8:40 a.m. - 04/06/02
it's stupid and it's obvious.
I figure since I so rarely make "To Do" lists, I should take another look at it and see what is actually To-Done. It looks something like this:
-attack the tile with a Swiffer-clean off my stairs (which collect things about as effectively as the Swiffer)-clean my room (to some extent anyway)-write an actual journal entry (whatever that means)eat, of course
I didn't manage to obsess about Jenna, to write all my letters, to make a mix tape, to work on either play, to even begin to start to maybe come to terms with being clingy, or to take another look at the Zine. In the end, my obsessing about Jenna (and all the things I was really obsessing about that, I finally realied, were fueling my Jenna-feelings) actually proved to secure my escape from my parent's guests, who frightened me in the beginning (the one man is very loud and friendly, and when I realized he was actually just deaf and genuine, I was ok- but in the beginning, not so much). Later, I sat down with them, and things were nice: the woman has my name and she dresses like a Hampshire student, which means to say, she dresses like I wish I did.
I think what happened something to do with my inability to accept the idea that there is anything I'm incapable of doing. Meaning, I sat here last night, while they were settling down to eat their pizza (which I *did* eventually join in, guilt-free, not to worry, dear reader) and said I couldn't have that person to tell me what I mean because I would feel worse if I broke down on the phone with someone. I then, got off-line, *feeling* the tears waiting for the one last push of tide, grabbed the cordless and went upstairs to my phone booth. (Somewhere along the line my bathroom became my phone booth because even though every wall in this house is paper thin, I can sit on the floor in there with the door closed - imagine, a door - and pretend that no one can hear what I'm saying. Makes it easier to talk.) So I went into my phone booth, opened a letter I'd snatched on the way, and dialed the number at the bottom...Aware that it was long-distance, and somewhere in the section of my heart that fully disbelieves the existence of time, that caught me off guard.
I called Jenna. Yes.
It was like fourth grade, needing. The many times I came up with plans to know about Brooke, writing her letters, begging for answers that never came, maybe she never heard the questions. Am I still yours/ are you still me/ are we still us? And something more, also, something not so trivial as this friendownership- I needed her. I needed her, and that's what we were based on, mostly: need. In that (beautiful magical fabricated) world, whose one true fault was the lacking diversity and fear of gaining it, Jenna appeared, and there was the possibility evident in the way she carried herself, the way she sat separately, the way she put together words...maybe, maybe, maybe - we can talk and hold each other about this?
And stories fell out, trust. We were saying, "I loved a teacher to obsession; would you like to see her picture- here it is." "She's beautiful." And we were saying "I thought no one, here, I thought I would be all alone with it, you can barely mention friends, but then, you came and I was free." She said, "you are my rock; you are the girl that keeps me strong" and Jenna is *so strong.*
And I needed to know- I NEEDED -is it over now, Jenna, are we memories we hide to try and lose?
I dialed the number, yes, the long distance number...two rings (answering machine?) - no, a man, her father (who will take you in at a second's notice, if you ever need it, Mary) answering. I ask, sounding young, "is Jenna there?" he says she's not; do I have a message? "Yes. Could you tell her - that Mary Lastname called?" And in the way he says "Oookay" I can tell he's never heard my name.
And this *should not* upset me seeing as, I know that in a vice-versa circumstance, my parents would not be able to define who Jenna is, but somehow knowing that Jenna was out (as of course she would be on a Friday night) doing who knows what, while this man who didn't even know how I fit *in* answered her phone...just...pushed me past the tipping point.
And -click- the phone is done and I am shaking, crying, crying, whimpering. I stretch out on the bathroom rug and cry, and I hear my mom on the stairs, and, my face three inches from the toilet, I realize- she'll think I purged.
But she didn't ask (thank God) and I didn't volunteer the fact that I was still a poster child for recovery. Instead she asked me what was wrong, and I told her nothing, and she pointed out that obviously *something* was, and I told her I didn't know what (because I didn't, honestly) and she believed. The only thing I knew was that Jenna wasn't home, and I couldn't stop crying, and those two things somehow did not add up to each other.
So after awhile I told her that yes, she could call Dr. R and she left me alone to do so (he told her he'd call back in 45 minutes, and I was grateful for the time...blubbering, as I was, how would I explain?) I tried, again and again, to pull myself together, but I couldn't - the tears kept coming, and I was getting sick from crying, and then I thought of being at RED one of my last nights, and crying so hard on the couch, and Karen in the chair right next to me, handing me Kleenex and stroking my knee. "She's doing what she needs to do," Karen said when Dave (DAVE!) asked if I was ok. And I realized, I wanted to go back - I *had* to go back...no matter what I was telling myself earlier this week, there was no option over RED. I've gone crazy, thinking I could get away from that.
I told myself sometime this week that maybe I wouldn't go work at RED in a few years, the way I originally planned. Last night, I realized that there is nothing else that will really make me happy. No other fantasy swells past second best; it's just *true.* No matter what play I write, what family I find, what city I fall in love with, nothing is enough without them, and it may be crazy but I can't live without that...
And still there is this ache in me that says, "RED doesn't exist; it's called something else now, and that's more than names. Stacy's on a different floor, Karen may be on an eternal leave, none of my girls remain there, and the trainees of my day have become trainers. Full-time..." So how will I ever go home?
I cried until I choked, until my stomach hurt from sobbing. Jenna, Jenna PLEASE...I told someone in my head (Dr. R., who would be calling any time?) that there were two responses to loving someone so much it scared you: hanging on with all your might and letting them go before it was impossible. I am the former, always, and Jenna...maybe Jenna is more open-fingered than I am. Maybe she is a door#2...
And I told the mirror (which I eventually perched toward; me sitting on the sink: window opposite, mirror at my left) that it wasn't about whether I was ever going to speak with Jenna again; it was about whether I was ever going to be with Jenna again. Whether we were ever going to *need* each other the way we did then...if we're ever going to fit together like puzzle pieces drifting in a foreign box.
Mom and Dad both came to check on me now and again; I heard the other Mary ask if I was ok, and they said- sure...just letting some things out. And when I did eventually come down and smile, eat a little pizza with them, they were more than kind. Somehow my having a psychotic episode seemed to break the ice. Actually, I felt better about them with the way things had gone, because otherwise I would have worried they'd taken my somewhat brisk behavior at the beginning of the night personally (I was trying so desperately to hold myself together)...and now they could see that I was just fighting with the currents I'd let free...
Am I the only person in the world who doesn't believe people are meant to come and go in life? Am I the only person who just *cannot* let that be true?
...Dr. R called as he was supposed to; I heard Mom tell him I was doing a bit better and explain some of what she supposed had happened. (I couldn't hear *what* she thought had happened, but I do know she knows nothing of the Jenna-part.) So I got on the phone with him, and I was like, "Hi..." and he was like, "Mary?" "Yes" "Hi...tough week, yeah?"
So then he started talking to me about what had gone on with Harriet (and I was like, oh, maybe that does have something to do with ALL THESE TEARS)...so I told him about how it hadn't been awful, how I'd gotten the chance to say what I needed to say, and the only part that made it hard was feeling like what I'd said had, once again, gone unheard. And he said he had talked to Harriet, and it had definitely been heard, though not, as he guessed I would have wanted, accepted...and I was like, yeah, and he sounded disappointed about how childish she is, and I said something extempore about how her not understanding in some ways made it easier to leave. Even though it hurt, it proved to me this wasn't something that would have been easily worked through, and I felt better (eventually) about going.
And he asked me if losing Harriet made me feel like my safety net was gone (and my head was saying no even as the tears sprung back again), and I told him that Harriet had not been a 'safe' person for awhile now, so I didn't know about that, but in general, I supposed I'd been feeling that way. I told him about missing RED again, missing it to the point of craziness, to the point of tears I could not calm, and he asked me if that had maybe started a little before the whole Harriet thing? And I told him I didn't know, that of course - it had started as soon as I left (or earlier), but I suppose it had been steadily rising as of late, more quickly since what happened with Harriet.
And he did one of those verbal Dr. R nods that are so well-timed and unassuming and then he said we could talk about it tomorrow (today), and we laughed a little because Mom had told him how when I agreed to the call, she'd said, "You know you're going to have to go see him tomorrow now, don't you?" and even in my tears, I'd laughed a little.
But he told me he's going to work harder about not spending so much time and leaving me to wait- now that people won't be leaving so often, and today is an afternoon appt, which means that he has people before and after us, and he'll be a little more punctual.
So in the end, I guess I survived the whole thing, though I'm definitely glad I don't have to go through today without talking to someone...I need someone today. I think I'll tell Mom I *do* want to leave early for the appt, and go to a bookstore or something first...just because - I don't think I can handle sitting here all day listening to the phone not ring.
(You didn't say to call back; you just said you'd called.) I know, but still, I was her rock and she was indescribable.
chord
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