9:48 p.m. - 06/02/03
(*we.re just waking up*)
It's your journal, girl. Dive right in...
Finals are turning into more of an obstacle than I thought they'd be. It's not that they're particularly difficult; it's just my lack of sleep the past few weeks, my preoccupation with more important things, and the realities of N*land baring their teeth for that one last set of exams. I took all but three questions of my physics exam today (as well as my soc exam) and I had to ask her about one question - one I know we talked about when the chapter came up, and a type I had looked at earlier in the day, to no avail. I said, "I still don't get this 'the sound of the sound' thing." And I said, "I'm sorry," and when she took the test to see what I meant, she told me not to be. Like it's nothing. A teacher explains to a student how the subject works. A teacher explains it more than once. A student asks for help, and isn't slit open with verbal slingblades. I wish I could have enrolled at that school, instead of simply graduating from it. ...Only two more days now, though. Tomorrow, I'll finish physics and start psych; Wednesday I'll finish psych (in a classroom for the first time since February 22nd my sophomore year) and meet the faculty I've so impressed. I'm worried and excited and entirely indifferent all at once. I wonder how it will go. I wonder if I'll get to have interesting literary geek talks with members of the English department and if my physics teacher's belovedly dorky sense of humor will play out as well in person as it did on his earlier tests... And what will they think of me? I'll have turned in my final final. I'll have done everything I need yet do toward the end of graduation. I'll be weighing twelve years of war stories against the first surreal taste of freedom, searching for balance. I think my only strong hope for it is that I don't leave myself regretting anything unsaid, undone. I hope I take all necessary social risks. Participate in conversation, beg an e-mail or grant one where it's due. I'm trying not to think a great deal about the possibility of social "mistakes" (blugh), but I don't want to regret what I left undone. That's what haunts me about N*land right now, and that's what I don't want to relive here.
Speaking of, I need to call my dad (who is still at my grandma's, and thereby in the same area as N*land), and ask him to provide a few #s, addresses...And I need to call the doctor and tell him I'm out of my anti-migraine med. And study for my phys and psych tests. And this is where I start to become overwhelmed. ...Because, you see, the shiny glass beaker I embody is already near brimming with everything emotionally awry right now, and these little things are all overflow. Surplus. I don't need to take any more tests right now. I have life to prepare for, to "master," and to understand. I have questions that aren't answered in the back of any textbook. Questions even the magic teacher's edition couldn't begin to explain...
Why, last night, after feeling so rotten and writing so sadly, did I feel as I started to lie down - that everything was entirely, absolutely (I'd say perfectly, but who doesn't hate that word?) alright? Why is it that the more real she is to me, the more pain I feel, but the more real everything (life, energy, emotion, grief) is to me, the more I know she's ok? How does that make sense? And how do I hold onto the certainty that she's alright and the security of her real-person-self at once? How do I acquaint those two bits of knowledge and start to realign myself internally, if I even can?
I have a sense of unrest today that's clinging in spite of my sure-hearted attempts to ignore it. Anxiety? The result of mistakes with meds the past few days? (Running out of desipramine, missing my morning meds yesterday, etc...) I think it could just as easily be the current reality of life. Well, that, or the fact that I'm finally going down on my Buspar dose, in hopes of quitting it entirely. Yes, let's find out now that the world's most obvious placebo was actually the glue holding my puzzle-piece brain together.
No, I know what that glue is. It has voices and hands and embraces and laughter and hope. It's some combination of everyone I love and the hope for love within myself, which I experience on occasion, if not consistently...
The other night I dreamed that I was simultaneously (super)powerful and paralyzed. I floated in the air like a balloon, but a good portion of my body (and limbs) was turned into me, and I had no real ability to direct myself or gain speed when necessary. The gift/ disability seemed mostly to frustrate those around me, and I kept moving about a building that looked mainly like a school. Twice, I ended up in this room where a small group of teachers stood chattering at the door, which appeared to lead into a hallway. They told me (both times) that I couldn't see "him" (some school-doctor-type) until at least 3:30 and one woman was determined to convince me she'd have him busy until at least 4. I kept saying that I hadn't even needed to talk to him, it was all a misunderstanding, but nevertheless, later I was back in that same room off the hallway, and the teachers were gone. I sparked fire in the space just above me, in the air, and I turned around and "he" was there, saying, "How long have you known you're able to do that?" but I wouldn't tell him because I was pissed. I wanted to talk, but it made me angry that he was making me work with him instead of Dr. R. He said that I needed to work with him for the magic, and that I could still work with Dr. R for my family-stuff, and later, after the magic was worked out.
And when I woke up, I kept thinking how the doctor (R) tells me I'm a wizard-in-training, that my relational gift is magic I need help learning to manage. I kept thinking how he says that the pain around it, the difficulty of it, has been mishandled so it sometimes seems like a disability in me rather than a gift. I don't understand why I would have been working with someone else, though. And I don't understand what happened next.
There were all these people, presumable faculty members or such, gathering for what-I-guess-was a meeting, and I was still hanging around. Understand that in the dream, there was no danger in fire; it was simply a trick, a bit of mischief. And feeling mischievous- I set the chairs or some cloth around them, something, on fire. It was amusing for a moment, but then it ended up giving me away, and everyone "suddenly realized" that I had these magic gifts, and they started chasing me, basically intending to exploit me as a circus freak. I started to run, or float, or whatever I was capable of doing at the time, and I heard the doctor start talking hurriedly about how I was a ploy. How he had used me to keep the attention off of himself, that he was the real wizard, and he didn't want them to know, so he pretended it was me. I heard him, and I knew what I had to do, and all the time, I knew he was lying through his teeth, trying to save me...
And it was awful in a way, but beautiful, too; I heard what he was doing, and I knew that I had no choice, I had to follow his lead. So I started talking to the people chasing (and now catching me) about how it was all a lie, that the real magic was the doctor, in such a way that they believed us. And next thing I knew, I was running (or whatever I could do at that point) outside, trying to catch him at the same time they were, because I'd betrayed him, even though I'd done it in his example. I did get to him first, and I started screaming about how this couldn't happen, and he said he was going to get away, he had to get away fast, and he said I'd be in good hands. I looked next to me, and there was Dr. R, who I had been so possessive about earlier, but whose presence now seemed strange, almost like I was meeting him for the first time. The other doctor got away; the crowd disipated, believing that I didn't have the magic powers. And the (real) doctor and I were left to deal with the magic and the life.
My greatest curiosity the past few days has been who or what the imagined doctor is. I haven't come up with anything solid, and I'm not sure I will (I don't always translate that manifest content so well), but I had this train of thought that he was Rogers, and that's led to some interesting ideas. The doctor (the real doctor) talks about how part of what made Rogers magic was me, and how that's the one part I haven't been able to claim. And in this dream, that was the secret. I had the magic, and he had to pretend that he did, so that I could be safe. I needed him to pretend and I needed to pretend myself. So I would be safe, so I would have time to understand it, so I could learn how to handle it. But he was supposed to be the one to teach me how to do that, so why did he give himself up in my place, leaving me with this other doctor - the one he had kept me from seeing earlier? And Rogers was supposed to be the place where everything I needed came to be, so why did they go away before it was time, and leave me with this other person? ...I've just started thinking about it as an outsider. As strategy in a game of high stakes or a story I'm reading instead of living out. And I'm thinking maybe the doctor had to disappear so that I'd know where the magic was. With him there, guiding me, I kept coming back to the hallway, I kept seeking him even when I said I wasn't, but when he left, when he lied, he made me lie with him, which meant - in some weird way - he made me say the truth. That I had the magic. And then like the Wizard he was gone, and there I was with Glinda, going - what now?
A note: Dr. R would look very, very weird wearing a fluffy pink dress with sparkles.
The thing is, it doesn't matter if that's what the dream is about. It doesn't matter if dreams have anything to do with reality, though I believe they provide insight; I do buy into that. It doesn't matter because no matter what, I started thinking down the track that I've been thinking on...the one that made me say maybe Billy disappeared so I could see how fully I was dying, so I could learn to take care of myself, and maybe Rogers was the same. I don't believe that about Billy now, and I don't know why the people at Rogers who made the decision about my discharge made it, but I wonder if this is a bigger truth about that decision. If I had stayed longer, if they hadn't hurt me that one time, would I have been able to fight on my own? Would I have known that I had magic myself, without them present?
I want to say yes - because they taught me to believe I do. But I don't know. I also want to say they made the wrong decision. I went through huge pain. It took me several months to find anyone who would listen, who would let me grieve, who would say that ultimate permission: "It was premature." Forget, "I went through huge pain." I'm going through huge pain. I'm not done with it yet. And we aren't talking strategy in games or plot complications in a story; we are talking life. Where real girls get hurt on top of old injuries. Where girls finally believe in home and then find themselves strays on the street again.
Left with good doctors, with ruby slippers, with magic, with guidance, but without that balloon. Without that one piece of Kansas that would have made all the difference. But...but...I mustn't forget I have pieces. I have something better than pieces; I have other in-tact wizards. I have miniature, human-sized Rogers, handmade and crafted carefully. And I have me.
I have me.
As for Billy, I think now that I did the very right thing for the wrong reason. I needed to leave. Even when I miss him now, I know that. I needed to leave because I was so sick in that relationship, and I couldn't have gotten better while remaining in it. I couldn't have let anyone else in, I couldn't have known how empty I was, how deeply I needed, I couldn't have known I was enough. I couldn't have broken the cycle, broke out of my binds, when I was that enmeshed in loving him. But that's not why I left. I left because in one lousy number he went from being a fairy tale to write about at iceflake, a bird I first thought was a woman, to a physical, earthly man. I never once let myself anywhere near a relationship with a guy where it wasn't somehow undoubtedly safe. And that's what I was afraid I couldn't convey to Dr. R, that my having loved Billy is no more proof that I can love boys than it is I can't. But I can now. I can show him now how it worked. Because I finally understand it myself.
And Billy was right; it was about the age. And it had absolutely nothing to do with it. It had everything to do with who I was and where I was, how terrified and sick I was, down in the deepest parts of myself. All I could be back then was a fairy, and all I could love was an enchanted crow. And his words were beautiful, and gods help me - hard as it is to admit it - he probably is, too. I did leave him for the wrong reason, but I did it with the right instinct, and there has to be credit taken in that. I lost a beautiful dream. I'm waking up now and there's a hell of a lot less stardust, but wishes walk in bodies, and I'm starting to spring antennae, feel out home.
I think I'd rather be awake in powerful waters than asleep in placid ones.
chord
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