5:15 p.m. - 05/31/03
wake me up inside.
hey.
you don't have to seem so sheepish. it's ok to be back here.
I guess.
this is something good you do, you know. it's not something you have to count. you don't keep track of how many times you eat a meal you didn't want to, and if you did, it would be a number spoken with pride.
I don't want to need this. or anything else. any of the other stupid, I'm-sick-and-always-will-be shit.
so it's global and infinite now?
I guess. ...well? talk. I don't have anything to say.
actually, you're usually the one who does.
this is stupid.
because?
because it's not working.
that makes sense.
nothing's working. the meds. they're supposed to make me sleep and make me happy and make me calm, and instead I'm up every goddamn night, and in the mornings I'm shaking and depressed. I try to fall back asleep after a few hours have passed, and dream that I'm having seizures and heart attacks, only to wake up to find my heart has indeed pounded right out of my chest. therapy (down to) once a week, and keeping a journal, and never ever fucking purging again, and I still screw it up. or it screws itself up. if I weren't depressed, I swear to God I could eat better. I swear if there was just food and energy and appetite and a desire to be better than I am, no matter how much work it takes- I would do better.
you're upset with yourself for not being perfect. for not having recovered.
I'm upset with myself for not doing what I know to do, for not doing better than I used to do, for acting like a total shit when I have the option now of doing otherwise.
is this really such an easier world? are you really in such an easier life than you were?
no.
well?
no. I don't want to think about it. N*land sucked. that's what sucked. having an eating disorder sucked. being punished for being diseased- that sucked.
what about not being able to sleep because you thought your heart would give out in the night?
yeah.
sounds kind of similar.
so what? so it's still bad. what kind of fucking thing to say is that? hi, I'm Mary, I've given everything in my life to recovery, and I stand strong against all the pro-ed fucked-upped-ness and then I come here, after all I've done, and say it isn't good? say it still hurts? say I'm trapped in the middle of nowhere without friends, without home, without a working brain, or body, or soul?
no one said you had to be perfect.
you don't get it. I'm a role-model. I'm visible. I have to be responsible for the shit I put out into the world. I can't sit here and write that I'm still in pain; what kind of consolation will that be to them? I can't talk on the phone about how I'd give every damn step of progress I made to have Tracy back, or Rogers back, or just one of those girls in the room with me right now. Do you really expect me to say that? Really? with people I love at stake?
you're at stake, too. and you're no one's therapist. you're no one's neutral ground. you don't have to be someone unconditionally ok; it's not your job. they know when they come here what hard work you're doing. they know when they call that you're not always smiling.
but I swore...
what?
I want to be! I want to be ok. I want to be able to stand strong and say, I did it, and it's worth it, and you people are going to be so happy when you're here. ...but I don't want them here. I want them beyond here. because this is still hell, even if it's not the seventh circle. ...I don't want to say that, though. I don't want to say that and have other people hear. I want to be different than I was; don't you get it? I want to be different than atomgirl. I don't want to be happy and down and happy and down and anxious and suicidal and loved and gone. I hate that. I hate looking like I'm who I was.
it's deceiving. you're not. but you are still sick.
what is that? what is that to tell me? if it goes away, I'm terrified. I'm angry even. I think, "no! don't start treating me like I'm fine. that isn't fair; I'm still not ok! don't do this to me again." and when it is here, I'm angry about that, too. "no! don't treat me like I'm sick. I'm not sick. two years ago, I was dead, but I'm fine now. don't treat me like nothing's changed because I have to believe it has.
all or nothing.
fuck you. ... don't you see I know that? don't you see that's all inside me? all of the rules and the mantras, and the this is sick, and this is healthy, and these are the bridges between? don't you see I can identify and analyze and cry my eyes out as well as anyone; I have therapy seeping out of my pores. when will it be enough? all this work. when will it be enough?
I don't know.
I don't want to live this way my entire life. I don't want to feel like shit, and feel like shit for feeling that way. I don't want to be in pain and then put myself in more, thinking how much love I've been given, and how blessed I am to still be here to even have this chance.
blessed?
yes.
because?
because I'm still here. I'm still here, still fighting; I'm not dead. and I didn't do anything to earn that. I didn't do anything to make the fucking heavens open up and say, "ok, you can have another chance, but this girl we're taking with us..."
maybe they took her home. maybe she has it all beautiful now. maybe she's peaceful, mostly, and surrounded by love. you're comparing yourself to someone in a situation you don't even know.
I know that I haven't purged in three months less than two years, and most of my friends drop their jaws at that.
and think, wow, to be her. to be that much more free.
yes.
no. they know. *you* know. don't you remember? middle school? high school? hell, girl, you'd only been purging *two weeks* when they diagnosed you...do you remember that? do you remember how many years of pain went by without a single ed behavior? do you remember? "one hell of a detour..." one hell of a way to have to go to get help for pain that was already too much. one hell of a trauma to have to endure to have one person who will listen to you, and not flinch once, for one hour every week. understand? understand the hell you've gone through just to get what you needed at least six years ago?
but I'm so much better off than most...
how the hell do you figure that? what equation do you put yourself into that says, Mary's pain is less than the pain of everyone else?
I'm still alive. I'm not in mortal danger.
you're safe, by the definition you gave him, when he asked you to elaborate.
yes. I am. I am safe. I am not going to die because of the pain I'm in. I am not in that sort of danger.
is that really safe? the absence of the fatal cliff? is that really...oh, Mary, you remember safe.
I remember Rogers.
tell me. tell me.
it wasn't like this. it wasn't like this at all. it was people around all the time, and they loved you, and they talked to you, and they didn't freak out when you cried, they just held you, or if you wanted, they just went away. and there were doctors. to talk to all the time. there were people who actually cared about you, not because you had an illness it was their job to help you quit, but because they got to know you and to care. and in the meantime, between the shift changes, and the staff meetings, and all their stepping off the stairs into their other lives, we made it home. we decorated for holidays and held onto each other like survivors and we pulled each other forward with our own progress. and I was safe there. I was home there.
and no one knew if you were going to die. it didn't even factor in. it's not even the relevent point. I remember the sleepless nights of heart failure, thinking of all the people who had died and will die, and how you could be one of them. but you don't know what death means. and you don't know what's around the corner. and you aren't letting yourself say out loud the one thing that could really matter here: being safe is being home. and you aren't home.
I'm not home. I'm not. and I deserve better. Better than D!@#$%^, better than a doctor, a teacher, and one parent at a time.
You deserve to be home.
I want to go back.
I know. I know, I know, I know.
Why can't it happen? Why can't it work? Why can't I just be there in their arms again, with all this solved forever?
I don't know. Maybe...maybe it's like Billy. and you have to be apart from him to learn how to survive on your own.
but I already learned that. I already lived an impossible life without anyone's help for years. I'm even supposed to know now that I don't have to do this on my own. I don't have to get better in a paper bag, even if it is possible.
but the doctor. you know what the doctor says. when you think of Rogers, what do you forget? Mary? What don't you remember? What don't you ever say?
Me...
so maybe you have to learn that you're part of the magic like he says.
there had to have been another way. I would have learned anything they wanted. I would have climbed ninety feet in the air and walked across a wire and talked about anything they could come up with; you've got to know that.
I do. you would do anything to be there, minus the sickness. minus the hospital.
minus relapsing. I'd rather feel this than be numb. just tell me there will come a time when I won't feel it. when I'll feel something better, consistently...
tell yourself this. say, remember in junior high? wanting so badly for someone to save us, saying wake me up when I have a hero; I can't do this on my own? tell me there will come a time when I'll be free from all this pain. and all that time, without you even knowing it existed, Rogers was coming, coming, coming to show you what to hope for. to say, "this is the sort of thing you can have, you should have, you *deserve*," - to take you in and hold you like a wounded stray in whom they saw a purebred. all those days, when you were writing death in your notebooks, and telling everyone that nothing mattered except writing, or not saying anything at all, it was coming. the time was coming. when you would know it.
and the time when I would lose it. again.
it's home #1. you've got to remember that. you've got to remember, it's your map, your compass, your heart, your heritage, your goal, your family, your home for always, but it's the best thing you've ever had *yet.* four years from now, this will be junior high. and you'll think, if only I could have known what was coming.
I just want someone to hold me while I wait.
you have them. and you have time, and are building resources, to have more.
it isn't over.
no. it gets better than this. you get more than this. your reward is still being built day by awful, blessed day.
ok, then...I'm just going to keep walking, and if I'm going the wrong way, someone will turn me around, ok? I'm just going to keep moving until I find it, and try to believe in it and in me along the way. try to stop this perfectionist, role-model bullshit. integrity is the only way it matters anyway. it doesn't matter if it's not sincere.
one foot in front of the other...
uuugh! I hate that song.
I know.
help me to keep doing this. help me to find the way.
you will.
don't let me stop loving myself.
I won't. ok?
ok...
aw, Mary, you don't have to look so sheepish when it works...
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