so, I think - for someone balancing between panic attacks - I'm impressively calm. but if you looked into my eyes, you would know it. they have that wide, frightened, skittish quality tonight. and even if you're as used to the tension in my body as I am, you'd be able to see how forcefully still I am... when I manage it. see the paralyzed steadiness of a girl who's using every muscle to keep the other muscles in place. and then a noise, or a light, or a silence - a lapse of time - breaks the act, and I shake like the temperature has dropped eighty degrees. but no, my skin is burning. and if you look into my eyes, you see the fear. not the anxiety, not the tremors, not the play between shallow breath and hyperventilation... you'd see the pain. I feel it as tears in my eyes... the injustice, the terror, the frustration, the sadness, the rage. betrayed again.
I don't remember being this anxious - anxious as I've been these past few weeks - without a corresponding activity... since I was in school. for no reason, dizzy enough to drop, heart running races, anxious. and it has made me cry tonight; it has. because I need a release, I guess. because it hurts like hell, I guess. because this is what doing well, being strong, going forward look like. this is life having taken the best possible path. and tonight I took a few of my middle school novellas out and paged through them. they're all my story with a few key changes, the same changes every time: first, the girl in the story always has a really obvious reason she's not ok that no one could possibly challenge. second, at least two people care about her enough to fight through her silence. saviors seek her out, and they invest huge amounts of caring and understanding into her. in the stories, no girl ever has to survive on a smile won at her own expense, for two or three weeks at a time. third, they're always ok. by the end, with one exception, things have always turned around.
and I think about who I was when I wrote these things, when I came home from school and typed away, page after page, chapter after chapter, the same formula again and again... until my heart goes sick. you know, it wasn't supposed to happen that way. tension in infancy, panic attacks in grade school, a lifetime of avoidant tendencies... I wasn't supposed to be left alone with this. terrorized. and I was. I was left to face this by writing stories in which people were helped to survive what I was sinking under alone... and by wandering the hallways of my school, "bumping into" important people, loitering nearby. I begged as well as a mute girl can. I mixed it up with the withdrawn, hard-to-get persona which always drew saviors in my stories. and I got little smiles. a squeeze of the shoulder. a laugh as someone walked out the door.
and then Rogers blew the fantasy from my mind, gave me more in reality than I'd found existent in dream. screwed pixiedust and handed me some serious, real-world magic. & skills I could use. and it's not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not, not ever again going to be like it was. I am not going to be helpless and alone again, ever. ever. so see the fear in my eyes, but don't let it unnerve you. see the pain and understand it's just the necessary grief. I'm working too hard. I'm working too hard, but I can't let up... I can't quit. I can only rest and keep working. this isn't fair or fun, but I have to keep going anyway. that's the choice I made. that's the choice I make.
and Sara called me back tonight, but I didn't hear the phone. and Dixie's sister sent me a manilla envelope covered in stickers, which most likely has something inside. and you know, I'm really, really scared. hell, anyone could panic given this position. I'm really, really scared that we can't do enough, that we can't really find the other side, that we can't really be done. I want to be home again. I want to hold Sara while I cry, kiss her hair, smell the Rogers smell, and have my brain reprogrammed by people who love me. I want to be there, where I can hold on, physically. I want to know someone who's well. Who's honest-to-godd better. I want them to meet me, to convince me well is truly possible, and to hold me while I shake at the huge Scary Things and the nothings at all. and I want to know that no matter what, I'll wake up in the morning and that person will still be here. supporting me. no one can promise me that. even those entirely free of illness can't promise something that huge. but I wish it. I wish that, when the feel of my friends in imagined embraces starts to fall away, when I can't keep from imagining I'm going to lose someone, I couldn't keep from imagining that someone will be there. reach out and touch faith. I am so tired of the empty air.
maybe the doctor was onto something; maybe talking about the IOP and all the shit post-discharge wasn't as random as I thought. maybe e-mail and letters and the occasional phone call is all well and good... but not enough. I'm tired of getting by. I'm tired of surviving against impossible odds, despite impossible circumstances. I just want all of the petty-life-stuff to go away, so that someone can come to me and we can just focus on ourselves, and on each other. so that someone can screw money and work and everything else that gets in the way and just be with me. I just need to be with someone. not to be complete. just - not to be alone.
I've got this individual thing down. I have taken on deprivation, isolation, etc and I have won - no question. and I'm not asking for it to be over, I'm not asking someone to make better that my sister-girl's in the hospital and Dixie's sister is sending me mail about as often as Dixie did...and can't do now... I'm not asking for those things. so, it should be enough. it should be...allowed. no saviors, no quick-fixes ... just, no alone. no alone.
I founded this name. and as I've found family, they've surprised me totally by taking it on themselves... and I know you are with me. I just need proximity, please. I need to never again face the frontier, be the lone member of a someday-family. I'm not asking for someone to take the pain and fear out of my eyes; I'll keep working on that. I'm just asking for someone who can see it there. I'm asking for another pair of eyes, that I can look into...
~me