so Mary's kind of in a slump at the moment; I'll be posting on her behalf. I'm her fingers, by the way, and I suppose small, surviving parts of her brain. I'm not enough of her to know exactly what is going on, but I do have some idea. the ever-so-vocal tumor in her head has gotten even more chatty; my best guess is that it doesn't like the fact that she reached her goal of going out 5 days in one week and still has a bonus 7th day to do with as she pleases. (sort of like God.) anyway. she went to the doctor today, and oddly enough she cried before she saw him. she felt like staying 'home', felt like she usually feels when a hard session has finished... but she went anyway. I think because she hadn't had a Monday appointment and because she thought the doctor might help her get close enough to the root of her problem (hell, she would have settled for a trunk, for some branches) to keep her from having a horrific weekend. she didn't expect to get there. when the illness fucks with her brain, she sits in traffic imagining what could kill her, and does not understand the difference between could and has. in the waiting room, the woman who keeps books for the doctors asked if Mary had been out in the sun, told her she looked really good, really healthy. we tried for voice, but it was malfunctioning. all we got were a few squeaks and some corresponding lip movement. that's all the doctor got, too, at first. then, a few details. like, she's not been around the way she usually is for her friends. she hasn't been answering the phone, or returning calls, or even listening to messages. but she's been going out and interacting with people. somehow, the stakes are just too high when she gets back, too high with the people that she has relationships with, cares for... she has a harder time. the doctor jumped onto that and rode off into the sunset, trailing theory and analysis behind him. he didn't understand that the people were not people she was getting to know, just people who were around: lifeguards, old women, some kids in the pool. she interrupted him to explain that there hadn't been any contact to frighten her; there was no reason that she would be upset over new contacts implying that she was abandoning old ones because there weren't new ones. and he just said something like, I think you're scared of the possibility of new ones.
Yeah, well, I think you come from the planet YipYak, but that doesn't make it true.
I guess if I'm going to regain, maintain, sustain any sense of self I'd better resume the first person. Fine. We'd gone over this all before, and I didn't want to talk about it anymore. I know all about attachment theory. I know that I don't have an attachment disorder; I have attachment issues, and yes, he's assured me more than once that everyone has these issues. and we've discussed what's behind them, and how my brain insists the resources are scarce - including resources of attention and connection - blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah. I was quiet, trying to come up with a way to tell him I didn't want to talk about psychology so much as I wanted to be less compelled to perform a lobotomy on myself. I sat there, basically shut down, and he said, "Do I have permission to take over for awhile?"
bad, bad, bad question. no, that is exactly what I don't need you to do. I didn't talk. Laura says silence means consent, but the doctor knows me well enough to know that if I don't say yes, I haven't meant to... anyway. he said that he wanted to outline an idea for me, another perspective we could work with, which truly thrilled me. I said, "I don't want any more ideas!" and he asked me what I wished for, which made me feel so completely patronized (what the hell kind of question is that?) and so completely deprived (like he doesn't already know, like it isn't blatantly obvious what I want and that I can't have it... not now anyway). I sunk out of the conversation entirely; I told him to go ahead and tell me the Idea four times before he could hear me. he immediately grabbed a tablet of notebook paper. I wanted to yell at him, "no! I don't want anymore diagrams!" I don't want anymore psychiatric bullshit; I understand what's wrong... can we just fix it, please? but I couldn't talk and didn't entirely want to - so he went on for the majority of the session talking about what infants go through as they develop attachments without having developed the concept of permanence. basic metaphor: you, Mary, are a big baby. fabulous. actual metaphor: going out of the kitchen to get plates. to get plates? I spent a good portion of the time trying to figure out where the hell the plates were if they weren't in the kitchen. I finally decided that people had eaten in their bedroom or a living room, that someone had gone after dishes in need of a wash. I paid attention, too. no worries. I heard the whole damn theory all over again.
he knows it. I know it. he even gave me a fucking summary at the end. do I get to answer five unit questions now? I came ridiculously close to telling him, "that's very good. you could write a fantastic book on this. unfortunately, I don't want to write a book. I would just like to leave here feeling a little less like shit." I'd probably be doing better right now if I had said a few of these things, but I was too far away. I suppose he's one of those people I'm already attached to, those people with whom there are stakes. and he doesn't think it's a coincidence (do you think it's a coincidence...) that this happened right after I'd been out more and we had 'missed' an appointment (have you not seen the blatantly obvious?) ... ok. so maybe I wasn't being totally accurate when I said I didn't know why I felt awful. I actually knew pretty damn well, as we've gone over it several other times when this same stupid thing has happened. but I just wanted to feel better. I just wanted to get this out of me, to get my head to stop saying such awful things... there are billions of people in the world, and I know I am not somehow so inferior or poisoned a being that I don't deserve what they deserve. I know that now. so why can't my head just catch up, just remember it all the time? why does it have to fall back into this godawful self-criticism and -contempt? I'm a good kid. I believe that. why the on-again-off-again self-hatred? why can't it just go away for good?
I miss home so badly I'm seeing things. I swear. two days ago the lifeguard at the pool was so much like Leah, I was practically staring at her. they didn't look particularly alike, but something about her voice and her mannerisms rung so close to my memory of Leah that I was practically crazy. and then walking 'home', there was a woman sitting with a man on a step, and several yards away, I could see her red hair go gold in the sun, and I thought of Brea. I had sense enough to laugh at myself, "Leah's at the pool, and Brea's on the sidewalk. I wonder who'll be around the corner." then the next day, yesterday, there was a girl at the pool... she was eleven, but she looked and acted a good deal older. something about being the oldest sibling and who knows what else. and I was so fucking intimidated by her - because I'm intimidated by everyone - that I couldn't even tell her my name... but as I saw her and overheard her over the couple of hours we were there, I wanted more and more to pick her up and heal her somehow. and although I tend to want that anyway, the main reason was because she could have been a carbon copy of Oshiana. it made me want to cry. when she lay in the sun instead of going into the pool, I wanted to pull her in and tell her she didn't need to lay out or look like a model... even though I'd been laying there myself. I didn't want her to care what other people thought of her, and who the hell knows if she does, but she was eleven, and I just wanted her to be safe. and the way she moved around the pool, the way she was outside - that was *so* Oshiana... that girl was like a wood-nymph. she could wear dust like make-up. and then I heard her on the phone, making a quick call to her mom, while her babysitter yelled to her from the pool and her little brother swam around. and it was so obvious that she wanted to be with her mom, that she needed to be around her mom right now... I remembered that Oshiana's mom is dead, died after she left Rogers, horror on top of horror, pain on top of pain, and I was just ready to bawl. and guilty, of course. because I haven't called Oshiana. because she doesn't even know about Dixie since our call a few months ago got cut short. not that I want to tell her. here's another tragedy; take care, love you!
but I ache for all of them. I miss us so much. I almost called Steph today, but I talked myself out of it. Silje called me yesterday; she's coming back to the states (at least, she's almost sure she is) for four months starting in August! and we had such a lovely talk, and I was so glad... but it's not the same. of course. that's good, in some ways. what I mean is it's not enough. I need Rosie and Oshiana, and I haven't kept up with them enough to meet that need. Haven't written Katia, fall out of calling Sara (even though I always fall back in...) And still go to write Dixie letters only to remember that I can't ever send her another... and I beg my mail to have something from Stacy, from Brea... but it doesn't. I've made it abundantly clear to everyone how much I need them, but we just can't find the time. why? why, why, why? damn it all; I just want to go home! this is not such a confusing problem; this does not require a diagram. I have a family, and I can't be with them, and tada! that's the extent of it. that's the extent of what's making it so. hard. to live.
whatever doesn't kill you leaves you broken...
I'll just call again. that's what you do, right? I'll pick up the phone. I'll return Brittany's call, hear her latest dramas. I'll call Oshiana and we'll talk about lots of things, including what happened to Dixie; I'll apologize, but she won't be angry with me. I'll call or write Rosie; I'll call or write Katia... I'll call or write Steph and Leah, e-mail Brea, eventually e-mail Stacy again.
and I'll hope that just one of them touches down in my nightmares each time I sleep, so that I don't lose track of what they look like, how they talk, and the way it feels to be with them. (& really, if it matters, I have what it feels like to be without them down.)
love you, red light...