12:35 p.m. - 07/16/02
[]saving grace.[]
if I had a doctor's appointment today, I would go in and fidget in shy and silly ways, and I would try to smile and probably end up complaining, but I wouldn't feel too badly about it, not so much as I usually do. mostly I would just be glad that I could put it into words, that I will never again be who I was a year ago, that I will never again think that person was so bad as she thought.
not long ago, I rode down i-me road, and waited to be hit by cars, thrown off my bike, and smashed into a mizillion pieces. I waited for the newscaster with the dramatized seriousness to speak about how important helmets were. I waited to be back in my house, safe, exhausted, away from the fear that always overwhelmed me as I turned the door knob, as I walked into the driveway, as I witnessed the sunlight and the non-recirculated air that said to me, "Mary, you are outside." this was not long ago. there are bits of this that still threaten to throw me off balance. there are moments when agoraphobia still has me skidding into gravel, into ditches. but. there is still but.
now, I fly down hills without using the brake (turn my head slightly to break the wind and check for the sound of cars); I curl me-and-the-bike into a curve, over a bridge. I laugh and brace myself over speedbumps I haven't time to avoid...and I think- really? really? this is me? I can go out into the yard, into the street? I can pass people my parents will never see- smiling women at mailboxes and teenage boys who all but roll their eyes when I wave to them. priests "on retreat" from the Catholic Church (leave it to my parents to move where the pedophiles are being reprogrammed) who have no idea that I used to live in a place like the one they're at, that I fly down these hills every day because there was a time I was incarcerated, not in a hospital, but in my own fear and phobia and depression. I come because I'm still not free from this but for 15, 20 minutes a day, I can have the same air and the same sun you all have. I can see that my legs pedal these hills as well as yours, that I am just as safe at that intersection.
see, the illness may never again be *visible* but the progress is. the progress is something that could be charted, graphed- phrases in this journal circled, highlighted, asterisks and smiley faces. look, look, look. every day that goes by, even when she hides in bed, even when she cries in public places, even when she screams at her parents "you're acting like children" - she is getting better, she is getting better. I can look at my poor eating the past few days, know (truly) that it is no reason to worry, I am still getting the nutrition that I need. *know* that I am doing this because I feel poorly emotionally, not because I'm trying not to feel. know that, all the same, it'd probably be good if I stop filling all my meals with yogurt, crackers, raw vegetables and so forth. variety. soon. but not at the moment. right now, I'm just trying to breathe, because I don't have an appointment today but (god willing) I have one tomorrow, and not through rehearsing but through gentle self-questioning I've come to know where I am again, (for this second, almost), and tomorrow the phrases will come more easily because I trust myself with my own words...
I've been thinking lately of this line from "For No Good Reason" about purging - "the muscles learn; they will remember." I've been thinking about how, no matter how long you abstain, you can always purge, restrict, binge, cut again. It isn't algebra; the rhythms won't ever be erased from you, even when your intelligent memory seems to fade. And maybe (maybe?) recovery is the same way. Maybe, even though I've been somewhere like this before and I have no memory of how I got out of it, maybe the muscles remember. Maybe even though whatever formula that equals where I was when I discharged stays hidden in my brain, stays in a secret safe at RED, I will get through this anyway. Maybe it's about impulse, intuition, memory. I did this once, so maybe the next step is just to do it again, to trust that I can do it again, that I am capable of doing everything I need to do.
Maybe I am almost optimistic in some ways?
chord
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