5:50 a.m. - 09/18/02
[\|it's a hard knock life\\"\
the crickets are out, which just proves it's too early. those two days of good sleep hang in front of me, just out of reach. I want it, but it isn't mine. for now.
it's a little unsettling that right after I talked about countering the not-fun messages still present in my head, I let them take over my journal. I'm going to try (a little) to keep from disclaiming everything I say right now as stupid and pointless and another sign that I'm unworthy of everything, including pain. jeez. you'd think I had shame issues or something.
the mission to cry failed. I did squeeze out a few tears, and I tried to talk a little, but I only succeeded, really, in giving myself a headache. I know everything that's going on in my life right now, and I know how truly horrible I felt/feel about it, but I can't seem to connect the two. even if the things that have happened are causing the pain, I can't seem to find the link. why am I so overwhelmed with all this shame and all this everything? am I feeling overwhelmed or am I overwhelmed by feeling? I can't find the source of it, the link between what is and what I feel, and that's making it harder to feel. I can't let it out when it's safe because I can't get back to it, and because the way shame talks, I'm not allowed to speak, with or without words. I was trying to talk to an invisible Superdoc alone in my room last night and not only did I tell him I'm not allowed to talk, I then covered my face because I knew my wrenched expression and the minimal tears were talking, too. God forbid I make a shadow sympathetic. it's going to be so difficult today, but I really have to do as much as I can. I don't want last night again. I don't want a year ago, two years. I can't do that again.
that's part of it, I guess. I've been trying to focus on the good I received: the better parts of school (pre-hs) and so forth. I guess it's possible some of the pain returned along with it, though I might not have done such focusing, had I been aware it would.
so yeah, if I were to make a list (I like listmaking, right?) of what was going on, I might start there.
-thinking about good of the past, which maybe brings up other parts of it as well
-had a talk with John with school while Mom was Right There, resulted in her being all guilty-like, which didn't suit me well
-feelings of missing RED welled up and took over everything
-talked with Sara, who confirmed that RED was a marvelous world, that the people are real, and who made the feelings safe (temporarily?) but even stronger
-heard again from Sara that her electrolytes is off, and she may have to be hospitalized
-found out that Dixie had a stroke, was in a coma, wasn't supposed to walk (but is ok...)
-finally told my friends (via e-mail) about the play which absolutely did not go well
The only response I got (so far) was from Chas, and she was absolutely beautiful about it, so it's not as if that part has not gone well. It's just...something happened to me when I tried to tell them something good. I'm not allowed to achieve things, I suppose, and even though I know that I achieved this whether or not I tell them, I still feel like I'm not allowed to seem proud of it. I'm not sure I even *am* proud of it, but so much of my life has been based on the concept that you don't take care of yourself (don't talk, eat, sleep, have needs) in order to prove you know you aren't worth what it's taking to sustain you. I couldn't kill myself so I tried to make up for it by living as little as possible. and for whatever reason, those thoughts became *huge* when I sent the e-mail to my friends. I wished, last night, that I'd told no one, that I didn't even have to go. and I felt like I was in an aquarium, doing something obscene, strange. like, here, read this e-mail that is so horrible of me to write, and then look at the other people I sent it to- the other people I *dared* to send it to- before my shame caught up and could stop me. it's like in that dream I've never had: it's only after they start laughing, you realize you forgot your clothes.
and they aren't. laughing. they aren't. Chas said she was proud of me, she's excited, she's going to see who's going. but I couldn't feel it. I told Dr. R that there's no difference between getting a problem right in school and getting a problem wrong. the shame is there either way, and I guess that's how this is. they aren't laughing but I still feel I exposed something less than good. less then clean or even human. all I did was tell them about something exciting. all I did was say, "I wrote a play, and you can see it"...and I feel so badly about it.
I don't make phone calls because I can't assume people would want to talk to me. who am I to assume they'd want to read an e-mail and then spend time watching a play? and of course, if we're *going* to be shamed, we know how bad the play is anyway, and...
Chas said, "the only thing I want to see more than the play is you." I know there have been times I loved myself that much. Almost that much.
It will be good, right? To see her, to see whoever comes? It won't be horrible. It's only two nights- two nights of play, two days of workshop- and then I can crawl back into my hermitage. I have weeks until this happens. I'll see really good people, people I love, that I'm happy among. Even Superdoc says I'm happy among people such as these. I only told those who will make me peaceful, and they will counter anyone who finds out, who brings up other things. I tell Sara that if you're going to have the shamed thought ("why would any college want a girl who's been sick for all of high school/ still is?") you have to try the non-shamed thought ("of course any college with half their sense would want a girl who's faced real-life problems, who's struggled and begun to discover the amazing person she is.") So I guess I have to work to believe this experience is going to be two nights of seeing Ruth come to the play. Having five, ten Ruths there at once. And I walked around grinning all night after that; I walked around oh-so-very happy. The city air was cool; the spinach pizza tasted good. Maybe I can cultivate enthusiasm, even if I'm scared as hell. Maybe the play doesn't absolutely suck.
It can't suck absolutely, as the acting and the movement are so good. But maybe even the writing doesn't absolutely suck. It's weird for a reason after all. It's not as if I always write that way. And always writing lyrically, in metaphor, in my home tongue, would not be wrong. And maybe that's why I feel so shamed and so exposed because not only am I saying, "hi I have this accomplishment, and if you're interested, this need" I'm inviting them to something that makes me very vulnerable. Which is *why* I only invited supportive, marvelous people- understanding that they might invite people who haven't been, for me. I've tried to only invest in the opinions of people who matter. Unfortunately, I've lost the stronghold of my own importance, the ability to counter their fleeting opinions with my own grounded-ness, which makes it all so difficult. I guess there's a lot of vulnerability going on, fear.
Which is why even typing, even imagining saying such words, I start to curl into myself with, "No, no, no, no, no! Don't say it!" God forbid I know what I feel well enough to say it.
I will know my feelings and express them. I will do this and be safe.
I understand your strategy. I will counter and be safe. I move into check again. You are going down. It may take me years to finish, but you are going down. No more shame on me, no more.
It may take me lifetimes, but I'll do it; I will know myself as well as others do and care for her that much. I will know her better and care for her beyond even my best friends' love.
Back when I was sleeping, and I had the Tracy's-little-sister dream, my struggle to understand her death came to the forefront for awhile. I've been really working to regain my faith, to believe in the world as I once did, even though I know my thoughts/feelings have not evolved to any sort of "this is what I believe" yet. It was enough to be determining what I believe; it was better than not knowing, then not believing anything. So I've been working to remember what I used to know, in hopes of taking up the process/progress once again. And one of my main difficulties with it is that my faith has to do in part with physical lives as growth-tools for the soul, which is immortal. The soul manifests into different people, these people live, experience life, help the soul grow, et cetera. But then, when one of these people is suddenly Gone-with-a-capital-g, it doesn't make much sense. It doesn't supply a Heaven, an afterlife, a ghost. It leaves me, it has left me, completely unsure what to believe about the person, the "manifestation"- despite the safety of her soul. Where are the quirks of personality; where is the shoulder that I held when she weeped?
I've said all this before. I've also said that beliefs are, largely, what we need to tell ourselves in order to get through. (That includes the one just stated.) I don't say that to minimize them, but rather to give myself a freedom to believe what feels right for me, what helps me- one of the freedoms I lost growing up in a town where 99% of the population were the same two Christian denominations. So, it's ok if I start to believe something that occurred to me after the dream, no matter what "reality" is (maybe reality is just the sum of all our daydreamed explanations) because I need to think this to keep living.
Maybe she didn't end. Not only that, maybe she didn't stop. There's an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem I read obsessively in middle school; it's called "The Suicide" - and I related to a lot of it. But I never liked the ending, wherein God tells the physically-dead girl that she can have all the happy pastimes she desires but refuses to give her a purpose. "'Thou hadst thy task, and laidst it by,' he said."...I don't believe in that God anyway, but I still haven't been able to shake loose of the thought. What happened to her journey? As a person, she deserved to see the good that comes of it. And what happened to her soul, which needed her life to grow? What does it do now?
None of the explanations to the second question seemed to solve the first. Her soul could be resilient, but that didn't make her safe. It didn't change the fact that she didn't finish her work in time to reap a harvest from it. Unless...
I started thinking about the little-sister who had her name, the younger girl who was working so much to understand what had happened, and more so to feel it. Who was grieving, whether it meant screaming or crying or whatever else. Laughing even, she could do. And I started to think about this idea that life is a series of cycles that eventually creates a greater cycle. That my life is a pattern of patterns which ultimately create a unit in the pattern of lives in the pattern of times. Time is a cycle of cycles made from cycles, and it leads us back to what we knew when we were our youngest/oldest selves. When we were on the verge of birth. And so...if there were a place...where Tracy could keep working...where she could face her own death and her life as well...where she could continue the work she already did and do the work her leaving made so necessary...she might be getting "younger" in a sense. She might be a girl with her same name, same eyes, same person, who bore such an uncanny resemblence, but was closer to birth than the girl I knew. And I think, I don't know...that I could find peace in that. Somewhat, after a few more cycles turn...
So that's a few of the listed things. I know my fears about losing friends and the pain of loving those in pain. I know the ups and downs school has taken, no needs to rehash those before the appointment, if I do then. I know my RED grief, and I know the shame. I even understand a little now of where it's come from, though my emotions must still catch up to all of this. It's lousy, feeling nothing. It's lousy to be a sensate drama-queen and be completely numb. But then...I might be getting closer to an option than I was. And besides...
I've regained my capitals.
chord
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