8:30 p.m. - 11/14/02
*when will I learn:::
My mom is on the phone with my sister, crying because the artists of the world have all gotten breaks she never found. A few minutes ago, I was on the phone with Sarah, but paused the conversation a second when I realized Mom was in tears. Turns out that Sarah was crying today, too, over a Gloria Steinem quote that said (something along the lines of) "So many of us are living the lives we are because our mothers didn't have the chance." I feel a deep sadness in my stomach for them, but I'm not completely sure it isn't guilt. Remember that night when we drove to the theater to tell her in person that Great Aunt Mary died? Remember how they cried and held each other, and I just stood off to the side wondering what it would be like to feel that sort of love and pain? I'm still trying to disconnect myself, to fly freely away from them, and Sarah is trying to re-bond post rebellion. Or maybe there's more to it I don't know. I want to cry, too, but I don't think it's because my mom's art hasn't been published, even though I feel for her. I want to cry because every day I feel like I live something other than my life. I feel like I'm trying so hard to have what I most need that I put aside who I am. And I'm so tired of that.

Anger today. Horrid frustration and anger mostly at myself. The same sort of defensiveness that made it so difficult to talk with Dr. R last night clung to me again today, and made me a little pissy in my e-relationships. Something that's kind of annoying about persons in the recovering community is that they assume any challenge they give you is a good one. Challenges in general rule, I believe; they're like a hug with trust added...they challenge you to be as good as you really are. So I always feel kind of shitty when I'm not capable of meeting one. It can be for a perfectly valid reason, and I can know in my head or heart or wherever else that the real need in this moment is not to meet it. But. I still feel judged and somehow lesser in my work. I feel like the good-recovery-person takes all the risks and blows them out of the water in her healing. I feel like the good-recovery-person isn't human, and certainly she isn't me. I feel a little cranky and rough around the edges.

I still have very little concept about how one is expected to feel anger. How do you process it? How do you express it? How do you let it flow and still go about your day? This is how I end up preferring the immense sadness of my abandonment issues or my grief- because it's so much easier than the frustration of something I don't feel I have a right to experience. I keep trying to figure out anger, but nothing seems to work. I punch at the bag until I'm out of breath; there is still tension in my shoulders. I play Fuel and Staind and other cliche but nonetheless helpful bands, and still don't feel peaceful. It's calmed down a little now, but I still don't know how to work my way through it. It gets difficult because I assume that the anger is a defense against some other feeling, (often the case for me) and so I try to skip to the feeling behind it, which never works too well. Or, I don't want to feel the anger I'm really feeling (for instance, at someone I love) so I turn it into shame. If I'm worthless, I'm not allowed to have feelings, therefore my anger isn't valid, and I only have to be angry at myself. Of course, that disconnects me from who I am and leaves me feeling less than peaceful also. I hate this fucking mind of mine.

I think the rules/explanations are something like this: I won't be angry because good girls aren't angry. Because angry girls are mean and mean girls aren't liked. I won't be angry because I'm afraid of anger, and if I am everyone else must be. If I'm angry, people will back away from me, they will not come to me to take care of them (how could a mean and angry person nurture?) and if I can't caretake, I will be alone. I won't be angry because if I am angry I will hurt those that I love. Being angry at them will negate how much I care for them, and they will be hurt and leave me. They will stop loving me because I am a whiny little thing who cannot love properly. They will be mad at me, and I can't take their anger and my own. I won't be angry because if I am, I might not survive it. Anger is overwhelming, and I don't know how to feel it. I need help, but I don't know where to look.

I've heard of anger management, but what about those of us who can't access enough of it to manage? I try to let it run freely, but it doesn't work. The only anger I seem able to access is anger at myself for how I'm acting in the feelings. I know there's more behind it. (Now.) I'm angry that people are age-ists and treat me differently based on my years. I'm angry that this often keeps me from being able to caretake, which, as a codependent, is the only way I think it's possible anyone will stay in my life. I'm angry about how few people are in my life, and how impossible it seems to change that. I'm angry at my mom, one of those few, who has to be all sick and needy herself, who has to go and take care of other people so tremendously they dote and coo over her, while making so little effort with me. I'm angry at myself for feeling she doesn't make the effort. I'm really angry at my dad for being such an infantile bastard. I'm angry at him for running away just like he always does, and now making a routine out of it. I'm angry at him for the way he assumes his calls will be the highlight of my life, and is upset when I don't jump to talk to him. I'm angry that he talks about weight and calories and food, and tells me he should start restricting because then he'd lose some of this weight. I'm angry that he called today and talked about the people in his congregation who had died, one of them a girl about my age. I'm angry that he can't understand anything- WON'T understand anything- in order to take care of me. Why the fuck can't he take care of himself so he can just take care of me?

I'm angry that I didn't experience any love until I was sixteen years old, and when I found that I had to leave it. I'm angry that now, without it, I'm back to the stale and insufficient version my parents try to pull as love. I'm angry that the two people who are legally responsible for me have never known how to take care of me, and may never know who I am. I'm angry that I can't hold people that I care about and be held by them. I'm angry that everyone else in the world seems to have at least one safe person who can hold them now and then, and I go months without experiencing that. I'm angry that no one is here to love me right here, right now and that I've come to believe it will always be that way. I'm angry that this isn't fair, and people dismiss that as a small statement. This isn't fair and that makes me angry. I try so hard to live the life that will give me what I need- myself- but part of what that self needs is companionship, and I don't feel like I'll get it on my own. I'm upset that I don't feel good enough, I don't ever seem to feel quite good enough, and then on top of that, I don't think anyone else sees me that way. I'm angry that life has gone the way it has, and that there is still so much in my current circumstance I can't control. I'm angry that they let me go, they *made* me go, without ever understanding how fully that would bring me pain. I'm angry that people don't know who I am when I call, and those who do don't connect with me the way we always could. I'm angry that I learned so early on that my perception is invalid, so now I feel like I can't even tell anyone what I have experienced, lest they tear it apart, and I no longer have the memory. I'm angry that no one loves me, which is how I experience life, even though I know differently. Most of all, I'm angry that what I know and what I experience aren't the same. I'm angry that my head is my enemy, that I feel I can't trust my own thoughts or my own feelings because half the time they're sick and starved for seratonin. I'm angry that I know more about neurotransmitters than I do about high school gossip, and that I'm probably going to bail on my friend's school play because it would mean going back to N*land where I was abused. I'm angry that there are so many good people there, and I want them in my life, the way any small town girl wants to see the old haunts, architectural and individual, and I can't because I might fall apart at the seams. I'm angry that I can't just put on a kickass skirt and kneesocks, grab a friend, and watch their jaws drop at my presence...because I don't have a friend to take. But damn how cool would that be? An appearance by Mary, the Girl Who Saved Herself In Spite Of You, attired to prove you no longer know her. You know longer know me; I am not your toy.

I want to tell them that. The ones who meant something, in that foul way of- you're almost kind enough to care, why don't you do something?- can check out my clunky shoes and risk getting kicked by them. The ones who truly helped me can admire said clunky shoes will I kiss the ones they're wearing, (though I would much rather kiss a cheek...) and the ones who nearly cut my lifeline can make muffled groveling noises as I dig my heels into them. Yes, I do have an angry side. This will make people love me less, and how can I afford to risk that? Granted, I don't want a general pissiness to be in my personality, but while it's here, why don't I have the right to express it? I mean, will you really love me less if I whine or vent or scream sometimes? If I occasionally snap or display mild violence toward inanimate objects, will you *truly* be all that upset? Why did I have to grow up with such fucking wimpy role models? With people bottling up and overthinking anger, pouting and growling and storming out? Why couldn't someone have shown me how people in a relationship, a real, loving relationship, are angry at each other? I can't fuel *all* this resentment into activism after all...

What I want is to be able to say that I am this-person and not feel that anyone else can alter that with their response. I want the presentation of me to completely represent who I am, and I want to be secure enough in that identity that someone else's judgment won't alter how I feel. I want to know that Red was my home and not feel guilty about it. I want to think of them as my heritage, and not second-guess whether they would be proud of that. Why the fuck wouldn't they be proud? I'm going to make them proud. I'm going to live a fine life, and they're going to be happy when they find their names in the acknowledgments of one of my playbills. They're going to be happy when I throw a gesture their direction to answer how I crawled out of madness into life. I'm going to be a girl that they will love, and in doing so make it even more clear they had to love me before. Because this time I'm only going to be who I am.

I found a way to mention Jenna last night with the doc. It felt good. I hadn't even really thought about the different topics that were coming up for me, but he seemed to touch on all or most of them with one comment or another. Then at one point, I referenced something as being similar to "why I keep in touch with Sara" and "why I want Jenna back so badly" and I realized that in doing so, I was keeping her in his little file of index cards, the ones you root through in your brain when someone mention's something you-know-you-should-know. I want to talk about it with him so badly- because the visits provide such a reprieve in so many other ways, and I don't see how he could not understand; at least eventually he would have to understand. In his office, I can cry about no longer being where I want to be, and guilt-trip myself over the fact that I'm clinging to Rogers over my parents who are actually *trying* to be in my life, and he just sits with me and says what needs to be said from the other side. He says things like, "But, Mary was that really a feeling that came up at Rogers, or did you feel that separation before? Obviously, it got intensified there, but I think you had been feeling it for years" to show me that it wasn't my fault. I didn't run away and adopt a new family, like that episode of the Simpsons where Homer and Bart enter Bigger Brothers. I didn't have one. I found one when I didn't have one. And yes, I love my blood; that goes without saying: I love them. But who I am was raised by those at Rogers, and that's not something I want to change. I'm almost glad the time-bomb in my head went off in adolescence; can you imagine what a mess I would be all grown up from the teachings of my parents? Freaks. I'm angry because my parents didn't raise me as I deserved to be raised, and I'm hurt because I know they weren't raised that way either.

Sometimes, his words slip in like angeldust. They didn't have it to give you. Which doesn't take away the pain of what I'm feeling or make the fact that they are basically all I have less difficult but it's likely they never experienced anything like what you had. And I'll try not to take that on as more guilt, when the truth is, the knowledge is a gift. If my parents have no concept of the home I found, it makes sense that they might minimize or dismiss it. It makes sense that they wouldn't be able to step out of themselves and their own needs to be top in my life, to see the wonder. Their eyes have not adjusted to that wonder. They're like infants who lose their ability to speak syllables the language of their country does not use.

I want to have that kind of sanctuary to discuss Jenna and everything within me that wants her back so badly. And I realize now it's similar to the challenge I had to turn down today: to give details about what I meant when I referred to my "real home" versus where I live. I couldn't give details because I knew the truth would cloud people's responses to my feelings, and my feelings are what matter right now. I can't say "a residential center" because that isn't what I miss; I don't *miss* being in the hospital- it's not like that. Telling about Jenna, about who I am that wants a girl that way, feels similar. I feel like people will say I'm lying to myself, that I have a sexuality I'm trying to cover up, that they will push me prematurely into something I can't handle. I very much like being a relationally girl-biased asexual, with the exception of worrying I can never have a relationship that way. I very much like being a sex-indifferent cuddlewhore. I want to gush over the girls that make me light inside, that turn my insides into water. I want to giggle like a freaking schoolgirl, and blush at my own imbecility. I want to work through where codependency stops and love begins, where fear stops and self begins. I want to know whether this is my identity or my safety net, and if it really matters which is which.

A friend of my mom's has a book coming out (one of those artists who actually found a way to make it, I suppose) about the Myers-Briggs as the core self-type, the Enneagram as the defense mechanism, and some third thing whose importance I can't remember. It really bugged me because I'm supposed to be an Enneagram Four, and this is very important to me; I consider the parts of me that can be labeled "four" (though not necessarily the label itself) to be who I am. I do not think it's simply my defense mechanism. Then, my mom occasionally goes off on how I cannot be an INFP (Myers Brigg's: Introvert Intuitive Feeling Perceiver) and a Four because it doesn't explain my analytical side, and somewhere that has to be explained. I've been thinking about it, and I think that Four really describes my identity, and that even if it's not my defensive-Enneagram, it is the best description in terms of Enneagram types of my soulhood. Defensively speaking, I'm probably a five- that's where my need to understand, to articulate, to be smart, and well-researched, and educated comes from. Four is my true self. None of this is really important except that I was talking about true selves versus false selves, and I don't know that about this whole girl-bias versus sexuality thing. I mean, I assume I would come out of the closet if I knew I were in it. I just don't want to be in it. I want the silli-ly affectionate creaturebee I am to be enough.

Also, I'm starting to realize that coming out would be an issue in my life, if I were ever to realize the need. I wouldn't be disowned, or overly condemned. (Although a great deal of my extended family are fundamentalist Catholics, I doubt they would be less than civil toward me, and there are only a few for whom civilness would be a switch, and at that a painful one. It would be hard, for instance, to lose my grandma to this, or to lose my Aunt Jean, Uncle Jim, or my cousin Anna. But I kind of doubt I would lose Anna that easily, and Jean and I already suffer a bit due to her conservatism. In terms of my uncle- the way I see it, my connection with my uncle is so far away from that sort of self it shouldn't affect him. And dude, he read Army Girl, so if he doesn't have some clue by now, he's dopey. Which just leaves my grandma, who loves me oh-so-much.) I think the real issue, more than the typically concerning ones, is not that people would judge me but that they would have an altered view of me. It's something I've discussed before that really bothers me. I don't like the idea that based on whether I date a guy or a girl I will be seen differently. The response will either be "oh, see there, she *is* straight" or "I *knew* she was gay"...which just pisses me off. "I choose people over gender"* you know? And who I am is not so easily defined as one choice within duality. I guess part of my girl-bias is more than sexual, more even than post-traumatic fear, or the fact that girls are cool. I feel like who I am fits more closely with what people (mostly family) will think of me if they think "gay" then who they will think of seeing me with a guy. I guess I'm concerned that I'll try to pidgeonhole myself into their perception, so I best fall in love with a girl and give myself the closest thing to who I am. Gosh. Identity is so *fleeting* when you can't trust yourself.

Can I trust myself? I mean, I know I'm crazy, but is it still ok to think that I come first? Note to self: I need to ask the doctor that one. How does it work? I need to believe that my perception is the most valid, that how I feel and how I experience is of the most importance (to me), and yet I have to be careful because my head lies to me, and what I think's not true? I don't really understand that. There's this confusion about whether the eating disorder (for instance- really, the whole illness) is a separate and detrimental force or something that came into my life and temporarily saved me from an unbearable circumstance. If it's separate, I can fight it, but I can't trust myself because its voice is also in my head. If it was on my side, I can trust myself, but I can't fight it, and ultimately I'll end up losing anyway. I just don't understand how I trust my perception when it's *my perception* that tells me I'm shit when I'm in a depressive episode, and my perception that tells me I've never been loved when I'm not experiencing love, et cetera, et cetera. It's my perception that says I'm gross when I'm restricting, and beautiful when I'm not. So how the fuck do I keep it all straight? How do I learn to trust my identity, when it fluxes based on how I feel in the moment, and it's clouded by illness I can't quite differentiate as illness?

I want to find one thing in me that's a constant. Just one. Something that I can hold onto and say, "Hey. Yeah. That's still here," no matter what I'm feeling. Then I can build- find or instate a second element, and maybe eventually, I'll have a whole personality. Maybe eventually I'll be able to sustain who I am no matter what illness is wrenching through me or what mood-state I'm in. Now, to find something. What on earth do I have that doesn't move? (Ideas?)

Before I go on much longer, I might as well mull through what I remember of last night. In list form because lists are oh-so-calming. Mmm. Lists.

-John is in therapy, and that means he might change. That's really scary to me, actually, even though I feel it would have made sense to realize it earlier. I love him, and I want his life to be better. I want him to have ways of better handling situations, but hearing him talk last night, I realized as he grows up, he might *change.* The way I feel Dale changed into this person I can barely know. And that scared me a little, and I guess I have to figure out what that means. I've heard about this from the side of the person in therapy (as in, "people might not like that you're acting differently, even though it's better for you; even if they're immediately glad- say, that you're not purging- that might not be so happy that you don't acquiesce to every plea or caretake every need") but I'm new to feeling it. I'll deal, of course, as first and foremost, I need a brother who is *safe*- but I will admit this one is hard.

-Hours go much faster with a companion in the kid's room than they do by yourself in someone's office. I spent an hour playing with my mom in a small section of the waiting room that's there for kids. (There were no other patients, and the secretaries had gone home, so we had free reign.) I built a dragon out of legos, and put him on top of the carpet where the school was (the carpet is made to look like a city) so no one could go in. Then I turned the stuffed cow I was perched on (comfortable, damnit- wish I had one of those) into a unicorn, and helped him befriend a mouse finger puppet. Finally, I cleaned through the dollhouse, as everyone was kind of lying in a heap. This prompted Mom to tell Dr. R my next session should be held in the kid's room- she was particularly struck that I put the father figure in the baby's crib, but that symbolism ain't so hard to read...

-This of course was after my appointment. My appointment was the first of the two, which ended up being a very good thing, and it went surprisingly well. I was frustrated- frustrated that I couldn't talk, that it was late, that if I *didn't* talk I wouldn't get another chance for a week, and that he couldn't make it all go away even if I did. I still managed to squeeze forth a few words, and eventually we hit on something- the Rogers pain, of course- that made me start to cry. I do so much crying there; I feel like a dope about it. I said something about it a few weeks ago, and I know his response was really gentle...something along the lines of, "This is real grief you need to cry over"...but it's still so difficult. It takes me ages to grab a Kleenex and collect myself. I just sit with my head in my hands and drip, drip, drip, drip, drip...

-Still, I was amazed that he even got me to that point. I was so defensive, and defensiveness frustrates me because it's not a sign that I *don't want* to talk, simply a sign that I don't feel I can. When I cried, we were able to talk about the feelings that I didn't think were valid. I don't think it's fair of me, or good of me, to cling to Rogers this way when my *parents* actually want me. He told me what I already posted, about how I didn't look to replace them. He talked about empathic failures again, and how as the child in a parent-child relationship, I was not allowed to take responsibility for that failure. Sometimes, when I really want (emotionally) to believe something, the way I really want to believe this, I have to argue it intellectually, to hear the other side. I told him that it was a *relationship* after all, and they were making an effort. He crafted this really beautiful metaphor about babies who are allergic to milk, whether it's formula or breast milk, and have to be given soy. He said that the mother can feel rejected because what she has to offer the baby is damaging, is toxic, but that doesn't change the reality. I needed something else. I found it, and I don't have to feel guilty for that, though if I do, I need to find my way through it. It isn't my fault I found good love.

-In a sort of intermediate period between this crying and the shy but joking betterness that came afterward, we began to talk about how lonely and isolated I am, and how difficult it is to believe I'll ever be anything else, when all I experience are the same four people again and again. He made a comment about "what a pathetic cast" those would be to try and pick my life's play from, which I shook off. I disliked it because I felt like it put him down, and God knows he's the most necessary quarter of those four. More than necessary, actually. Anyway, we talked about how auditions go (or are going, at the moment: next play has callbacks on Sunday)- how people come, show what they can do, are or aren't called back, perform again in different combinations, different roles, and are or are not cast. He said that life goes that way, too, that I go into my life with an idea of the theme, and as I meet people, they can pick up the roles I need to support that theme. Feeling a little dissident still, I told him that would require people show up to audition, which led us back to the ever popular Why Mary Believes That No One Would Want To Be Around Her topic.

-I told him about the Geneen Roth exercise where you finish the statement, "In the cafeteria of life..." and how my answer was "I will always sit alone." He said he sees a very different cafeteria for me, and I said that I couldn't imagine why, but if he wanted to construct, I would visit. Taking me figuratively, he said that he imagined people would be chasing after me, crowding to know me, and I would revel in that, although at times, I would also choose to back off a little, and sit alone to think my alone-thoughts. In that way, he said, my belief was true, but he believed that moment would be the exception, and that it would be my choice- two very significant differences. I told him I really wanted to believe that, but what proof was there in my isolated D!@#$%^ world? and he told me he wouldn't believe the thoughts of someone else without evidence either...

-Then he said...and this one I really liked...that an expert biologist can look at a seed and know exactly what sort of plant it will grow into. I just sort of waited for a second thinking, "So, what? I go home and listen to 'Secret Garden"? but he said, "...The seed doesn't know." The seed doesn't know. How brilliant is that?! I mean, I really do trust that he is Superdoc. He may have lost his magic powers/wand temporarily, but he really is good at what he does. So if he sees my future the way he described, maybe it really could be like that? He said that my ability to relate to others not by changing myself, but just by being who I am (his example: people are affected by the plays even though I'm saying "that's not what it was about") would really be a relational asset, and that he really couldn't see me sitting alone by a choice other than my own. Dear little doctor-man.

-Let's see. What else? Earlier, we were back on the "why did you quit talking to your parents" track- him asking how I would feel or would have felt talking to my parents, what I was afraid would happen. I told him I thought it would make things worse. I felt guilty needing help because I was supposed to be able to do things on my own, and I was afraid that if they actually gave me help, they would only

make things worse. I knew that telling them certain things would hurt them, and I thought their hurt would hurt me, so I protected them as a way of protecting myself. That's mostly what I remember. And he kept saying, in that way he has, "But why? You had to learn at some point that it wasn't safe to talk to them. You had to experience, over and over again, that asking for help would only hurt you more." But I couldn't think of any examples to help him in his analyzing. I have a few now, but at that point my mind was blank.

-What I know (and they aren't really examples so much as clues, but hey, clues can lead to things): I stopped telling my parents about the stomachaches when I was in third grade. Maybe after third grade, but definitely by fourth. I didn't tell them when my best friend and I sort of split up, which was really really hard on me. If I experienced depression before middle school, that was the time. I also didn't tell them when the whole Chelsie-thing happened, and my calculations have put that somewhere around nine years old. So, whether or not the direct reason I quit talking to them was the "you're faking" mentality I perceived around my stomachaches, (that led me to quit talking about them)- this all definitely happened before/around the time I was nine. Up until that point, I remember telling them things...or at least, I don't remember *not* telling them things.

-Oh and...when I went into his office?...he called me "Miss Mary." And that made me all fluffy inside. I do believe he is dear Linus in disguise.

'T'is time to end this too long entry; say goodnight.

chord

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