8:55 p.m. - 09/26/03
I am sorry // that I cannot make // you fall in love // with my love song
I'm not alone, and my life isn't falling apart; I feel supported, I have a home, and I'm confident that there's love enough to balance out everything about this pain and maintain the beauty of the world. So why am I crying?
I don't want anyone to read this. What a change that is. What a change from not wanting to write unless someone was guaranteed to read this, and to respond, and to somehow make it worthwhile. The words stopped being worthwhile intrinsically. Did I tell you my grandma is dead? She's not really dead; I mean she's not really "not alive", but she died. And I can't go see her anymore. And my roommate, Tracy, she died, too. It wasn't supposed to happen. She died horribly. For my grandma it was more peaceful. My aunts and uncles sang her hymns, and I really do believe the phrase "passed into Glory" when I think of her. That sounds just like what my Grandma'd do. My skin looked red against hers, and I held her hand, and I brushed her hair, and I kissed her. I told her I loved her, and I told her I wouldn't forget. She died, and Tracy died, and it's more okay for her; I saw her fight and saw her be peaceful, be ready, have faith that wasn't the slightest bit naive. Faith that knew. Tracy died in pain, from a mistake she tried to undo. From an illness I have, too. From a rotten illness I couldn't save her from. I didn't even try. I couldn't try. And Beth's Claire... all these people. I don't know how things are supposed to work, but I know when something's wrong. And I know this feeling: this, it should have been me. One time. One life I could have saved, exchanged. In the Spring when my grandma was hospitalized and I was about to be, I wanted to take her place in the ICU bed so that I could fast for her because it put her in such pain. Now I want to exchange places far more permanently, and it's wrong; I know it's wrong. My death now would be to everyone what these deaths are to me. I know that. And I don't want to die. I really enjoy living, no matter how much pain I'm in sometimes. I really enjoy living now - now that things aren't so impossible. Now that I know how to live, I really do appreciate it. I really am grateful. It should not have been me. It should not have been anyone. I'm eighteen; I should not be surviving my friends. I should not be attending funerals. My grandma was 78. The generation before her all came close to hitting 100. And maybe it's selfish - it is selfish - I really am grateful for just those extra two years ... but I still want her here. If I could just let her be here the way that she is now, I could let up a little, feeling this. But I don't think I can let her be until I've felt this, and that's the trap I'm in. For now. I don't want to adjust. I don't want a new relationship. I hate new relationships. What was wrong with the old one anyway? What was wrong with my relationship with my dad before he moved out? Why do I have to build a new one? Why does he send me cards with the same characters he and Mom used to claim as their own? Why doesn't he just come home? He's supposed to come home! He's supposed to be here. I remember - I really do remember how much I hated it when they were together and fighting and sulking - but this isn't right either. This is not right either. Doesn't he know that enough people leave? Doesn't he know that I really, really didn't need another one? Someone who had a choice. Someone who could have stayed.
The doctor says it's only abandonment if you make a commitment to stay. Otherwise, it's leaving. But my dad was committed; he was my dad. He is my dad. And he left; he just left, and I didn't even know. I believed him when he said Mom wouldn't let him come home. I believed what he implied - that she had kicked him out. I believed it all, and none of it's true. He's the one who stayed away. He's the one who wouldn't work. He's the one who won't go back into therapy. I can't give my dad an ultimatum; he's my DAD. I can't say, "You have to face this, you have to really face this, and get help, or I can't see you." It would break my heart, already glued back together so many times, to lose him. And you want to hear the truth? The real truth, that actually does come into my head when I think of being honest with him? I'm honestly afraid that he would hurt himself. I'm honestly afraid that he would...fatally...hurt himself. If I said anything. Remember that malignant power the doctor says I think I have? Well, I don't want to test and see if it's true here. I just want my daddy. And my mom. And my Grandmom. And Trace. And all the girls from Rogers. Rosie, Jesus, girl, where are you? Rae? Oshiana? Jenny? Abby? Sara, tell me you haven't called for a reason other than you aren't ok. Tell me you're safe. I'm so scared right now. Loss is an idiotic process. Like somewhere in me something says, "Look at all these people that are gone" and follows it up with, "Oooh. And look at all these other people who *could be.*" As if it's not enough. To only grieve what's really lost. As if it's not enough to feel the guilt of living where others have not, without the guilt of living with greater health than others. Not enough to have people actually dying, I have to imagine what will happen to me if this person (variable x = everyone) did. Could I stop it if I tried? And could I stop all these mini-deaths, these created ones. Like "she's getting married, so it's over" - the ones that don't have to be real...could I stop those if I refused them, flat-out denied them entry to my brain?
My poor brain. My poor eyes; they're running out of tears. My poor body. It's so desperate to hold someone and be held. It jumps up in the sessions, when it's most vulnerable; it wants to reach out and grab onto the doctor and not let go, just until the moment has past, but it never does. And I quiet it and say, maybe when the session's over I can hug him. But I never do. And it knows that when I say it. It knows the promise is empty. And that fits because my arms are empty, too.
We did talk about Chas today. There's so much to tell him, so much more than I even realize, that I feel like I lied by way of omission. I tried to tell him who she is to me, but I didn't mention the electricity and adrenaline around her; I didn't mention that I would literally shake after talking to her because of the intensity. And this one anxiety I didn't avoid. I can't think of any other - performing, maybe - that I didn't avoid. I told him that talking to her or just having her look at me was enough to make me feel really, honestly *good* and I tried to convey it. I told him what I said to Mandy the year I didn't know why Chas looked so wrecked, that if anyone deserves to have a perfect life, it's Chas. He had me repeat that and asked why, and I said - putting everything into my tone to make the words mean more than just words can - "She's just an incredible person." I cried as I said it. He leaned toward me. "By that logic," he said, "your life should be perfect, too."
I cried harder, shook my head the way I knew he knew I would. "It's not the same," I said, so softly. It's not the same. He repeated it and looked at me, knowing better than to argue the point. I'd gotten his message and he knew it. All he said was, "I don't mean that sarcastically[?]...I really do mean it." Oh, Dr. Don't think I didn't hear the implication. I'm an incredible person, you said, in different words. Don't think I didn't catch it, and don't think it didn't mean the world. But Chas to me - at one time, she was everything - and I don't know how that's possible when there were so many other women, even then (didn't mention that part, did I...) - but she was. It's like being able to love multiple people wholeheartedly. It's love-logic, superior to math, where things won't add up correctly.
He knew when I got there what I was afraid of: that her marriage would mean abandonment. He said there was a definite statement in marriage - a person says, "I'm going to continue having multiple friends and relationships, but I'm going to take this one person ... " and I was bawling. She's picking someone. She's picking someone, and it's not me.
I told him how I've felt so vicious at times, just to the guys she was dating - including this one. Men I never met, but heard about. I was happy for her - I knew what she wanted, and I wouldn't have kept it away - but I was always so angry at them. For taking her away. For getting to have her in a way I couldn't. For filling needs I couldn't fill. ...I told him how her mysterious struggle, which came into the open only after I got back from Rogers, grew worse as my illness grew worse, that we both fought our own battles, and whenever I went to her she was there. I told her I was there, too, and I know she knew that. It took her a long time to come to me, but I still know she knew. And I understood when I told her I was here, for anything, for her, that it didn't mean she'd suddenly open up and confide in me. I knew it might not be comfortable. Maybe she'd choose someone else.
Always that longing. Let me be the favorite. Let me be the special one. Single me out with love. Take me home and keep me safe.
He asked if we were ever physically intimate. I told him no (my head spins typing this) and felt like I was lying. I didn't know how to explain. I tried to make it clear later saying, it's been almost a year since I touched her. Since I saw her. And since I held her? Since I really talked to her...? but I don't know if it was. I didn't think until later to say what he might have understood. That, being so emotionally intimate (can I say that? is that fair? he said it, and it seems true, but just like with a death, I wonder now if she wouldn't find offense in the words? maybe she was never close to me. maybe I was a burden - but she loves me and she says she wants me in her life for always) every touch was charged. What did we do? Nothing. We hugged. We held on extra long. She put her hand on my knee. But it didn't matter. That charge was there. I was shy and scared and our fingers touching, for how much I felt it, for how much I loved, may as well have been a kiss. Romantic, erotic, these aren't words I know to use. These aren't questions I can answer. No. She wouldn't have asked for a relationship, and I wouldn't have wanted one. Because I wanted to be asexual. I wouldn't have wanted one because I thought then - just like I think now, just as I'm thinking writing this, the "oh, God, what would she say..." thoughts - that she would love me less if she knew I had a sexuality. Any sexuality. I have no idea what would happen if it turned out that not only did I have one, but it was drawing me to her. Would she still have affirmed my speech on gay rights if she knew it meant me? If I knew, and said, that it applied to how I felt for her? These questions are only relevant (or so I'd like to think, who knows) in their explanation of who I was then. When I was ten, I was electrically charged and craving for the teacher of my gifted class. When she left, I wrote her a love letter I would never have thought to call it, and cried my eyes out. I was already entering adolescence, and sometimes I thought sexual things. I would think of her - and of my fifth grade teacher who I also adored beyond restraint. I would imagine their disappointment in me, if they knew. I shut it off. I don't know how, but I convinced myself it wasn't there. And I want to stay convinced; part of me does. I know now that those same women I thought would lose all respect and affection for me if they knew what was happening in my head had developed those same thoughts (minus the shame, most likely) in their teen and pre-teen years. I didn't know then. And they're both gone. There isn't any saying this to them, in the months before they marry. There isn't any risk left.
Chas and I connect less and less. I no longer go to school across the street from where she teaches, and neither of us seem to keep up with e-mail the way we used to manage. I don't pour my heart into the letters, anyway. She's not my only outlet, she doesn't see my soul bared...though I don't mind that she did. I'd like very much to take back all the pain she saw me in, any pain that gave her. I told the doctor that's why I don't call her, haven't since I came back from Rogers. Because I want to all the time, and when I think to do it, I'm always feeling badly. I can't call her feeling badly; that's too much like before. And so I never do. Because I want her to know that she doesn't have to save me anymore. And I was too scared or I didn't have the presence of mind - something - to just call and tell her that.
She knows, I think. It's evident. I'm super-self-care girl these days. I'm trying to be. I'm hella better at it than I was. I think she knows, but I still can't say it. I still can't make myself call.
He called her "the girl." I liked hearing that. Chas is one of the women who taught me to say "woman" - without being conscious of it. But the doctor said things like, "So when are you going to call the girl?" and I cried uncontrollably and thought, I can't, I can't, I'm too afraid. Knowing I've said that sort of thing a million times. There wasn't any reason this one had to be different, but there wasn't any reason to keep it the same. So I thought no, no, no, and I said, "Soon, I guess," each word a separate cry, breaking down. He said that was a start. He said he didn't mean to minimize the intensity of this relationship and all of the dimension in what's going on right now by acting like it was just an issue of calling the girl. But it would be good to establish contact he said. "Just call to say hi," he said, and I thought - that's right, isn't it? - that's all I have to do. Remember calling for no reason? Remember calling to say hey? I can do that. I don't have to do it all at once. (He told me that.) I don't have to say everything right now. There's no sin in taking time to say things, especially when there's so much to them, even I don't know it all. Besides...I don't believe in sin.
He said he really didn't think it was a one-way, needy relationship, where I drained her, and she received nothing. He said my depth and my ability to listen probably mean a lot to her as well. My character. He said he had a mantra for me to use over the next few days. I collected myself and prepared my brain to listen and encode. I was going to rememeber this, and I was going to walk out into the waiting room, not looking like the flood of 40 days had just passed through my tear ducts. He said, "Your capacity to be present as a human being and to be of intrinsic value in relationships is not limited to days when you feel 'ok'." I let the words sink in, and then I sunk with them. I couldn't help it. I wanted to just nod, to say ok, to thank him, but I started bawling once again. Remember, Brea, when you told me I couldn't do anything so bad you'd leave me over it? And I cried because it's simple, but I don't remember ever hearing it before. That's how I cried today. You really think that's how it is? You really mean that? Even about me?
He said he thought he'd write that down and give it to me, so once again I have a prescription sheet that has nothing to do with pills. He said this had turned into another one of those preachy sessions where he talks to my head-voices, and before I could say, "well, what else are you going to do for an hour, when I'm too busy sobbing to talk?", he said what I told him before - that sometimes they need it. Often, they need it. My brain would be very different if he operated it, and I'm working to set some of those changes into action. So that he might as well. All those "seeds" he talks of planting, I'm working to make them grow and override the weeds I've lived off until now. Shed some sunlight on all this devil's snare.
Oooh, a Harry reference. I must be feeling the tiniest bit better. ...You know, Chas is the one who told me, early in the fad, that I absolutely had to read Harry Potter. My grandma would have loved it, but the fundamentalist Catholicism surrounding her made it impossible to consider. And as for Tracy, I don't know. She has magic in her. As do I.
Alohamora: Our magic opens doors.
chord
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