It's very weird to me to have a profile list me back at one entry. Of course, by the time anyone is reading this, I'll be listed as having written two...but still, considering the 635 atomgirl letters, the 805 chord entries, and the zillion or so scattered through offshoot projects of mine, "one" feels a little low. The idea is that fresh ground feel good, feel promising; I'm not doing this to feel like I haven't done anything up until now. I found diaryland in 2000, wrote in it almost every day until I went to Rogers, wrote in it almost every day since I was discharged, and am still writing in it - here - now. It's strange, when I start to really think about it, how many people I've met, and how much of my life has been affected by the random link on a (really bad) teen poetry site that led me here. It's weird when I start to think about Crow, and how we really did love each other in some form, when I remember the details of what he used to type to me. Or to remember impiwhirl and wonder how her health is after all this time. It's weird to count out the relationships that exploded into hurt feelings and hella mighty dust and the ones that continued despite all the bizarre new rules of online relation. I'd say I've changed a lot. I know my way better now; I know how to protect myself, not only from threats, but just in the sense that I know what I need and how to get it. I make sure I do. I make sure I get out of situations that injure me. I didn't do any of that before; I didn't know how. And that's more proof that Sara's right: I didn't choose to be where I am, and I couldn't have kept from coming here. That's still a hard piece for me to understand. How exactly does one comprehend that she has the power to change her situation but is not to blame for the time when she didn't have that power or the fact that her situation has not entirely improved as yet? How do I say to myself, "ok, I'm still sick, but it's ok because I'm doing my best" when so often I hear that line used to bullshit someone's way further into illness? I'm desperate to be integrous; I want that more than almost anything, and I hold myself to such high standards with it. But even those standards are not as high as others; take the standards for being in recovery. (No, really, take them. Leave me to rest from their incessant attack. Please?) I mentioned in the last entry that this is not at all how I intended to start this journal off; I honestly did intend to do it traditionally this time: a brief history of...mine...for the record. The sentences refuse to create that, and that's another issue of "do I not have the power to control them or am I just not trying hard enough?" for me, so, I'll try to let it be. All I meant to say was that my standard in recovery is so ruthless, so relentlessly expectant of perfection (always optimistic, always forward-moving, always gung-ho, always grateful, always ready for the next step, always a damn good role model for others, always inspiring in a traditional, touchy-feely, "how does she do it, but you can too" sort of sense). And that's one of the problems I have with fresh starts. I find them intimidating as beautiful, blank books; they arouse me into desirious hunger, but I never feel capable of insuring my own offering. I don't have words incredible enough for those pages, let alone handwriting, or typewriting, or cut-out-stalker-style words. I don't want to start, as if emptiness embodies a spirit closer to perfection than a few mistakes. It's ridiculous, but it's not a problem I'm alone in, so I feel less so. I've just been thinking over the past few days, as I've set up eventhewind, that I wanted to offer something sparkling, new, fresh, clean; I wanted to offer something that built on my words at chordchild the way those words built on atomgirl's, mainly the obvious improvement in health, the development of person. I know that was evident throughout atomgirl, even if it was stunted considerably by originally undiagnosed, then denied, and finally, escalating, all-consuming illness. And it was definitely present in chordchild - not simply in the immense difference between who I was before and after the three months I spent living at Rogers, learning skills, feeling love, and being home - but also (I realize when I let myself) throughout that journal, alone. I progressed after I left the hospital, also. I'm still progressing, and 'though the turn of the calendar hasn't done as much for my spirit as I'd hoped, (excepting the first hour or so of the year which was delicious) I expect my first visit with the doctor in over a month (only two days away!) will help some things fall back into place. I just hope thre isn't much bruising with the falls.
I'm scared to go back and speak with him for the same reason I'm scared to write honestly here, instead of as some hyperoptimistic characterization of myself. I don't want to tell him how far I've slipped this past month, even though I know he'll focus more on how well I stood my ground. I need to come out with it. I need to be brave and talk about things like last night, already feeling un-okay, having someone say to my mother, "I wish I'd married better," and having my mother respond, jokingly, flippantly, in my presence, "So do I." I wanted her to ask me how long I intended to stay angry, so I could ask her how long she intended to stay divorced (well, separated.) Separated. God, I hate "separated"! If ever there were a term of false hope. And of course, I couldn't even think those responses without knowing that my mom couldn't stay in the relationship and stay herself, healthy, and this isn't really her fault, and it doesn't matter, I still hurt. I came "home" to the apartment feeling like I'd been used to smash through walls; I sat in the dark of my room and cried in a scary way. A way that isn't cleansing, isn't peaceful, in some sense isn't even natural. I cried hard and desperate and like the sobs were scraping against my stomach and my throat. I'd opened a letter. Dixie's in a psychiatric unit, says she needs to get back on track. Dixie. I've been losing ground slowly over the past few days, despite all the ground I've managed to keep in place. I have been losing some. In the early days, I had cravings to self-injure; I just needed a visible sign of pain. Slowly, the desire to purge slipped in, memories of the early days before it took over my life - glossed-over, it'd-really-help sort of memories. (Kicked out and avoided.) Then, actually wanting to be sick, no longer able to use the inevitable escalation of the disease as a means to bar against it... and finally (and I'm about to be brutally honest here, so if you'd rather focus on the fact that I'm taking care of myself and have an appointment with my psychiatrist Monday and do not feel this way when I am seeing him regularly, as I haven't been able to throughout December - skip the next few lines) wishing I could die from it. Last night, wishing I had died from it. That's a sentence I can't even type without tears springing to my eyes, and I hope it remains that way. I do love life. I do love my life. I do love the people in it; I do want to stay alive. But with all the fear of what it will mean to be in my future, to be an adult, and more so (infinitely more so) with all the pain of watching my friends die and nearly-die, with the endless onslaught of tragedy after tragedy after tragedy, (and all of them so brutal, so inhuman, so unjust) I sometimes wish this illness had been allowed to run its course. It's undeniably deadly. If treatment hadn't interfered, if I hadn't interfered, I'd be dead from it. And I don't want that - tonight again, already tonight, I don't want that...but I need to stop getting letters. I keep telling myself to be relieved, to be happy; she needs to be in the hospital and she is. That's the logical way of thinking. What about all my Jenna-worrying; what about those girls who *need* to be in clinics or hospitals and *aren't?* Aren't they really the ones I should be crying over? But I'm no good at telling myself who to love or who to cry for, let alone to stop loving, stop crying, let go. I imagine my miracle Rogers as this golden house that has slowly grown outdated and hasn't been taken care of properly, is starting to look old and wrecked. My miracle, formerly all but perfect, cracking away. Each time the phone rings and someone else is in the hospital or needs to be or just got out or had a scare or has some hard news or anything, anything, anything...each time the welcome letter in my mailbox actually says something I will never, ever forget - verbatim, something I will carry in the soles of my feet or the crooks of my arms... I cry again then. And I know Dave and Dr. R gave me all sorts of advice on how to deal with this, but I don't seem to do so well, all the same. I don't understand why it wasn't allowed to kill us. I don't understand what I can do with my life now, so obsessed with and unpinned by this. I love. I love being alive, I love them, I love working with them to be saved, I love being here to write e-mail and entries, I don't want to die...I've just ended up in a life I'm not meant for. I can't be meant for this. I'm supposed to be a first-year college student, an English major, with a minor in drama or women's studies or something, working at the local craft store for funds, and the campus library for work/study. I'm supposed to be dating someone, for the first time, and it's ok, but it's not serious, but I'm starting to understand what it means to be in a romantic relationship. I'm supposed to get packages from a place called home where people called family miss me; that place is supposed to have one phone number, one phone number that I can call and talk with everyone. I'm supposed to have brilliant, adoring friends who support me incredibly (and receive the same back), and we're supposed to be innocent and think we can save the world, preparing for practical lives with secretly impractical dreams. I keep thinking it's useless to go on with these thoughts, but they go on whether I label them useless or not. These are the thoughts I have right now. That it didn't kill me, and I don't know what to do with that. That I'm not better, and I don't know how to have a life when I'm sick, let alone give those I love access to my painful, awful thoughts. That somewhere there's still an in tact, normal girl life that I could have "if only"...
If only. If only. Never when. ...Oh, but we will build something out of this. Oh, there will be compromises and victories and things better than I imagined them. Oh, but it's a process, and I'm not done yet. ...I just could have been so good at being peaceful. I just miss that life and want to make it possible again, if it ever was. I want back what I didn't have, meaningless normalcy. No, I want ease. I want simplicity. I want to be Alice, prior to the rabbit-hole - hell, prior to Lewis Carrol laying a hand on her. I want that liberty of innocence, that lack of fear.
~me