9:45 p.m. - 03/06/03
i hear my voice ! i hear my voice ! i hear my voice
And now for something completely different. (Sort of.)
I had a nice day, today. No, honestly, with the exceptions of losing the nourish entry, a little row with the momling, and not feeling as confident taking the psych test as I did prior to it, I had a really nice day. I've been feeling inspired, like there's "something inside me ... begging to be freed."* And I don't know, it's coming out in many random ways- playwriting (all in my head thus far) and drawing in my memorial-ish-journal-ley thing. I have a sketch book where I keep track of my red-love. Which proves the very frightening fact that it affects me more than I'm able to express in here and at the doc. You aren't even hearing the half of it. Scary, no?
There's just been this love today. I can feel my heart (in the poetic sense) quite a bit more than usual. And some of that is pain- (the doctor has taken to using the word "heartbreaking" lately, and it's acquired real meaning for me for perhaps the first time) - but mostly, I just feel really *real.* I feel really alive, and I have this love, and the pain is just, like a part of that right now. It's like I have a story that involves pain, and I have love that lets me tell it. There's beauty acting in verbs I didn't know yesterday, inside me. Things just seem better.
And food is better, (but not cured of course), which is such a nice lift. I credit the session yesterday; it's been less difficult since then. I ate a dinner tonight that, a few days ago, my mom offered to make for me; my response was an involuntary do-you-really-hate-me-and-want-me-to-die-that-badly? look. I've mentioned before that I occasionally forget other people are not in on the conspiracy my eating disorder suggests. They don't know, by default, when my head has switched into "food is poison" mode, and therefore, do not mean to offer me poison. They mean to offer me food, which is what I've been eating lately, and I'm just grateful for that. Funny how a few days of difficulty make me so grateful for the "smaller" things.
A week of telling (bits of) my story through the EDAW e-mail and a psych chapter on eating disorders pushes that gratitiude along I guess. In very different ways. I want to write a play about my eating disorder. I've never wanted to do that before, and it makes me feel happy and relieved and (oh, dear) lie crying (again.)** I suppose the talk yesterday about how letting certain things stay quiet until they want to speak up is not the same as selling my voice to the sea witch (again) appreciates this bit of affirmation. If I'm actually more interested in talking about, communicating, or artistically expressing something, there must be truth in what he told me. I'm glad when there's truth in what he says; I'm glad when I can feel that for myself.
Of course, it will be nothing like a normal play people imagine on eating disorders. It will be a weird-ass Mary play that people will interpret to mean whatever the hell they want it to mean (and, if it's in keeping with everything else I've staged up to this point, that interpretation will be sexual abuse, but maybe I'm breaking out of that)...I think it will be really wonderful. I'm trying to make sure it's not the same play that I'm already working on, but I don't think I can tell that yet. The one I'm working on now is hardly started. And I'm glad Sarah is talking to me about collaborating with someone else (with or without my involvement) while I figure out an end to our four-play-monster-fest (i.e. write and decide to use the fourth play) because the one I *am* working on has a girl-girl relationship, and I'm not sure I'm ready to let her read that. She read an unfinished script with an implied girl-girl relationship play between the one that goes up in April and the one I'm working on now (which I think was a good stepping stone, and something for my die-hard fans to read when I'm 80, but probably not up to par for now) and just took the safe route (thank God) of interpreting it as two sides of the same girl. I just wonder what ripples it will create as straightness curves out of my writing. I see it happening more and more. And I realized yesterday that I have never in my entire life written a story or a play or any such thing where there was romantic interest. I never wrote about a girl with a boyfriend. I tended to write about girls with problems who were saved by very young, very pretty, very wonderful women. We're not going to analyze that tonight. we're just going to understand that the sort of attachment which can take place between a girlling and a girlling is delightful. And might be difficult to share with a sister when I'm not sure myself what the presence of such subplots in my stories mean. On some level, Sarah's interpretation is accurate. On another, it seems to fall short. I want to do the women in my plays justice; (most days they feel more real than I am.) That means needing to understand their story and their message.
Oh, I want to do the men justice, too. There are simply significantly less of them...Momentary brain-lapse.
I told Laura about nourish. I gave her a link and everything. That's part of why I was so upset the second entry didn't post; I wanted her to find something good when she first got there, and the newest entry (currently) is a bit rough. There was more emotion (more love!) in the second one. Sometimes I forget that my intention there is not to write a self-help manual. It's part of the storytelling, too. I wonder how this new play (even the concept of it; it's already real to me, whether or not it's ever written) will effect my "I don't want to make anymore media about illness" mindset. I'm not sure it undermines that idea, really. I mean, the play I wrote which one YPI's contest (and which will be the prologue to the monster-fest) was about my relationship with depression, and seriously strikes me as the story of my eating disorder now (though at the time, I didn't even know I had one. Granted, I don't always know I have one now. Blast my mind and its mind-games.) I think this will be similar. I'll tell my story in a way as non-Lifetime TV as you can get. It's always about relationships with me (and I didn't know I was the attachment queen; God Harriet sure misinterpreted that one) so it will probably be a story, somewhat, of my relationship with the illness. Not, "how she started and then stopped acting eating disordered." I think, also, there's an aspect of the muteness. Years ago (in middle school?) I wanted to write a play based on the Little Mermaid, and I wonder if that won't come out in some way here. I look at the loss of my voice as a very serious thing. I consider it muteness now, muteness that went on for years- a complete ignorance of communication. I think I'm getting to the point where saying, "well, but, you talked sometimes- so you weren't *really* mute" is like telling an anorexic they aren't sick because they occasionally eat. When I felt how real this fear is, this fear that I'll lose my ability to speak and be heard, I couldn't help but recognize the trauma. The doc called it trauma, too. It's weird; I tend to think of events as being traumatic. I've never considered the possibility of a traumatic *response.* But it makes deep and rather important sense. Having a deadly disease is traumatic even if that disease is an eating disorder, in response to internal and external factors. That whole concept seems novel to me...Maybe I'll catch a better feel of it in time.
Gosh, voice. I'm wired with the joy of it. I'm spinning circles trying to decide what to create first. I'm grateful that school was moved to today because now it is my Friday, and I have my early weekend after all. It's amazing, really- how after so long, you can still be grateful. How knowing what it is not to have something, and recognizing that, can make you all the more embracing of the fact that you do have it now. I couldn't talk! Now I want to sit for hours and tell you stories that would wipe the dust from the wooden beams of our ceilings; now I want to make magic out of ordinary words.
chord
*Tracy Bonham
**"The rivulets about to stream from your eyes are not tears but waterways whose course if followed eventually leads home." -Dorothy Someone ... I *will* learn this.
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