9:35 p.m. - 01/29/03
head above the poison gas.
first off, let me just say that I will personally *watch* American Idol, and even push myself to make phone calls on behalf of Frenchie, the tender-hearted, mature woman with an absolutely amazing voice. the fact that she could singlehandedly slap Hollywood in the face doesn't exactly sour the deal. damn.
*
but in my real life...things are happening as well. most of them involving me breaking down as far as I can go without needing outside forces to repair me. actually, scratch that. I'm far beyond the point I would usually run to someone (hmm...I wonder who) begging for help to beat this. I'm far beyond the frustration, anxiety, depression, and headache it usually takes me to cry psychiatrist. somehow, I'm still here. that's one of the glorious realities of life. no matter how fucked up things get, if you go to sleep, you will wake up. if you brave the night, you'll meet the morning. close your eyes a moment; give the scene time to change. that's what I'm trying to do: hang on, survive, get through. I have officially given myself permission to stay firmly planted where I am. I don't have to excell. I don't have to display brilliance in the arts, in relationships, in school. I don't even have to *do* any of these things. I don't have to take steps in recovery this week. all I have to do is eat my meals, not purge, not cut, not restrict, and still be alive and ready to talk one week from today. that is the new game plan, and trust me, it's a difficulty level higher than "excelling" normally infers.
I can say, gratefully, that right now I do not have a migraine. I have the headache that is normally a migraine. and I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for the little white pill that has kept the demon-queasiness out of my life for over a week now (and quite the week at that.) yes, that is actually how hard my life is at the moment: I'm nearly blind with headache, and I'm grateful it's not a full-blown migraine. Hooray reframing.
I know very little about what's going on, probably as much as anyone else can gather simply by reading this. and for the record, I do want to say that I don't write everything I think. this relationality/ sexuality issue I've been discussing is in far earlier stages than the thoughts I normally discuss. that's part of the reason I was encouraged not to write while at Rogers. I always wanted to understand thoughts completely and articulate them brilliantly; I didn't want to just let the words fall out, let the confusion be visible. I'm letting it be visible right now, and that's absurdly difficult. so let me just remind the portion of the world that reads this journal (who better not include my family, damnit) that this is not Mary's-thoughts-on-the-subject-of-sexual-orientation. this is far better described as Mary-being-completely-confused-about-everything. what I say in the moment is not always what I believe. what I say in the moment is not always all of what I believe. what I believe for myself is not always what I believe about others or what I would expect others to believe. on some level, this is still a journal, and with this particular topic, I need that understood. a plea, to you the reader... not to stay silent when you would do otherwise. just, to tread softly on what is already confusing as hell.
and can I just say, why does an Internet search for "adolescent glbt" lead to an overwhelming number of suicide and abuse statistics? that isn't exactly the type of response I'm looking for right now. I'm looking for an environment that calls up in me that voice that says, "yes. yes, this is me." I'm looking for the words that ring true, and the images that mirror me. I'm looking for some sense of myself, as brought to surface by an outside force. my excavation seems to do little. let's see what books/ music/ television/ movies/ websites can do. so far very little. so far, I know what I know, but don't trust it. so far, this is all seems frightfully similar to what I went through when I was questioning whether or not I had an eating disorder...
and how awful is that? to compare the process of discerning something perfectly joyful to something like illness? argh, it hurts me. but it isn't illness I'm comparing it to- not really. it's that weird period I went through during junior high, when I was desperately in need of help for the depression, the panic attacks, the identity and self-esteem issues. when I didn't always eat, when I found it kept my anxiety down, when I didn't have much appetite, when I started eating whole boxes of crackers in the mornings when I was refusing myself sleep. by eighth grade, I was skipping lunch, and sure, in hindsight that is clearly where my anxiety disorder bears her offspring: ed. but? at the time, it was all so unsure. and if I hadn't ended up diagnosed, hospitalized, all of this- what would it look like? is it so obvious then? I still wonder what would have happened to me if I'd never been asked about having an ed. I wonder if I would have developed this illness if there hadn't been so much attention on the food-part of my odd behavior. and to make it more bizarre, I don't even know what I want to wish. do I wish that the eighth grade social worker who stuck herself into my life and failed to save it had figured out what my real story was, instead of tossing me aside post-abuse check-in? do I wish that I had never gotten sick? never having gotten sick means years differently spent, means pain never experienced, the possibility of wisdom (hell, identity) never gained. it means never going to Rogers, never meeting the people that I met, never finding the small parts of myself that I have found. or at least, not finding them in the way I have. would I be who I am if I hadn't been through this? is my identity a destiny or something shaped through experience? I don't know. I wish I'd never gone through this pain. I'm terrified of losing what I've found.
right now, I just wish someone could say to me, "I really wish you'd never felt that pain. You never deserved to feel that pain, so intensely, so alone. And I'm really grateful you got through it, even as much as you have. I'm grateful you are who you are, and I'm so sorry for who you've had to be."
I'm down on myself about my past. I needed to talk today and couldn't make myself call anyone because I've been "the mess" so many times before, breaking down and asking someone to be there. I just can't do it anymore. I'm so tired of that identity, and I'm so hurt that it's still here. I don't want to risk losing who I am. I don't want to call someone up a mess and have them assume all the growth, the strength, the progress, transformation have poof!ed away. I don't want to believe that myself. I want to see myself in this sort of hell- this hell that seems as intense as post-Rogers, (when I slept 18 hours a day)- as post-December (when I quit eating and started losing weight-and-me again) and know it's not the norm. I feel like this is what I cycle back to because I've spent so much time here. I want to feel like recovery, like knowing who I am, like relating to others well, like feeling free and strong, determined and optimistic, are the standard, are the place I hang my hat at night. that's what I want. I also want to forgive myself for not being good enough for standards with which I don't even agree. I want to forgive myself for a sickness I didn't even choose.
"did you put people through this?" he said. "or was it something you were put through, also? and expected to have more control over simply because it was happening inside you?"
Britt said something interesting in an e-mail today. that maybe this bothers me so much because I'm not in control of it. she was pointing out that I'd said I'm afraid of making the wrong decision, which I am, and that it's not necessarily my decision to make. of course, I don't know that for certain. not feeling anything strongly enough to say, "yes, this is how I am" means that I still feel like it's something I might have to construct for myself, something that doesn't exist fully on its own. I might be one of those people in the middle of Rosie O'Donnel's line segment, letting experience push them into one sort of feeling or another. but control is an issue I hadn't applied to this before, and it makes sense. it frustrates me that I can't know now, that I can't voice it now, that I can't dismantle the fears that seem silly, that don't live up to my liberalism or my (real) last name. the guilt. I think I do want to be in more control than I am. if not of the outcome, at least of the process. I want to be able to choose how I know and when I know, if not what. but of course, all I get to choose, really, is how I act on what I know at any given moment. grargh. that's not enough some days.
the idea that having a sexuality or even speaking up about it does not mean being raped helps a bit. it's still crazy radical. it's still something I need to repeat to myself about a million times a day.
I used to (and actually still do) wonder why, if I was "abused" by people of "both"* sexes I'm so much more terrified of guys. I think now it has a lot to do with sexism, with the abuse that women take indirectly through subtle (or to be more accurate: ignored) social harrassment. I don't doubt that what I've endured and watched others endure- even fictional characters, continuously- has effected me similarly to the more specific abuse. I can't doubt that has an effect on us. I don't want to grow up and be a supermodel. but it doesn't seem to matter what type of person I am; I'm still a brutalized victim every week on Law and Order: SVU.
this isn't what I started out talking about, but it's the first time in days that several sides of the story have come out at once with any sense of coherence. I mentioned several entries back that part of the problem I have with bringing This up is that I don't know exactly what This involves. Relationships? Sexuality? Sex? Trauma? I'm beginning to see now that it's all of these things and more, and it makes me want to run quickly in the other direction. but there is some sense of reward on the other side. the lengths I go to for more information on myself and for the possibility of someone real to wrap around. it may not be enough, but it's enticing. there's negative reinforcement as well: oh, the joy of not feeling like a crazy, confused creature for a few minutes. oh, for a little bit of sanity again. we all know I don't feel crazy easily. I didn't even feel crazy for the majority of the time I spent in a psych hospital. so this making me feel crazy is a big deal. it means I need to start talking about it and that means I need to either dismantle a few of these fears or act in spite of them.
back before I wandered through this sixteen or twenty tangents, I was comparing what I'm going through now to what I was going through in junior high. and I guess I have to say I feel like it's similar. I feel like someone could look at this and say, "well, duh, it's just all the shit you go through before coming out" - except to do so would ignore all the people who "question" and "experiment" (for the record I like the first word somewhat but despise the second) and end up realizing/ deciding they're straight. I feel on some level like the progression of my illness into a diagnosable ed (well, somewhat, if you ignore the shitty insurance standards) establishes that bizarre time in junior high as the beginning of my illness, when it might not have looked so obvious without what happened next. What is that quote? "Life is lived forward and understood backward"? Something to that effect.
and I don't know why I feel that minimizes anything. maybe it's a way I have of minimizing everything. "this time doesn't really count if it doesn't stand up on its own." I'm not sure why I'm compelled not to let it "count." probably because I don't want to be told what is going on. (as usual, Mary, the typical youngest child is pissed when other people try to tell her what she's facing.) that's a change, though, from what I was thinking. I've had so little faith in my own experience lately that I was ready to post a poll on here, like the olden days, to see what my readership believes the outcome of all this questioning will be. I got the gift of (what I mistakenly thought was) one such guess tonight, though. and I learned how scraping on the spirit that can be. I'm not sure if it feels abrasive because the "guess" was wrong or because this is something only I can know now, but I suppose just realizing that it truly is my call is worth the bruise. I'm grateful to that person by the way. hope she's not beating herself up for speaking. personally, I'd hug her if I could.
and maybe this means that I won't have to feel like complete shit when certain people in my life try to place me in their small-minded schemas following my first relationship (should I ever choose to have one.) I do realize that I'm as afraid of myself on this count as I am of other people, though. I know I need to be strong in who I am regardless of who I'm with (and certainly regardless of their gender)...but I worry that won't be the case. I don't want to be the needy, distressing straight-girl (and god knows I could play it) or the take-on-the-world queer-one. not to imply that those are the only choices, even from a sterotypical perspective. just to say that I don't want my identity to be defined by who I'm with. I'd like to grow from that, change from that, be in that. I don't want to lose myself to it, though.
some things I'm scared of that I think I'm finally ready to voice:
-that I'll lose friends over what I realize/decide
-that I could end up a part of another minority when it's hard enough being in one
-that I could end up liking the same sex that scares the bejeezes out of me (to put it lightly)
-that I won't have a voice once I discover/ admit to this; that I'll lose my right to choose my path
-that I'll lose my credibility (talk of acceptance is more convincing from someone outside the group attempting to achieve it...right?)
-that I'll lose my past, that everything will be viewed in light of this information. i.e. that *was* what was going on and also what caused my illness (meaning I also lose my real truth, the actual etiology)
-"I told you so!"
-that I'll lose my right to be a feminist or even my right to be me
-that I'm making myself into something I'm not; that these groups are established and exclusive and I'll be exposed as a fraud in time
-that I'll be setting myself up for more pain (damn those Google searches; someone needs to look into that...I do understand, however, that squashing who you are for a lifetime isn't exactly painless either. that's a definite control issue. I'm trying to control how people will react to me rather than how I act within myself, a dangerous instinct.)
I'm sure there's more, but I don't doubt it'll all come up in time. For now, I'm comforted just to have a list, and to realize the basic theme of "losing myself." This is self-assessment, self-awareness, self-discovery; when did it become about loss? I do start to think sometimes about how much I could gain- how much freedom, how much relation, how much joy and excitement and silly fun like I've missed out on. It just fades into the rest of the crud a bit too quickly. In the meantime, I try to keep my head above the poison gas (water seems a bit too kind these days), and do my share of lurking and pretend.
sometimes, though, it'd be nice to only have to face one issue at a time. I suppose this could also qualify as phobia, though. anyone know the word for fear of self?
chord
*I hope people see my point on these quotation marks, and I don't end up somehow on the page where they're misused.
�
�
