9:45 p.m. - 10/06/02
(no room for a lie so verbose++>
So. I'm not proud of what I had to say last night. But I've learned, to some extent, that feeling guilty about my emotions does little to change them. I need to say what I feel, and even though I go back and forth over whether it's "appropriate" for me to say it in a public forum, I essentially opt for the "it's my journal" out. I do feel like I became a little two aggressive last night, like I started attacking a group of people, the same way I felt attacked, but I'm just so hurt by it, I lose my sense of self-restraint. I lose my ability to empathize, to understand- and considering that's one of my greatest gifts, it's scary how fully it was gone. I don't want to be the way I am about this, but at the same time, suppresing it will not help me change, so I'm just going to start speaking about it a little more, when it comes up...and I'm going to hope I can find some peace in all of it.
I think it comes down to two main pieces. One, I'm extremely disturbed by it, and two, it's everywhere. This isn't a part of the world that I can escape; abusive media is literally all over the world, and if I want to live the life that will make me happy- a life of cities, and arts, and books, and cheesy movies- I can't dislodge myself from this world. Still, I'm so threatened by it that I *want* to. I'm scared that I can't protect myself from it, and thus will not live up to my own standards. (Tonight, I nearly had a nervous breakdown in a Target because I felt like a capitalist pig. Not exactly fun times...) I think another part of it comes from how entrenched I now am in the issue of eating disorders. I'm entrenched personally, because I experience one myself. I'm entrenched vicariously, having friends who experience it. I'm entrenched traumatically, having lost a friend to it. I'm entrenched socially, having seen firsthand how the media, while not causing these disorders, still does great evil. I'm entrenched politically, having witnessed the lack of political protection from the absolute evils of the insurance companies, the inaccessability of treatment, and the general stigma. I went to literally the nation's cheapest residential center, and I still spent $400 a day there. The minimal average stay is 60 days. I'm so caught up in this. I never thought I would care so much about that stupid disorder where all girls care about is weight, but I've lived in the world of that disorder for so long now. I've seen the horror stories, of girls who can't stay in treatment long enough to get well, girls who can't get in treatment at all, women who are tired of being treated like girls, men who are ashamed of their association with them. I've seen all these horror stories, large and small, unique and universal, and I just can't escape what I know. Occasionally, I stumble across a line in a book that I wish I hadn't read, but I can't push it away from my mind through wishing. I have messages written in my muscles. The tendons in my feet scream, "Christy's tendons were sliced the night she was gang-raped" and lead me into a thousand other memories that freeze my breath and stop my heart. I know too much for how defenseless I am against it. I can go out wearing a "Fuck Your Fascist Beauty Standards" t-shirt- I can refuse to purchase magazines that perpetuate the pain, but ultimately I can't stop it. I can't convince anyone what the slightest comment does to my internal organs, and I can't change their minds. The very fact that I want to, I'd guess, leaves me inept. It's the codependent's ultimate paradox: the incessant desire to help leaves one incapable of doing so.
Proposed answer? Help me. I want to talk about it. I want to know that other people hear me. It's hard because things are so busy right now. I think about going into therapy on Wednesday and needing to talk about tomorrow's appointment with Tammy, the pain around missing RED, my brother's visit and what it brought up for me, the workshops that will have already started and the impending play, the proposed trip to Massachussetts, and so on and so forth. Every time, I'm feeling something it seems like the thing I absolutely need to say, and then another comes. It's all so important, and I'm going to have to trust myself to speak in my time there, and to trust that he will competantly define the themes in these events and convince me (again) that we're involved in a process, and I don't have to say it all in one hour.
I can always call him if something else gets too strong. Therapy is not my rationed talk-time. I am no longer mute, I am no longer alone, I am no longer without help. I can't believe how much I need to hear that. It may sound simple, but the thought catches in my throat, behind my eyes. I don't know if I ever expected to be in this place, and some time may pass before I realize I am. Safe. Safe. Safe.
Finally and always...I will be.
To be in this culture seems to threaten that for me. And it isn't enough to scream back at the television or to turn it off. It isn't enough to wear the right clothes and listen to appropriately disturbed musicians. I need to be aware but not paralyzed. I can't cut out media because there are parts of it I love, and because I can't be active against an evil I don't see. I just don't believe I'm invincible anymore. I thought media didn't affect me because it wasn't the absolute cause of my eating disorder, but whether or not I *was* effected, I am now. Media, and people who embody- through their build, their dress, their comments- parts of the media that I find so off-putting, have the power, at this point, to trigger everything in me from self-hatred to extreme grief. I can question myself, whether or not I'm who I want to be, based on the fact that I have this illness related to the very culture I reprehend. I can be completely without wind at a single reminder of my Girls. And I know it's about me. I know I need to help myself so that I can do some good, in personal or political ways, but on nights like yesterday, it just leaves me without perspective. It seems to be their fault. I forget what a cycle it is, that they're caught up in it, too. It's similar to that part of Ani's "Letter to a John" (regarding sexual abuse) - "women learn to be women/ men learn to be men/ and I don't blame it all one you/ but I don't want to be your friend"...I know that our cultural upbringing raises rapists as well as rape victims, but there are points when you're just too raw to look at the sociological pattern of it all. There are points when ingroup bias takes effect and I fucking hate *them.* I'm not even sure who they are half the time, except that they are the ones making my life miserable.
So I'm sorry that I feel this, and I'm sorry that I'm sorry, and I continue to work on both of those. I continue to work on not being perfect and not caring about it. It's new...You like me for my flaws? You like me for my imperfections? I'm lost; I always hated Julie Andrews' Mary Poppins, also- so proper and pretentious all the time. And yet, I've tried to be proper, haven't I? I've tried to be perfect, with humbleness added as a part of that? All I know of modesty is shame. Beware bragging: never see good in yourself. I'm working on it, but it's still so new.
This is where I check in between Wednesdays. This is a large part of how I survive the week. I'm not looking forward to tomorrow's appointment with Tammy, so I still feel stretched to make it through. But I will- make it through. And one of these days I'll introduce a self who even pro-ana girls don't feel judged by. Not, I hope, because I want to be without flaws, but because I want so badly to feel safe. And honestly, no matter what I say, that's what I want for others, too. I'm scared, I'm angry, I'm judgmental- but I really do want peace. I have to find it for myself before I can augment it in the world...
Cliche but absolutely true. To some extent...
chord
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