4:25 p.m. - 10/29/03
button up your overcoat.
[There are two other posts as-of-today before this one.]
I admit it. I've been thinking of nothing but Jenna, in every past, present, and future possibility pretty much without exception, since Friday. I've been an absolute wreck. Today is the first day that I have not spent hours in bed with a blanket over my head, trying to sleep my way out of thinking. And yesterday was one of the worst. Yesterday was so awful; every sense of hope and faith that I'd had until then disappeared, and all the dark thoughts the hope had been countering were allowed to run freely through my brain. Wreaking havoc. Damn them. And then I finally broke down and decided to call the hospital, and talked to about a million people, attempting to get a hold of a member of her family - because Jenna herself asked that we not try and talk with her, and none of the medical people will give me any information - because somehow, by their bizarre definitions, I'm not a relative to her. Oy. I didn't speak with anyone from her family, and I got flustered enough in my phone calls (see the desperation? Mary, calling strangers, talking to person after person after person?) that when the nurse on Jenna's-new-non-ICU-floor(!) asked if I wanted to leave a message, I left one. Without the disclaimer of, I wasn't trying to talk with you! I wasn't trying to be invasive; I just *had* to know because I was going crazy myself, with worry. So I'll probably need to straighten that out. I don't want her to be mad at me, but I'm far less afraid of her being angry with me than I am of other possibilities. As I said to the doctor, in order to yell at me, she has to be speaking to me, and I think even through the pain of having her yell, I'd still be amazed and grateful for her one-and-only-Jenna-voice.
I'm so scared. Still. Perhaps moreso. No, not moreso; I don't know. After I talked to Dave, Monday, I felt so much better. I felt like I could focus a little on my own life and my own needs again. I remembered that "sisters" is not synonomous with "clones" and although Sara and I have a lot of similar feelings right now, and are doing a very good job of holding onto each other, I need to be careful not to assume that she's feeling something for the same reason, or in the same manner, that I am. We're still different, and we're in different places, and even though we're both upset, we're upset differently. In some ways. In some ways, we're just two girls with an illness each, loving another girl who nearly died from it this weekend. It was more than remembering that which made me feel better. It was the whole talk with Dave, which, upon reading my transcript of it, doesn't seem so positive. But in the moment, it was such a gift. I haven't talked to him in almost two years, in two rather concentrated years which seem like they could hardly hold all the time and progress that they do. I wonder a little if I wasn't getting more of Dave when he's talking to a peer and less of Dave when he's talking to a client. They can be very different Daves. I still felt like a former patient, but there was such kindness and compassion and *support* in his voice. It was bizarre. When I was at Rogers, I knew he genuinely wanted to help me, I knew he genuinely cared about some of the girls, but I don't know that it ever struck me that he could genuinely care for me. After I spent so much time fighting him, complaining about him, complaining about him to him, and so on... It seemed different in some way, and at the same time so familiar. And that is the absolutely right word. When I got off that phone, I felt like a girl trekking through a rough and wretched stretch of wilderness, who - ready to just collapse and give in to the elements - called home and had her heart refilled. Love in booster shots... I honestly felt like I was a normal kid for a second, like I was a kid having a hard time at college, calling home. And it didn't matter, just then, that I'm not in college, I'm in life's brutal PhD program (it might be the masters program; the superdoc mixes his metaphors, which makes it confusing), it didn't matter that home was a hospital, and the family member a former therapist. It simply didn't matter. Even more than it hasn't mattered over the last few calls. The last few calls felt like reconnecting with Rogers, which I call my Home, with people I feel are Family...but this call was like a pep talk from a close and oh-so compassionate cousin. And what he said about the letter - that it was beautiful, gorgeous - affirmed so many things I never thought I'd hear affirmed. Obviously, there's an affirmation of my writing and of my progress, which is nice but - not to entirely dismiss those - there are more surprising affirmations. The letter was full with my insistence that Rogers is home, safe, supportive, everything I want (unfortunately coupled with [almost] everything I want to be away from.) If Dave thought the letter was gorgeous, that didn't bother him. He doesn't fight that. If Dave thought the letter was gorgeous, he doesn't mind that I'm still sending him letter after letter after letter, despite the fact that I thought I hated him for a long time and that he never responded. I told Sara this - that he must not hate getting the letters - and she said, "He loves it." And I said, "he must not hate that I think of it as home," and she said, "He thinks it's funny." He thinks it's funny, he accepts it, he's proud of me. He's proud of me. Today, when I spoke with Sara, she detailed some of a conversation she just had with Dave (though she's far braver about calling him than I am), and even though a lot of what he said to her seemed bizarre considering what he said to me (just confirming that Sara and I are different people in different places, people whom Dave sees differently and treats differently) and one thing they talked about was people who don't want to get better. Dave told Sara she's going to get better. She is. We all are. We have to. Or as Dave said, we have to believe in that. We have to believe and hope that we will get better before we die. He reminded her that there are people who do want to get better and are managing to do so. (I'm about to choke up here...) And I was his example. I was his example. "Look at Mary Lastname!" and even though I still want to shout that I'm not ok, don't pin me "recovered", I was so touched by that. Because he didn't pretend I was ok when I talked to him Monday. Even when he knew I was behaviorally stable. He was perfectly understanding of the fact that feeling is seriously hard, as hard as illness, and my pain was amplified by the fact that I'd chosen not to use inevitably-hurtful coping mechanisms. I want to write him again. I think that means I have to do something because I have no new news since the rather recent last letter. Of course, I could just send him a note thanking him for the little talk, and telling him I'm going to hold him to his (perhaps involuntary) "I'll talk to you soon." Damn right you will. You will learn to communicate long-distance. You just will.
He called Jenna, but she apparently didn't want to talk with him either. I'm not sure if she took the call and told him that or refused it like she has mine. I knew he'd call her or visit her; I just knew. In some ways, it's comforting; I feel for him so much because it must be so painful to be in this war zone all the time, but I'm glad he's doing the work that he is. I'm glad he called Jenna because now, if she goes back to the EDC, and the new, rather stupid rule about age puts her on a floor that isn't mine, I trust more that Dave will push his way into her life there, just a little. Just enough to push at her and get pushed back, to maybe tell the therapist on first floor what to watch out for... I hope. I hope she goes back, and I hope when she goes back she progresses. And when she progresses, she remembers she can do this, and invests her energy into finding out how, again. I hope that with everything in me.
Despite yesterday's good news, I'm still really nervous. My chest is all tight, and I'm anxious; I feel like I have to refuse my mom's invitation to go run some errands (get out) because I just can't take the added stress right now. It would be stressful. Bright store lights and things to buy and people everywhere. I could do it, but it would be stressful, and I just have to vote against that right now. No more stress. I already feel like my nerves have turned into rusty chain and my muscles have petrified. I think, if I didn't know how to cry and talk and write and beg others to help me love someone they don't even know, I'd probably be seriously ill right now. Either the way I was seriously ill before or in some new sense. I've certainly *felt* sick ever since I've heard the news. And see, I'm more scared now that she's out of ICU. Which is so annoying. That's entirely anxiety-disordered (and history interfering) on my part. It wasn't like that when I first found out. When I first found out, I cried and hugged my home and put my hand on my throat. When I told Sara today, she started screaming and I could tell from her voice she was grinning, and I know that - to some extent - that's how I felt yesterday. A little more trepidatious, but still, that joyful, that much gratitude. Now, I've passed this "one step in the right direction" mentality that was so comforting and moved steadily along into a "yeah, one step, and how many more is it even going to take to have her physically stable, if that's *possible*?" which is a far less breath-giving thought. I'm just really scared to hope because I know that I really could lose her. This isn't paranoia around a tonsilectomy; this is hellishly real and deserving of my fear. And I want to hope, but I just keep thinking of that day with my grandma, the day before she died, when it was all turning around and we were all upbeat again - when I was thinking about the next time I'd visit her at home... I'm scared to have hope because even though that time, I felt in the beginning that it was probably the last time, even though I felt that she was ready and that I had said everything I wanted to (thank you), and gotten two years more with her than I might have, two years I really needed...when the tide turned back again, after I embraced that hope, I was ill. I was completely ill over it. I don't know how to trust her life when her eating disorder is involved. I don't know how to feel safe when it's so possible... ... Well, it has to be possible that she recover, too. As Shannon (from the IOP) used to say, what you have to remember is that just as quickly as things can go wrong, they can go right again. Just as quickly as something bad can happen, something good can, too. I just wish my faith were more steady. I felt safer when I believed in God. Now, with my beliefs so confused, it's more difficult. And I'm SO GRATEFUL for this one step in the right direction, especially considering, one step in the other direction was all the illness needed to take her entirely. Oh, Jenna. I can't lose you that way. If I lose you to life...I'll survive. I thought I'd lost you to your life once before, and I didn't get through the pain, but it didn't break me either. I'm willing to do everything I can think of for you - even things you'd hate, (like informing other people and asking them to help wrap you in such love) and have you walk away from me. I realize now that my love for you is the greatest kind of love, the Rogers-kind, which can sustain me even through the loss of it.
I just can't lose you to this illness. I just can't accept that your life end here. Before all these people I've called and asked to love you have the chance to meet you and be touched by you as well. Before I get to hug you again, even if I do it instinctively and you smack me afterward. I don't think you'd smack me. I just...you have to live. That's the only miracle I'm asking you for. That's the only thing I need you to do. And when you're alive, we'll figure out together, how and if we are. Oh, God(d?), I hope it's how...
chord
p.s. I had a not-so-successful session with the Superdoc Monday. (I didn't want to work on planning how to deal with any of what's happening; I just wanted to cry about it.) But one thing he did confirm for me is that while Jenna says, "I'm done; leave me alone" her actions say, "I want to be well; rescue me." And I'm obviously not the one meant to rescue her, but there's hope in the possibility that as Dave said, as I've said, as the Superdoc said - she might want to get better. We believe she wants to get better. And she's a strong, strong girl. The Superdoc reminded me that what I wanted here was not to act in a manner I'd regret; I'd told him I regretted some of the ways I backed off from her at Rogers. Regretted not pushing my way through some of her rules. It might have broken us completely, but it certainly didn't help that I walked away. Even though I walked away hoping she would follow. He reminded me to do what I need, which I will. I'll continue to try and take care of myself, to remind her I don't mean to be invasive, and to communicate with her as much as possible. This is Jenna. Jenna, whose absence has been the subject of many a rant and rave in this journal. More importantly, this is Jenna, who's alive, and loved, and meant to stay that way.
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