Epiphany hardly qualifies as the worst day to reunite with one's co-pilot, guide, and of course, superdoctor. I've wondered recently, in all the weeks I've had to think about him, (would you believe I've literally had something like ten scheduled appointments go by?...no wonder my brain looks like burnt styrofoam) which one of us qualifies as the superhero and which one would be the sidekick. It's an odd partnership because my own feeling of power is so central to it, and at the same time, he's the one who always seems to know where to go next, when to wait up, how to help me get to the next destination. Co-pilots, I suppose. Oh, and look. Epiphany is actually the sixth of January. Well, one day off isn't too bad for a girl who retired her religion many, many holidays ago. And the symbolism of joining up with my partner in justice (hey, why not; we have partners in crime) the day before Epiphany seems even more fitting. More in tune with how I feel. Maybe tomorrow I'll have the great breakthrough where life starts to make sense again. Tomorrow or tomorrow's tomorrow or the tomorrow following. Already, I feel less desperate to break through; there's that much comfort just in having him back. Here. Alive. At the end of the session today, I finally managed to push the words, "I'm really glad you're back," through the shyness that's escalated with a month's lacking practice. I wanted to dilute it with some jab at my inability to hold my own during his absence, but before I could manage, he replied, "I'm really sorry that you had to go through everything this past month alone." I nearly lost my breath when he said that. I nearly lose my breath remembering it, at least. I told him I didn't exactly believe he'd had a picnic during his time away, and that's entirely true. If anyone had it as hard as I did in December, I'd guarantee the doctor did. Put the threat and pain of his illness on top of the inability to help people he's always helping, and I guarantee it's a prescription he'd have given quite a bit to avoid. But after he went away, he did the best possible thing. He came back. That's still a miracle to me.
Still, it was a shock to see him so ragged, and know that this "ragged" was a hundred steps up from a few weeks ago. I don't know how to communicate the degree of sickness he endured or how deeply that loss would have... eek. Well, there's no need to go there because he stayed right here. I just had a hard time when he negotiated himself into the waiting room on a pair of crutches, his hair a little long, a little unkempt, his one foot in a business shoe, the other in a splint. I wanted him healed, right then and there. (I wanted him healed several weeks ago.) Here, I'd spent the past few days worrying about how wrecked I was going to appear to him, and instantly I forgot that, and went to wanting to tend him. He was firmly focused on talking about me, though, and to be honest, I didn't need a great deal of coaxing. Other than journaling, and the call to Sara, I really haven't let much of anything out in over a month, and even with the questions of where to start, how to proceed, and so forth, I obviously wanted to talk. I needed it. I needed to cry, and I did that also. No surprise. Although quite a few of the tears came at not wanting to verbalize the progression of bad feelings and all the wanting to do things that I want to do when I feel so bad as that... I got through the first part - wanting to cut or burn - ok: I slip down into that particular desire the most regularly of all my now irregular toxic coping mechanisms. Telling him I've wanted to purge tugged at my insides; it turned faucets, loosened muscles I'd held tight against the strain... I cried when I told him that, thinking of all the time I've put into this. I thought of everything since Rogers, and the celebrations - a month, two months, six months, a year, eighteen months, two years - and I told him and I cried. I thought of who I am and how much he's done for me, and how much I've worked through; I thought of Rogers and after Rogers, and I told him about wishing, finally, most recently, that this illness would have killed me.
And the tears sprang up again, the way I said I always wish they will. I wanted to tell him how much I love to be alive, how much I don't want to die, how grateful I am for everything, and how fully I love everything, everything, everything. Some reflex left over from interactions with less than helpful high school shrinks even made me want to state the whole, "But I'm not going to do anything; I'm not going to hurt myself. I'm not suicidal, and really, really, really I don't want to die at all. Except." Except this hurts so much. Except I forget that the options aren't so dramatic as "grow up (in the sense that I define it, enter the nightmare)" or "get actively sick again and die." I told him I try to remember that there are more than two choices, but it's so difficult to remember. He said we definitely needed to add an option c, perhaps even a d, an e, and f. He told me that according to a study, healthy individuals in healthy relationships generally stop asking the question, "What would my parents think if I did this?" in their mid-forties, that growing up won't happen overnight, and that in some ways, we spend our whole lives as children. We're never more prepared for the phase we're entering than we were for the phase preceding where we are that moment. He said there is not only one way to grow up, and that it's majorally important that I not feel I have to conform to anything if/when I decide to begin the process. I don't have to be anyone in particular; I don't have to live a certain way. I wondered, again, about college: if I'll go, and if the possibility of my not going has to do with the absolute importance of knowing I get to carve my own path. I can't remember his words now as he spoke them, but he told me something like, growing up does not mean sacrificing my identity. And that must be a cornerstone of the beliefs that are gnawing away at me because the possibility that I could achieve the ultimate fantasy - that I could live as who I am among caring, supportive people - gave me back my breath. I think about that possibility, but it's such a fantasy to me. Reality is compromising yourself until you're no longer recognizable. Reality is pushing yourself to fit other people's rules and standards and...no, he said, "growing up" (which he put in quotations because it's a shady phrase) is about having ever more freedom and choices... I felt like a dazed apprentice again after he said that. I understand that, if the world really is as he sees it, I must look seriously misguided or naive. And that doesn't even have to be judgmental; we could just leave it at, I was never shown this, and so I never knew. But in my world, the simple things he says might as well have the accompaniment of a gospel choir and a full orchestra; indeed, they alter elements. He makes the shape of the sky and the texture of the ground change, and he told me once that all he does is reflect back to me the reality I show him. (All secrets bared, I think he does a tiny bit more than that. But he does do a nice job of making it look like my thoughts, turned just slightly, with an extra mark here, here, and here, look like those he voices. Art, I tell you. Blueprints of utopia.)
He told me, and I had a bit of a hard time with this - because I've always been so gung-ho on changing what's visible; I suppose because I had to start eating before I could do the tiniest bit of work. I expect everything to work that way. Let me go and put myself in the scary situation, and then we'll work our way out from there. He says no. He says that if we had a switch which, once flipped, would make all my phobias disappear, if it were that easy, we might not want to flip it, just the same. He asked me how quick I'd be to flip the switch, and I just stared at the air in front of my eyes, speechless. "I wouldn't," I said. "Why - why wouldn't I?" This is what I want, this freedom. Why would I restrain? The doctor says, and the doctor has a good track record with this sort of thing, that ultimately, the work we need to do to change my behavior, to make it so that I can do all the everyday things that I currently avoid, will be relatively simple to execute. The difficult part, and the part that remains central to me and my life and my future, is why the phobias are here in the first place. I feel a little dopey for not catching on sooner - how many times have I said this about eating disorders? - but of course it's true. Taking it away without understanding why it's there in the first place, what needs it's trying to meet, what good it's trying to do - taking it away before its purpose is understood and new understandings and methods of coping have been tested and mastered ... is worse than never taking it away. Is the type of thing I would never want to do, even if it were so easy as flipping a switch.
Aiy. Complex and complicated, in an entirely real, non-Avril-Lavigne-ish sort of way.
It meant a lot to me when he said he wished I hadn't had to go through the month alone. I didn't really, of course; I had a lot of lovely friends supporting me. And my mom was pretty amazing a good part of the time (when she wasn't crazy herself, which she has a right to, also needing therapy.) But I felt alone a lot. Friendships are no substitute for two sessions of therapy a week (and vice-versa.) And sometimes - like, when I started to tell Sara about the letter from Jenna's illness, and Sara set a good boundary and asked not to know - I just needed my say-whatever-the-hell-I-need-to sanctuary. The brown leather furniture, the dark brown woodwork, the dark green walls. (He's only missing an animal head, truly. And how bizarre is that, for a doc who's so softhearted? It makes more sense when you see that, instead of the animal head, he has fully-in tact animal figures and kids' drawings to decorate the wall.) I needed it, and today it came back. What did I ever do without therapy?
Seriously, that's what I remembered most today. I went in feeling more similar to the girl he met nearly three years ago, than I have in a long, long time. I'm not that girl, and I understand that I'm not; I don't feel my progress is lost. But I understand now that December, in some ways, was like a mini-replica of my life before treatment. When I came in, so beaten down despite all that I know, and he said, "I'm sorry that you had to do this past month alone" the same way he's told me he's sorry because I did not ever deserve to be so alone as a kid... it reminded me. And it was a little like a miracle, all over again. I may have to see shadows I'd rather not view, but I'm wrong about my miracle growing dilapidated. It sparkles as it always has. I would have hugged him today, if I didn't have to worry about knocking him over. He came back. He sat in front of me with a splint on his foot and leg and wanted to know how I've been. He fit an appointment with me into his first day back part-time, and when he talked to me, he fit another one in before next week, when he's supposed to be back on schedule; he fit another one in despite his continuing physical therapy and the fact that he's supposed to be working part time. And I did feel just a little, little freakish for needing that, but mostly...mostly, I felt grateful that he knew. And would do that. For me. Between the present-day-me and the childhood-me, I'm ready to burst with thanksgiving. Love. It never stops being a miracle, to know I'm not alone.
...And quickly, in random news, I called Britt today! to affirm that good things come to those who skip school, and also because I wanted to surprise her. We didn't get to chat long; I was on my way to the doc, but I did pick up the phone and call the girl. And I had her laugh and voice and words as my reward. Squee. Believe it or not, I did something even more terrifying as well. I wrote my sister an honest e-mail about my thoughts and feelings regarding the company. I told her the easy things, like how much I love it, that I want to do full plays, and be a part of other things, and how much I really, really love it (again)...and then I told her that I don't want to pursue the arts. I don't know for sure what I want to pursue or how, but I know that I have too much passion and too much pain around what I've gone through with friends over the past few years to give my life over to anything else. Yes, I'll probably always write, and yes, I'd love to contribute on occasion, but I can't commit to the company when I feel this way. I made it very clear that I still plan on being her sister until the end of time, that I *am* committed on that front. I thought she might respond similarly to the way she did when I asked to have my name changed on the co. site. But she didn't. She responded joyfully, thrilled with what I said. Apparently, she's been feeling frustrated with the distance between where I am and where she is, the complications of that in the work, and her own desire to do other things. She's been keeping it quiet because she didn't want me to feel pushed out, and I've been keeping quiet because I didn't want her to feel abandoned. And of course, as it turns out, (actually, there's no "of course" about it - relationships where communication actually leads to the mutual meeting of needs are miraculous as well), we both needed the same thing. And we're excited about being sisters again. About sharing thoughts and art without the pressure of, "And how are we going to make this work in the next piece?" and most importantly of sharing life outside of creative genius. I'm mad giddy about the outcome, honestly. It's been a long time since Sarah and I have spoken our truths and come out on the other side so simply as this.
It's been a long time for a lot of things. Just over a month, when you're me, and it's now, and you missed nearly ten would-be appointments can be a very long time. I thought those damn spirits could do it all in one night! Which reminds me...I have good reason to believe the doctor does not know who Tiny Tim is. (I asked if he'd been bogged down with Tiny Tim references, he looked blank, I tried to explain it like twelve times, but he still looked blank, and now I'm thinking he might really be that deprived.) If so, I need that gap in his wisdom filled, pronto. It's the most surprising thing-he's-clueless-about yet. Far more disturbing than him not knowing a single musician I name. Tiny Tim? Why, they're practically brothers! They both have crutches; they both did not die (and that's very, very important)... Yes, I'm thoroughly disturbed. I need to bring it up later this week, when we talk again. Unless I'm too busy talking about things like growing up and phobias and illnesses and friendships and letters that knock the wind out of you and diseases you'd like to see capitally punished. I don't know how to start, that's true, but I'm downright proficient at rambling along.
He lives. And so do I. And so does Tiny Tim. And yes, Virginia, so does Santa Claus.
~me, belatedly merry