10:59 p.m. - 07/08/03
never were words so true..
I don't know what day it is - not in the way you're supposed to know. I know it's today, and maybe that's better - for me, for now. I know most of what today is, though I wouldn't assume I know all. I know tonight is sadness, bridged to this morning's ok feeling by a lonely afternoon. I know I'm in love with my brother's dog, and I wish I always had a furball nearby to comfort me. Better, even, than furballs are friends - good friends, true friends, sister-friends who call you from home, even though you can't be there, to tell you that you are. Who say over and over again that you are loved, you are remembered, you are still here. Sister-friends who call just in time to hear your hidden tears, spilling out after you talk with you father about why you can't go visit him this week. Spilling out after he tells you that he has pictures of "all of us" up in his apartment, all my siblings, myself, himself, my mom. Spilling out because my parents' wedding picture is still hanging in my mother's bedroom, and no one will tell me why two people who feel the same way they did, married, for twenty-seven years have decided not to be. And then he says that he thought I might be coming this week, and so he got me something I like; he got me yogurt pretzels. (Yogurt pretzels like I used to eat at Rogers, like I buy when I'm homesick to quiet the soreness I live with, in spite of, through...) And I thanked him and looked at the counter where a bag of yogurt pretzels my mom bought were sitting out unopened. Crying because they both want to be home so badly, and they're only getting further away from it ... but they're trying to show me they love me, and to do so, they give me something I had at Rogers, something I learned to love at Rogers, when I learned everything... And I can't explain to them that they aren't home. I can't explain to them that I love them and want to be with them always and want to run away. I can't explain to them that I'm crying because I love with my whole heart a girl who is sweet enough to share with me the home where I cannot be - and in her most amazing gift there is the pain of my not being there. The "do you realize...there are ten girls on that floor right now...and they probably don't even...I mean I know Sara does...but most of the others probably don't even know what it is they have, or don't want to be there, and they are, and I can't be, and do you realize how unfair that is?" It's no privilege to be in a hospital; I know that. It's a right, everyone's right, to have a home and it just so happens that those girls, on my floor, have the privilege of living in the best home I've ever known.
Tonight, maybe for the first time, I understand what the doctor has been saying for months. I feel sorry for myself. I feel unjustly hurt. I feel, tonight, like maybe I do have it hard. Maybe getting better is more difficult than being sick, and maybe...it doesn't matter how long you've been eating. Maybe what matters most is that you're still in pain. That you love so wholeheartedly, when those ties stretch near to breaking, you break, too. Tonight I think I understand that my life is not what I deserve - yet ... and I have very little to do with that.
I continue to do everything I can to be here as best I can, to live as well and as wholly as possible. Tonight, let's just cry for the fact that, even a girl who learned her lessons well and applies them everyday - doesn't get riches thrown at her feet. Doesn't get a free pass, no restrictions, home.
There or not there, it's mine. There or not there, it's mine. There or not there, it is my home. I understand that...so...it's ok to cry over the second part, the end, the "not there." It's ok to cry so long as I keep knowing, there or not there, it's my home.
chord
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