listen as your day unfolds // challenge what the future holds::
02/25/04|9:40 p.m.

A certain someone, arguably my best friend in the universe ("arguably" because I dislike ranking relationships or even pretending that they're comparable enough to rank), definitely one of my kindred-sister-desert-island-girls has gone from being 8 hours away to a distance of, roughly, forty minutes. And I can't handle it. At all. I'm not handling it well at all, which pisses me off significantly. I don't like that I can't handle much of anything lately; I don't like that I can't just feel all happy-goo-puddlish because someone I love so much is so close. I mean, it's been over two years since the last time I saw her, and now I'll see her so very soon, and so soon after that! When she called me today, she was only forty minutes from my apartment; there was only forty minutes drivetime separating our phones. And that's so wonderful; really, really, really it is... I don't mean to mar any of the wonder by saying I'm upset. I'm just generally not ok lately, and when good things happen, I'm still not ok. Considering that "good things" don't exist so much as "things with potentially positive, potentially negative, and somewhat neutral points" seem to complicates things. I mean, when Sara called to tell me she had exciting news, she said it was not-the-sort-of-news-you're-supposed-to-be-excited-over-but-still-exciting news. Not a truly happy thing, but still, I can't stop smiling. I get that. It's never a truly happy thing to admit yourself into a residential facility, into a hospital; it's never happy to have your life, or the life of the girl who ranks damn high in your non-existent friend-hierarchy, so very much at stake. But then she calls and she's forty minutes from you, when she used to be eight hours. She says to keep working at going outside because she wants a tour of the city. I say there's not much to see, and then remember, we'll be together; we could tour D!@#$%^ for all I care... I'll touch her for the first time in over two years.

I'm not a bad friend for being slightly freaked out about this. (Could someone repeat that to me several hundred times?) I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. The freaking out has nothing to do with her, or how much I love her, or anything like that. The freaking out has to do with my issues, mainly, and it's not my fault that I'm not free of psychiatric "eccentricities" as yet. It makes sense that, faced with a situation where someone I really care about is going to really discover what the "agoraphobia" part of my illness actually means, I lose some breath. It makes sense that, knowing she's close enough that I could hop a bus and see her, turns up the temp of my "I can't yet hop a bus and go anywhere" pain. She makes me want it more, and that's a part of the soreness that I don't think she'd take as an injury. She makes me want it more, but that means I have to concede, or at least consider, that the doctor is correct: It's not motivation I'm lacking. Desire aplenty, my friends. It's something more difficult, more deeply buried, more intangible than that.

Sara's here! Sara's close! My sister Sara (who-is-not-my-sister-Sarah) and I are in the same state for the first time in over two years. What's more, we're in the same region. The same county. Her address bears my city's name.

I'm happy. I just want to make that evident. I don't want the fact that this is difficult, or that I'm feeling emotions other than joy, to discredit the joy I am feeling. But I have to be honest about those other feelings, too. I probably need to be honest about them with Sara, eventually. A lot of the fear is parallel to the fear I have around my brother, with the significant exception that Sara's care never hindered my own opportunity for help. I'm scared that she's so sick, I'm upset (small voice...with her...) that she's so sick (even though I know, know, know, know, know, know, know she doesn't want to be - it's a feeling separate from the knowing, and I hate that it's so much as that), and I have this hurt-and-lonely feeling that translates into some sort of envy when I think of where she is. It's ridiculous, by which I mean it's irrational, but it's true. She did call today, from this new treatment center, and such noise of active voices filled the background, she apologized, and I had two very different responses completely simultaneously. I wanted with everything in the world to be there, and I wanted with everything to run, run, run away. I'm scared. I'm rattled, more accurately; I'm terrified. I want nothing to do with this illness; I know how seriously I can lose. I want to run away from it, even if it means denying that I have it, even if it means losing friends - but I don't... I want to do so, but I don't because when it comes down to the wire, I always realizes I want my friends more than I want to run away. Despite the pain. I come to that fact over and over again, but still, the fear is based in reality and does not go away. This isn't, "If I leave the store, I'll get arrested" (when I haven't done anything, let alone anything illegal). This is, "This illness could kill someone I really, really love. And brutally. It's done so already." This isn't paranoia; it's intelligent, experienced fear. What I would give for this to be a silly phobia. A matter of learning that the people on the sidewalk will generally smile at or completely ignore me, that they will do this far more often than they will jump on, kidnap, attack, or murder me (statistically proven, that) instead of a reality. Still, I'd rather love Sara and be afraid than be carefree and never know her. I'd rather deal with what losing Tracy means than erase the fact that I'm one of the lucky few who knew her... We know this. We've come to this before. We know that sometimes, I get worn down and feel like it isn't true, but when my strength comes back, I've never run away. I've never even put on my shoes.

So, mainly that. I'm scared that she's not going to be ok, I'm scared that I'm not happy enough to have her here, and I'm scared that her sickness takes precedent over my own. That her struggles take precedent over my own. When we talked on the phone today, she was asking lots of specific questions about how I am - because I left her these two rambling messages the other night, as I was having one of my, recently common, meltdowns, and I had a really hard time not saying, "But, listen to me going on! You're the one who's just gotten into a new hospital! How are you?" Of course, I ddi ask her how she was. We talked a lot about that. Probably fifty percent. And I managed not to sabotage the fifty percent of the conversation that had to do with how I am. Which is impressive, considering.

I know that Sara understands that some of the hardest struggles come at those times when you aren't using coping mechanisms like the (fucking goddamn deadly) ed behaviors. I know the doctor says that what I'm doing is more difficult than abstinence. It's a matter of knowing these things myself. When I heard the people in the background during Sara's call, I ached with wanting them. (And I judged that and felt like a freak because "who's jealous of a friend in the hospital? hello!" ...um, I am. And I'm not a freak. I'm a rather lonely, but still lovable, little critter.) Afterward, I sat in my room crying, and thinking about the snatches of conversation I'd heard across the line. "Hey, so-and-so, are you coming to blah-blah-blah tonight?" For the first time in several months, I thought, "Maybe I *do* need to be in college." (No, I don't. Not right now. And future decisions will be made in the future.) I just thought of having a dorm, a floor, a suite filled with people, actual people, who would make noise, and ask me about where I was going, who would hang around doing nothing, and coordinate plans to do nothing more actively, and so forth. (I eventually remembered the part about homework and classes, at which point I let the fantasy slip away. But you know, college is not high school. And if I want, or if I need, to go to college to do what I want to do...I'll be able to go to college. And I won't suck at it. And I won't let it suck for me. I haven't thought that way about it in awhile.) So in my loneliness, the idea of a community like the one Sara's just entered, the idea of community even for such a sad reason as that, called up yearning. The doctor's right about the wear-down of my day-to-day. It's one thing to say I'm phobic or I don't get out; it's another to spend days on end in an apartment, seeing no one but my mom, and leaving only for my sessions. Throwing out the word "agoraphobic" is one thing. Looking at a photograph and a piece of paper I have, to substitute for everything I imagine Sara having, is quite another. This isn't ok. And it will change.

I went out today. I went for my walk. I was scared, it wasn't fun, it helped my mood, and it didn't go horribly. I'm ready for the weather to become more steadily warm, to help me make myself do this. I'm ready to not be (physically) sick as well. (That'll help with the walks. And that'll help in general. I'm not sure why Thursday has to exist this week. I'd very much like it to be Friday tomorrow, so I could see one and then another doctor back to back. Aw, I'm going to get all nostalgic now. ...Not on my life. I'm glad to be done with the multiple-doc-visits-a-day days. Very, very glad.)

And I'm not letting my loneliness mean anything other than I'm lonely, and I need to continue doing what I can to change these unacceptable circumstances. For instance, go outside. Contact people. (I finally made a move on the whole track-down-Dave operation. And starting March first, there will be a phone-campaign on behalf of my relationship with Jenna. Oooh.) Continue therapy. I'm not letting it mean I'm worthless. I'm not letting it mean I'm hopeless, stuck, left here to rot. And I'm not letting it convince me the only community is in sickness. Even recovering-sickness. I deal with enough of that bullshit just trying to navigate cyberspace; I will not join the insanity.

If I have to build a sandcastle and rope my loved ones into residing there, one at a time, I will do it. And (sigh) if I have to wait, and struggle, and cry in this damn apartment, I will do that, too. I do find it a tad annoying that the plans I concoct for myself are always so much more colorful than the realities. If I didn't fly around all night inside dreams I can't possibly decode, I don't know what I'd do. (Well, yes, I do. I'd be a crabby insomniac. We've been there, too.)

I'm starting to know my way around in this. It's not the city, but I could give quite the tour...

~me

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