tripped switches of another's pain so keenly? Why do I have to grieve girls killed by what I have somehow sidestepped? Skillfully? Coincidentally? I still can't say. But why can't it be enough, for my own sense of peace -enough, that I'm surviving? That I'm more and more alive?
I had a play open in New York City, to twice the audience of the last. The first night saw people sitting on the floor, standing to the side. I didn't hear one unfavourable response, I received a thousand amazing compliments, I spent whole days inches from someone who used to command my heart as skillfully as she does her craft, I hugged people I have never seen, I hugged (a) people I have held before. I had beings on my lap, at my side, with their heads to my shoulder, with their lips to my cheek. I ate better than someone with an eating disorder can eat, although I have one, and I stayed a night somewhere other than with family, for the first time since (before?) middle school. I did all this, and I undermine it because I can't do it for anyone else. I deemphasize the magic that I am because I don't know yet how to transfer it to others. (If I ever will.)
It should be enough that I have magic in me. It should be enough that I am made of stardust, stone, and love. My heart simultaneously drumming out music and dancing to the tune should be enough.
And tears should be translated into words, effectively.
chord
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