10:45 a.m. - 01/15/02
if god is a bit much, just believe in santa.
I've been writing multi-purpose prose this morning, a letter, thus far with two recipients, now made into a journal entry (mostly to make me feel as if I've done *some* journaling on the subject of my school fears)...
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I've been thinking about why it's so hard for me to explain what I feel about this prospective return to school. I guess I've realized these past few months, at Rogers and since coming home, that in my family we don't communicate to be understood. Instead, we express ourselves only to be right, and to achieve the benefits of that- namely, to win whatever argument we feel we're fighting, to collapse all opposition, and to continue on as we wish, without having to be countered, afraid, or angry. I guess what I'm trying to say is that since coming home, I've begun to realize that every conversation here is, in a way, a debate; somewhere we've all learned that our realities are only valid if they are correct (and if *only* they are correct), and so when I talk about something, I try really hard to be "right" to a point that I cannot be challenged. When I think of what I want to say, I hear every argument my mind can come up with, in its own voice - in the voices of my parents or people I've met - and I work those challenges into my little everyday monologues, trying to make my opinions flawless so that no one can confuse them or take them away from me. I try to make my perception an impenetrable reality, so that no one has the power to minimize it.
I've been doing this with school. When I start to talk about it, and I lose track of the details- this fear I have is such an overwhelming, nebulous fear- I get afraid because I don't want to be inarticulate or unconvincing. When I finish even a short conversation about it, and I still hear the possibility of going back, even if I don't realize I'm fighting not to (because honestly, at this point, as hard as it is for me to intelligently comprehend I could be in a classroom sometime next week, I hold almost no belief that my need to *not* be there will hold enough weight to keep me away) I start to panic because I realize that without logic, without reasons and sub-reasons, themes and motifs and supporting theses, I'm not going to have the power to keep myself out of school. In my life, (minus Rogers, minus therapy) I've learned that feelings exist to be justified; feelings alone are not an argument- logic is - therefore, feelings can never be a reality, that impenetrable reality that is necessary for survival in my family. In order for my opinions to remain unscathed they have to be of logic. It's an odd reality, actually, considering that in other environments, the only thing that cannot be challenged is a feeling, and here, it is disqualified almost immediately. The usual exit line sounds something like "I understand you feel that, but... [insert logic here.]" Feelings are illogical; therefore, they are easily dissembled in debate, if not internally.
Unfortunately, with school, the feelings are so intense and so myseteriously widespread- through past drama and denial and assiduousness, I seem to have thoroughly confused their origins, if I ever was aware of them, and I don't think I fully was (or am) - it leaves me unable to articulate them in a way that is logical, or even easily understood. Even if I can explain the intensity of this fear (which I'm not sure is possible through words) I can't explain why it exists in a situation that doesn't warrant it. In a perfectly "safe" situation, I feel a fear that redefines the word. And if I can't come up with reason for that fear, I'm afraid it won't hold any weight. Meanwhile, when I try to think through my school-life, and determine some such reason, I'm overcome with the fear, and I can't get through it to any "intelligent" origins. I only have the fear.
In my memory, this has been true one other time. When I was scheduled to discharge Rogers, I went into constant grief; I screamed, I cried, I begged to be allowed to stay. I came up with every perfect argument to take down their logical "better now - leave now" thought process. I didn't want to leave on the same level most of my friends were *pleading* for discharge, perhaps even moreso. The weekend before I came home, I got a pass home to sort of "test the waters." Understandably, my perception of that weekend might be "clouded" by my emotional unwillingness to leave (again, emotions are only barriers between perception and reality), but I remember shutting down almost instantly, spending almost the entire weekend in a back room, feeling nothing. When I returned to the hospital, I asked my parents to leave almost within seconds; friends, staff, asked how the weekend had gone, and I couldn't explain it. I said it was awful, they said "but you ate" - and I didn't know how to counter that, if I could eat through whatever was so awful, what reason did they have to keep me from returning to it?
I had a near panic-attack that afternoon. Every anxiety I hadn't felt at home washed over me, and I started shaking, had trouble breathing, felt like my heart was going to race right out of my chest, if I didn't race right out the door - in the opposite direction from "home." After the anxiety, I began bawling, and pleading with them to not make me go back to this place. I told them, and meant it whole-heartedly even as I hated myself for the words, that I would rather die than come back to live here with my parents. They asked why, what had happened, what was so awful, so wrong? I went through every moment in my mind and couldn't come up with the slightest justificatin for what I felt in what had happened. I tried to utilize the reality of Rogers (very different from the reality of "home"), trying to convince them that if I felt it, it had to be justified. I wouldn't feel it for no reason. I think some of them honestly believed it was as awful as my tears made it look but believed I had the strength to get through it; others knew that even if it were that awful, the treatment team would send me home, and so they gave cute offers to adopt me, trying to get me through the pain of that last week. In the end, the decision was that returning home would be beneficial to me, that my parents could change, that things at home would not destroy me. I'm hurt by the tears that jump to my eyes as I type that. I'm so tired of having my limits tested, of being put through experiences that will be "good for me" at times that simply aren't. I understand that I need structure, that I need people, that I need purpose, and a chance for affirmation, all of which school would provide. I understand that on a bigger level, this fear is *way too big* not to be faced. But I can't do it. Not right now. Please.
The minor beginnings of justification that I pull when prompted to explain all came after the fear. The teachers who screamed at me when I had panic attacks, when I was too depressed or too malnourished to focus, when I missed day after day of class- the teachers who screamed at me until I cried, then walked away - all came later. The fear I had going into certain classrooms, knowing I would be treated like a cocky animal, needing to learn its place, this wasn't until high school, at the earliest junior high. The high anxiety, the pressure, the stress, the cutting in between classes, in classes, was all later. And I don't remember what caused it originally; I don't know what caused it originally. I just remember having stomachaches that would leave me in a fetal position bawling; I remember sitting in dark nurses' office with them, completely forgotten; I remember stretching childhood sickness' (both physical and emotional) into weeks of missed classes. Every morning of a sick day the pain in my stomach would start to disipate; every morning asked to return to school I'd feel it again: flames and knives of fear beyond fear. And they asked me then, too, what was so bad - was someone being mean to me, was someone hurting me, was something happening?- and the answers were all no. I had friends, my teachers liked me, I did well in class. But I was terrified. I was terrified up through middle school, when the anxiety finally became too much, and I shut down into the depression.
I understand that this may seem melodramatic, but I don't know how else to explain school as I know it. I remember summers filled with nightmares that I was back in school. The nights before returning from vacation when I felt pain so physical I was surprised it didn't kill me. Pain I eventually quit talking about when I was told the stomachaches were nerves, when I heard them joking I was faking, and didn't want to be perceived as a liar. I thought, eventually, that the pain had stopped, but in high school I barely slept on school nights. I stared at the clock, waiting for the time when I had to get up, going over in my head if it was a day I could handle, or a day I could handle to skip. Sometimes, I went to school, and was so overwhelmed that the pain would return, usually in headaches now, and I would go to the nurse, wincing from it, and - no one questioning the girl who'd never lie - go home. I played up headaches several times, knowing I was really running from anxiety, not to Tylenol. It was the one time, outside of hiding my eating disorder, that I allowed myself to lie without intense berration. It felt like a survival tactic, like it was the only thing I could do to escape. And I believed, believe, that the escape was necessary. The escape from fear maybe, if not school, but it's a fear I don't understand, a fear school embodies, and I don't know how to trust a decision that returns me there, without first understanding the fear it still brings.
I go back to my return here from Rogers, and ask myself what I've gained, what I've lost, what decision I would make now, knowing what I do. I did gain something, coming home; I gained a better understanding of what goes on in my house. I can articulate now that in this environment, I'm not allowed to feel, and explaining the intensity of living that as a rule, especially at a time with feelings such as the grief I feel for Trace...starts to help people understand, starts to help me understand. What I've lost is the ability to have a smooth recovery, if there is such a thing. I've lost the level of self-esteem I had when I left the hospital. I've lost the uncompromised ability to challenge the voices of shame. I've lost my own sense of worth and the belief that I deserve safety. I've handed it over in order to have logic, in order to explain my parents' behavior, Tracy's death, and everything else. In order to say this a pain I deserve, which somehow, in the short-term, makes it easier.
I wouldn't choose to come back here now, knowing about the knowledge I'd gain, and I don't choose to go to school, aware that it might help me understand why I've been so afraid of it for so long. The whys *are* vague, are nebulous...the best I can offer is this: I have to believe, in the part of my heart that wants to know that I'm who I was treated as at Rogers and not who I'm treated as at home, that there's a way to understand and heal that fear, that doesn't put me in a situation as dangerous as going to school during the day, and coming back here afterward. I *want* to understand the fear, I want to have friends, I want structure, I want purpose, I want to know I can survive something seemingly so simple. But I want to believe that I'm worth getting those things in a way that doesn't risk going back to where I was. I honestly believe that returning to school by day and continuing living here at night will end my recovery. And maybe that would be a choice I'd make - I don't know - maybe it would make "sense" to me then to end it. To say, if the best I deserve is living in a house like this one, being sent to a place that might as well have been a torturous, traumatic hell for how it feels, maybe it isn't worth it to re-discover *my* life because maybe my life isn't worth it.
If there's a way to get those needs that school would meet. fulfilled in a way that doesn't leave me so desperately hurt as this, *I* think that would be better. I think there are other needs now that are being overlooked, like my need to be safe. Just once. I keep begging to return to Rogers because it's the only place I've ever been safe, and seeing my life gradually return to the other extreme, the place of parents and school and constant fear/shame...it leaves me terrified. Desperate. Please. Isn't there something else?
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Last night, I had a dream that I was dressed as Santa Claus and so I got pulled into this little mini-concert that was being held somewhat spontaneously in a Wal-Mart. Mariah Carey was there, as was the girl from Hangin' With Mr. Cooper, can't remember her name, and a couple others. They were singing "When You Believe" which is a song Tracy turned me onto, a song I taped from her collection. It has me thinking that Santa Claus enlisted the Sandman to play courier for his reply to my letter the other day. I'd forgotten that we mold our own miracles, that as they say in Twas The Night Before Christmas "even a miracle needs a hand."
For those of you who, like me, would never know this song under normal circumstances, the lyrics are here. The chorus is what showed up in the dream.
I guess what I'm trying to say is communicating this need, understanding that this decision to return me to school has the power to fully return my shamed self-perception, is my way of trying to make my own miracle: to not be evil or poisoned anymore. To be brave and atomish.
armoredchord
"you hope, and I'll hurry/ you pray and I'll plan/ we'll do what's necessary/ cos even a miracle needs a hand..."
-night before christmas
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