8:40 p.m. - 09/23/02
didn't plan to say this.
I wrote a short summary of my addiction for Psych today. When I first thought that sentence, it went, "I wrote my story for Psych today." My story. My life story. I really have confused recovery with life, and maybe there's nothing wrong with that (I'm still fairly certain I don't want to live a different life than that of my recovery) but I know it must be odd that I don't know the difference between two years and seventeen. When my brother was over a week or two ago, we started talking about our years in community theater, and how small they seemed now. I thought about how little those people affect me in my days, despite how deeply I felt for them at the time, despite how hard I cried when I lost them, and how impressively they opened my eyes. I don't like the idea that my entire pre-middle-school life has condensed into some oddly distant time, wherein I was shaped and scarred but somehow not myself. I know that, even if I don't cry for them daily, the people from the theater-summers, really did effect who I've become. That was the first time I really escaped N*land, the first time I experienced theater (which led me to do the drama group in middle school, which led to my meeting Laura, and so forth, and my writing plays and so forth) and it was also the first time I experienced a community of open minds. I learned then that homosexuality did not define personality; I was eleven and I was very much impressed by that. My ability to accept people came largely from who I was exposed to as a kid, and that a great deal of that exposure took place the summers of '95 and '96. But it's odd. To say I don't think about them often. A few names still draw up dusty emotion. Say Lindsey (yes, another Lindsey; my first Lindsey with an E) and I remember the confusion of shyness and friendship, of arousal and childhood. Say Kay and my emotions explode. These people, these people I could barely bring myself to talk to, changed me, and I remember crying every day after it was over, writing journal entries about how life could never be good if we weren't always all together doing shows. I think about this, and I hate it, because even integration is what I'm striving for, even if I want my experiences to mesh into one present person, even if I really don't want to sit in my solitude and wallow over RED forever (which I'm not guaranteeing is true) I don't like the idea that I could have moved on from that pain. Say what you will about grief, I feel like I must not have loved them so much as I thought if I was able to move on from it. And I'm scared that some day I'll find I've moved on from RED, which I don't want to do (and it's more justified, it is, I was really close to RED people; I *could* talk to them), that it's some odd memory lost in the fog of my mental periphery. I wrote *books* about my experience over just one of those summers; I don't care to count the pages I've written on RED. And I don't like the idea that it might be the same. I don't want to be resilient enough to get through this. Even if I am doubting everything, even if I do feel terribly uncertain about it all, that doesn't mean I'm willing to give them up. I won't accept it as truth that one day an experience is your entire story and the next, you rarely think of it. Long ago, childish, a dream. Yesterday I saw "Oconomowoc" on a map; it startled me. As if anyone knows Oconomowoc exists. As if anyone has ever been there, ever lived. (You can't really mean it's real?)
I don't know who I am without recovery. The idea of not having that be the first thing I tell people, of not feeling like my whole self is represented in the jokes and memories and insights of that world...it drains me. I don't *want* that. I don't want to give this up, at the same time I can't give this up (not completely; I'm not better yet.) But part of it goes beyond the need to heal my illness; part of it has to do with this is all I know. I learned how to be in recovery; I haven't really learned how to live. Unless they're the same thing. Are they the same thing? For a person with an addiction? And why do I want, for always and forever, to be a person with an addiction? Why am I so scared to even *check* if I go beyond the boundaries of case-studying?
When I was not very old, I was given three choices about how to do a project, one of which had to do with writing, one of which had to do with theater. I nearly asked my mom to hit me when I chose the theater-related assignment. I felt terribly guilty, as I was supposed to be The Writer, as it was supposed to be all I knew. I kept apologizing, kept trying to explain, until finally she said, "Mary, it makes perfect sense. You have to have experiences in order to write about them." Before that, I never really realized that I could like something other than storytelling. That gift was my identity for so long, and it took me until middle school (it took completely losing confidence in my ability to do anything well, including writing) for me to consider a career outside of author. I spent most of my kidhood, squeezing myself so tightly into this creative box I didn't even realize it was a tight fit. But I really don't feel like recovery is, unless recovery is *supposed* to entail never ever having any friends. I didn't feel like Rogers was settling; I didn't feel like wanting to be there forever was a cop-out. It was just ...heaven... for me. It was Earth as I've wanted Earth to be. Which is not to say I didn't hate the way Dave occasionally treated me, and the way certain staff members got a bit condescending now and again, or the fact that in my entire stay Jenna was the only resident I felt safe talking about conservatively-liberal subjects with. ("Hey, you won't freak out if I say 'gay' 'bi' 'trans' or 'feminist'?") I know it wasn't perfect, and I really did miss parts of it. I remember watching that concert they did after September Eleventh, and telling Leah how much I missed being able to sing. I felt the lack of performance art, the lack of diversity, the lack of educational stimulation, but it just didn't matter. It just didn't matter when I had them on my side.
And maybe that's what it comes down to. I fell in love with my teachers ever year for years. I did anything I could to have them enjoy, adore, attend me. When I started doing theater, I was suddenly surrounded by a supportive, excited, affectionate group. When I lost that, I took it hard. When I went to middle school, when I went to eighth grade, I found it again, in my team of teachers. That was the miracle year, when I barely walked a foot without someone smiling or holding me. When people were concerned, when they weren't willing to say my peculiar behavior was just *me.* When I lost them, I grieved like I had never grieved. I stood in the upstairs hallway with Mandy and bawled. After RED. Well, it has been the same, hasn't it- but not fully. Because when theater ended, I cried. I struggled. When eighth grade ended, I was sick with grief. When RED ended, I couldn't write, I couldn't speak, I couldn't move, I hated the world, I wanted to die, and I would have given up everything good I knew beyond them to get the good *of* them back. I've never felt that strongly about it before. When I lost Billy, walking around in shock for days, I didn't feel it this hard. This is my first home. My first family. My first love. And even if I've been looking for it, and finding bits and pieces here and there, for many years, this is the first time I've truly found it, and I just can't let it go. Adding "when RED ended" to that litany stopped the blood in my veins. RED didn't *end.* RED can't end. RED is everything...
And I don't say that to try and minimize my life before or the people I've always known. One of the only reasons I'm surviving the displacement right now, the loss right now, is because of people I met pre-red. I'm aware that just as I take counsel from who I want to be, I can take counsel from who I've been. There's comfort in knowing what I've been looking for this, that I've always been given some version of it, even though RED was the furst full fulfillment, and the one I still very much want. It's so confusing. I don't know where I am or if I want this, I'm obsessed with my past, and terrified of my future. It leaves a girl afraid to close her eyes.
Or open them.
Things I need to talk about on Wednesday:
1.) I'm scared that what happened with Harriet was my fault and is therefore about to happen again with him (another sabotage-job)
2.) I'm really overwhelmed with the grief about RED and the separation from them
3.) I feel really guilty about what's going on with school because I don't feel I've a right to special treatment (i.e. even if the system is wrong I don't deserve a better version while everyone else has to suffer)
4.) I'm extremely disconnected from myself because I'm not sure that who I'm being is an accurate representation of who I am, and I don't want to change who I'm being. I want recovery. I want what I had before I started to question this. I want to be the therapy poster child forever and always.
Don't I?
I just want. them. I want love. I want to know in my heart that I will have the good of them again with even more good added. I want to believe that if I call, it will be a good thing. And I want to have people here with me, so I don't *need* to call so badly. I still will.
When I write it, and I say that it's my story, I do so- in part- because the end is Thus My First-Ever Family Changed My Life, and that's something I have to say over and over again, until no one can dislodge it from me, until their importance is absolute fact. Until, I could call them, be told differently, and still believe. Until they love me no matter what they say.
This can't be healthy. But if I'm just a person and not an example, maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe me being imperfect is how my fans learn they want to be themselves, and not a copy of the chord.
(said) chord
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