Raising Zoeyjane

“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” ~ Maya Angelou

So there’s this thing I’ve seen play out all around me, from all of these bruised souls that have accidentally become a part of this sisterhood we shouldn’t have been born into. It’s a sly fox, this condition, and it leaves you licking your lips and asking for more. It’s an addiction in and of itself, because of the adrenaline, and the fucked up neural pathways that formed long ago, and the fact that regardless of the proof, the pudding is what you’ve been told to eat.

Us children of violence, abandoned by addiction, loved merely for moments by hands too hard to hold and cast aside by affection too ghostly to grasp… we are the beholden.

We shuffle through, scarcely making a sound, until the reactions we grew up with take over and then our voices are too loud to silence. For a while. Then we remember our place and become re-acclimated to docility. We smile and say thank you, even as our cheeks still burn from the slaps.

We accept that someone would try to hurt us, because that is our role — to be the ones that others need, if only so that they don’t hurt themselves. And we feel … good for it, at least some of the time. Good, why? Because we’re living the American dream: we’ve found a purpose and we’re shining in it.

I am so damn good at taking a punch, I’m a better soul than someone who sails through three levels of education, on full scholarships, while volunteering and helping socially-challenged children meet the eyes of strangers. Because I didn’t have to go seeking out a mission in life.

I was born this way.

“Cause if he didn’t care for me, he would have never gotten mad. He hit me. And I was glad.” ~ Carol King

I read Sweetney‘s post over at Babble and mentally, my palm left a red mark on my forehead, and I can still feel it stinging.

See, she asked, all innocent-like, when people knew that enough was enough. When the moment came when their marriage was over, when they knew that it was dead. She told her own tale, and even though I kind of knew a little about it, I didn’t. I saw it, in my mind, the way that she wrote it. And I understood it, because it was missing the why? for me.

Mine is, too.

When did I know that it was over? If not sooner, by the morning of December 11, 2001 — 41 days after our first date.

When did it end, after that? Well, six months later. And then two years later. And then a year later, and another nine months later, and then a few months after that, and a year after that, and then six months, and oh, I suppose it’s been three weeks ago, now.

“I’ll take it all, give me more. I will be your hero and your whore. Valium knights in my bed. Only now, he’s a vagrant in my head.” ~ Spinnerette

It is our mission in life to respond. Response can be spoken, or given, or eyed over. Response can be acceptance. Response can be ignorance.

I’ve responded a lot.

This act we undertake, to answer the call to us, it’s based upon a carefully crafted ideology that only rejects and dropouts can fully subscribe to. They drink this kool-aid, it seems, by the gallon, and they’re drunk, 24/7 on the option of being owed. They have themselves fooled, sometimes, occasionally, that this voice they hear, telling them that they deserve to act that way and say those words and grip that hard is confidence. It’s what’s deserved.

And us beholden, we ask for more.

I’m not talking about being a victim. I’m talking about being a saviour.

See, cause I was born with this chip that has never burned out and rarely needed recharging, and it’s programmed my circuitry to respond most fervently to people who claim to love me — even if only transparently, temporarily — and to help them.

As I said to someone the other night, my role is, and always has been, to be with the guy, and once he finally leaves, and leaves for good, he gets better. I’ve always assumed that it was the leaving me that made them better, and that it was only necessary because I was the one that broke them, but in my fervent self-defense as of late, I’ve come to realize what a load of shit that is.

And how very well I’ve created my own victimhood, while not calling myself one.

“If you expect nothing from anybody, you’re never disappointed.” ~ Sylvia Plath

I went through a Jewel phase, back before she wore red pleather and I knew too much to appreciate yodelling. I thank her for a few things, like the knowledge that even someone who sings breathey and fairy-like can be a chart-topper. Like Jason Mraz. Like the song I used to sing to death, when I was about 14?

be careful with me // cuz I’m sensitive and I’d like to stay that way

I absolutely prided myself on the fact that I hadn’t grown hard and mean and untouchable. I was never going to be that person. I wouldn’t put up a wall, because that was so damn stereotypical and hell, all it would take is the right elements, and I wouldn’t have anything to protect myself from, right?

I think that tune faded into the dust the day that my eye socket was fractured, two minutes after my boyfriend ran out of the door because he was afraid of my father hurting him. I punched him the next day, at school. My eye was a little black and blue and I almost pushed him down the stairs, when he told me that he heard me yell, even as he ran down the street.

I was about 14, and I’d just let my boyfriend get to first base, even though the mound was pretty much completely flat, and my dad came home early from work. One ran, the other kicked and I kind of died a little.

I moved in with my grandparents for a month or so. And it wasn’t too long after that I moved into my mother’s. And not too long after that, I moved out on my own, first with a roommate, and then without. I’ve never been much good at living with people, since, because all of those kicks that actually never came still kind of tickle the back of my brain.

They’re there when I defiantly place a spoon concave up, or I cross the street without looking back and forth, three times. The phantom punch to the solar plexus is what happens when the germs may have multiplied. The cigarette burns, not quite pressed all the way in, so that their ghostly embers still flame a bit and really get the job done, they come when things are not in their place and I’m constantly flinching from their heat and itching from their scabs.

This body is covered in invisible scars.

And me? I just kept asking for more, because goddamn can I take the pain. And I will make you better, you see. I am that self-important and holy, it seems. I’m not broken. I’m a fucking healer.

Anyway. Back to the cold heart.

I froze over a little bit more than a week before I met the rock star ex. All it took was for me to see in him with a similar badge of honour. The no-self-esteem club had a new member, and he was kind of cute. And quiet. And docile.

I thought. Everyone thought.

I forgot to mention this other thing. These people that I’ve taken it upon myself to adopt and compulsively aide and break? Well, they’ve all got this same make-up. Their parents weren’t affectionate. They don’t have any self-confidence, but still have enough of a chip on their shoulder than you cannot be critical. They’re really nice guys, and no one who hasn’t received a call in the middle of the night with my scared voice on the line ever seems to really see the propensity for the other side. These guys are supposedly relaxed and calm, temper- and drama-free. These guys don’t yell, hit, push, and they would certainly never scream obscenities at you that you’ve never quite heard combined in a sentence before. Words that even someone like me, with all the fucking class in the world, wouldn’t feel comfortable echoing. These dudes? Everyone likes them, and you’d never think that they would intentionally cut you off from your friends, life, habits. Well, no, they don’t, but not doing so means not being with them.

These guys have been my victims, because I was always the moody one, and the manipulative one, and hey, I’ll just admit it, controlling and withholding. If these guys were even close to how I would describe them, it was only by my hand.

That’s all true. And it’s all fiction.

And if so, why didn’t they just leave, then?

Why didn’t I?

Because that’s one of the things really I’m good at. Being the guilty party.

“We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.” ~ Jim Morrison

I’ve talked about this with a few people, and I’ve maybe blogged about it, but who the hell knows. Some people get it, and they tend to be the kind that have romanced a blade a time or two in their life. Or the slow suicides, the ones not quite honest enough to admit that they covet the offing, but brave enough to pain their way through every single moment of breath.

For the record, those people are, I think, more selfish than the ones who do take the long walk off the short pier. But maybe that’s bias, in this moment.

The This I’m getting at is this: when you’ve been fairly beat around, and fairly loved hard, and extremely self-damaging, whether chemical make-up is to blame or not, it gets a little hard to define some things. You get stuff confused.

For instance, happiness. Is Happy the same thing as Not Depressed? Take love. Is Being in Love, the same thing as Being Wanted By Someone So Much, They Need You to Live? Is that the same thing as feeling confident, because your responsibility for whether someone’s sober, or suicidal, or actually dead has been exceeded beyond expectations?

No. But I got that confused for a really long time. And when I didn’t anymore? I had given up.

This person I was talking to the other night. They asked me, if he hadn’t walked out three weeks ago, if he’d apologized, or things had just returned to how they were, or gotten better, what would I have done? I shrugged and said, whatever he wanted. He’s always actually been the one in charge.

How … embarrassed I felt, when those words fell out of my mouth.

Me, this petulant, insensitive, cold-hearted nymph, who has convinced her way into so many situations and been the cause of all of these broken boys… I would just accept whatever he wanted to happen.

Wanted to marry me? Okay. Wanted to break up? Alrighty, then. Wanted to move away? Well, that would negatively affect your daughter, but if it will make you happy, then let’s discuss how I can keep protecting your image around her, while I’m completely transparent in my own — so she knows that you’re amazing and she’s stuck with horrible, crazy me. How about I just make it easier, and go five steps further. I could just offer the kid to you. I mean, it’s not like you’ve gotten to have much time with her, what with me taking visits away from you for those six months it took you to get sober. Oh, wait, it only took three weeks? But… you didn’t call for seven months… wait, no, I get it. I did that.

To him.

He has, in his mind, every reason to blame me, and until a few weeks ago, on some level, I did too. I could insert toe into every agitated water of his existence, because really, aren’t I the only one who either helps or hurts him? If I’m not beating him against a rock, I’m definitely smoothing out the creases.

That’s my birthright, right?

“This is not about love. I am not in love. In fact, I can’t stop falling out.” ~ Fiona Apple

I collect women.

That’s a bold statement, and I say it so, because I mean it in quite the same way as I do when I say that I’ve collected these men I’ve left behind.

These women are all the same, and all different. They are the Voices of Fucking Reason. They are wise and sensitive. They are opinionated states of Switzerland, who will stand at my side when I go left or right, and they will be there to soak up the juices that leak out when I hit a dead end. These women are mothers, even without children. These women are the answer to my mommy issues.

They’re more precious than gold and I have no qualms about blaming them for a large part of my existence, still. They’ve raised me up, without lifting a finger sometimes, sometimes, from thousands of miles away.

These are the women who say that it’s okay to choose me. And when I say I Am, and then I quit Choosing Me, they say it again, but in different words, the next time. These women are like the soft blanket you never sleep with anymore, but that you keep close to you, just in case you’re shivering and need something to hold onto.

Some of them have done this tango themselves, and some have rarely actually been part of this kind of dance. They’re special. They’re priceless. They’re the people that I constantly feel I don’t deserve to have, and the ones that constantly assure me that regardless of what I think — no matter that I feel like tabs must be kept and that I’ve drunk my weight in them without hope for being able to pay for it — our friendships are not based on credit and commerce.

I’ve been these women to others, too, and it’s ironic, but completely predictable, to say how silly it is that I haven’t been to myself. Those who can’t … join them, right?

Something like that.

So, for the first time, three out of five of my Switzerlands took a hard England. They said Enough. And Stop. And This isn’t okay anymore. And they didn’t say, ‘I love him, but…’ first. They just said it was wrong.

This wasn’t loyalty. These aren’t the people who tell you what you want to hear about the jerk boyfriend, because they’re the types who know that Hagen Daaz and chick flicks don’t solve shit. And they also know that they’d kind of be assholes, if later on, the jerk boyfriend turned out to be the husband in shining armour. Their opinions are weighted and strong, but they are respectful and cognizant of their own lack of experience in the thing for which they do not prescribe ice cream for.

60% of them said to let him go. To stop worrying. To just accept and walk away and be involved only as far as our daughter is concerned and that that only means that if he shows up drunk, don’t let our daughter leave with him. They say to ignore that he, for the first time in more than a year and a half, went to the liquor store. They say to go ahead, live my life, without fear of what will happen to him if I do. They say that he is supposed to be a person I care about, that cares about me, not a responsibility.

And to go to a fucking Al-anon meeting.

“Delusional, I believed I could cure it all for you, dear. Coax or trick or drive or drag the demons from you. Make it right for you… ” ~ A Perfect Circle

I had it in my head for a week or so. I’m done. I’m out.

I’m all used up, because I’ve offered myself over and over, and always been there to mop up the spills when he was tired of being a puddle, lonely on the floor. I have talked myself into it being about him. That he cannot or will not move on, ever, if I’m available to him. That he can’t be my friend, without the benefits, and that if the benefits are waiting for him, he won’t look for other insurance.

This is mostly true. I mean, I do believe this. If I waited for another six months after this time, there would likely be the predictable re-ignition of friendship on his part, coupled with sermons about how we aren’t together. Or that he loves me, but he isn’t in love with me. Or that he shouldn’t be with me, and hates himself for doing it over and over. And that I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.

So, I’ll save him that moment on the pulpit — at least, in front of me. I’d be delusional if I didn’t believe that the family that’s half-supportive of him wouldn’t be hearing the same things. Well, without the relationship regard. He never told them about us dating, you see. He was too embarrassed.

He told me.

Anyway. This isn’t all about him. For once, this is not about the ball in his arena, and him choosing to flatten it with a Zamboni. Twice.

This is more. This is … Okay, here’s what this is:

The last three? people I’ve dated when he and I haven’t been together have gotten the full menu of me, right away. They were all but dared to take off, because, hey? Wouldn’t it happen, anyway? They were nice people. They weren’t part of the walking wounded. They had common fucking sense.

The last two said the same things to me, nearly verbatim, actually. “Stop trying to talk me out of you. It’s not working and it’s completely obvious.”

And this person I’ve been spending time with, he said to me that my wall is maybe a facade. That I want people to see a wall and walk away, because it’s easier, but that it doesn’t really exist. Maybe that’s kind of truth, too. Because yes, I do want people to run, if it means that they’re not going to later, if I don’t want them to.

But really, that’s an asinine thought, too, since I can’t remember a person that I’ve actually wanted to keep before.

So.

I’ve never been in love, but I’ve had the opposite of hatred and thought it was the same thing. I’ve fallen in love with someone for a few days, until I realized that it was the fixer-upper than I was qualifying as precious. I’ve watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and wished blankness, and wished for memory afterwards. I’ve watched Garden State and imagined being kissed on the top of a van, on the top of a canyon, in the rain, by a man who killed his mother. I’ve switched teams and then realized that, no, it’s not just me, women are fucking crazy and they talk about their feelings way too much.

I’ve drank my way through conferences because there were too many feelings.

I’ve been sober for… well, technically less than two years, but I haven’t been drunk in two years, and fourteen days. I’ve convinced myself that I have a problem because I medicated away all of the energy that I took off of these men. Or I drank with them, because it’s easier to ignore drunken idiocy, when you’re in on the act, too.

I haven’t been happy, aside from being high, drunk, not hurt, not sad, successful, apprised, enamoured, giddy or another variation of manic.

I don’t know what that’s like. I don’t know what else I’m like, because I keep losing myself, trying to save other people from losing themselves.

I can’t do that anymore. I have a 23″ waist and a daughter who calls me beautiful and so skinny. I don’t sleep. I wander, in my mind, because I can’t leave her alone in the middle of the night, when I would otherwise prefer to wander the streets. I repeat patterns, unsurprised at their results, yet scarred a little, every time.

I fail, every damn day that I am a beholden one.

I’m divorcing this family. I’m not checking in for Easter dinner, and I’m not sending Christmas cards. I’m orphaning myself, with intention and malice. And I’m sorry, but I can’t help you or him or her anymore. I’m breaking up with all of you sisters, you see, and we won’t get drunk and accidentally sleep together some night in the future.

Because, fuck it. I’m not choosing me. I’m trying to choose the person I would be, if I hadn’t been Mary and Magdalene, all at once. And it’s going to be hard, so I need your hurts and angers and wounds and festering to be quiet, so I can. So I won’t feel selfish for not being beholden.

And so that if I do, I keep going.

It’s been a long time. I could say I’ve been busy and that would be more than a simple understatement. I could say I’ve been empty of words, but that would be mere gloss. I could say… a lot about why and make all of the best, most annoying excuses, and I could challenge you to keep reading past those excuses, because goddamn, is there nothing worse in personal blogging than someone saying that they weren’t blogging for a personal reason, but keep coming back to them?

But no. I’m too honest for that shit.

I haven’t been here because I’ve been drowning in life and growth and shrinkage and the inability to put together meaningful sentences.

I haven’t been here because the last time that I was here, I poured half of my heart out about how shameful it feels to get weighed at the doctor’s office, and how minimized I feel because I’m not simply Will Power Girl, able to leap tall scales with a meatball sub in her hand.

I haven’t been here because July 25th was Zoë’s fifth birthday and it felt wrong to blog about something else without first writing her a birthday letter. And because I couldn’t write a birthday letter that wouldn’t, at some point in the future, potentially make her feel like I … well…

I couldn’t write a positive letter, so I felt like I shouldn’t write any damn letter, but if I didn’t write any damn letter, I shouldn’t write at all.

But I need to write. I miss words. I miss the middle of the night soothing I get from busting at the keys on my uncomfortably large keyboard. How conspicuous that makes me feel. There isn’t timid tap-tap-tappings. There’s the sound of finger-sized elephants marching on its keys.

And I need to be honest. Because yes, it’s shaming to be weighed and to have your mental health measured, depending on the number that results. And oddly, when I didn’t get weighed at my last appointment, despite – between me and you – having lost six more pounds since the last time, not invisibly, I was a touch slighted. I felt written off, like I’d been given up on.

Maybe it was just a busy day.

Anyway, yes, ashamed. Send me to the confessional. Because it was also quite delicious, on a nearly-psychotic level, to taste what Megan Fox’s measurements feel like. People have to work their asses off for that shit and I just… happened to fall into it. Gooooood Body. Goood Girl.

I saaaaaid psychotic.

So, here I was, between the line of ‘this shit is toed-up’ and ‘oh no, I just watch what I eat and do a lot of pilates’, and I was cruising. Maybe a little dizzy sometimes, but cruising. This could have worked out fine, until a little woman hugged me and made me feel like my grandmother used to – like she cared (even if just due to shock) and that she would, if I said I needed it, drop everything for 10 minutes and rub my back.

And like I was making my Grandmother worried. Like I was selfishly not thinking of her blood pressure.

I was pretty pissed when it happened, when she said, in front of God and everyone and San Diego, that she was worried about me. I was being spotlit, you know? I don’t like spotlit. I avoid spotlit, unless it’s one of those few times that I choose to layer on pancake makeup. Spotlit is not forgiving and it shows all of the cracks in the basement walls.

A week later, I could’ve started to really lose my shit. Because, Hey, once you’ve lost your shit post-BlogHer, might as well make it a semi-annual event, right? But no. I had work to do, and a boyfriend(?) to entertain me and bake cakes and make me eggs over-easy on Sunday mornings, and a kid who is the reason I went to BlogHer.

I went because I needed to get away. Well, 92% because of that.

I wasn’t just tired. Parents get tired. That wasn’t it. A few months ago, Zoë started a new … phase (please, for the love of god, be a phase). This phase means that she yells at people. 98% of the time, people is Me. So, Zoë is going through an unidentified thing that makes her yell at me.

Why would she yell at me?

She doesn’t want to leave her friend’s house. She wants the thing at the store. She doesn’t want to eat the dinner I’ve cooked, after asking her what she wants me to cook her. She CAAAAAAN’T brush her teeth. Go to sleep without a snack. Breathe, in bed, because she’s sooooo thirsty.

She can’twon’twillneverwillkeeponisjustgonna {insert appropriate threat, action, button-pushing suggestion or otherwise appropriate phrase, here} foreverneveruntilIdie.

She’s become mean with her word choices, and adamant that she will be obeyed. She. Will be. Obeyed. Or else I don’t love her and I never want her to be happy and I never let her have anything and I just want her to be sad forever and never be anything but a crying little girl. And did she forget to mention? I Broke Her Heart.

Every day.

For HOURS.

I’ve used pleases and convincing and choices and restriction of choices and positive results for positive behaviour and positive language and thanks yous and equal-to-the-crime negative consequences and outlandishly-unequal-to-the-crime negative consequences and I’m-going-to-count-to-3-the-choice-is-yours… She’s temporarily lost custody of art supplies, stuffed animals, video games at her dad’s, TREATS. Not like, one treat.

Like, THERE WILL BE NO DAMN CAKE, COOKIES, PIZZA, FRUIT SNACK-ROLLED-UP-THING-CHEWY-CRAP THAT PEOPLE KEEP GIVING YOU, ICE CREAM, BURGERS, ANYTHING FINGER-FOODISH THAT DOES NOT COME FROM THE GROUND OR A TREE IN AN ORCHARD, OR ANY SORT OF PRESENTS-FOR-THE-HELL-OF-IT FOR A WEEK. Not even a new bouncy ball may be obtained from a dollar store, you’re so grounded from non-necessities. Don’t Make Me Cancel Your Birthday, Too.

I would have done it and it would have sucked, since I dropped $250 on the entertainment that’s – more than a month later – still talked about and fondly missed. This was birthday win, by definition and on so many levels.

You thought I meant a stripper, didn’t you?

But really. She had treats, art and stuffed animals confiscated for the entire week leading up to turning five. And that was me holding back…

She woke up on the day of, said I’mFiveI’mFiveI’mFiveI’mFive, Mama, I’mFiveI’mFive – as if I don’t remember the day that my crotch became less foyer and more broom closet due to an incredibly disproportionate head, a vacuum, the miracle of fucking childbirth and a student suture-maker. Then she asked for her felts and talked to them, because she had missed them so.

Really. She spoke in an accent somewhat related to Southern Belle and there was even clasped hands.

But the yelling. I mean, holy shit. If I can step back when it’s not that harshly delivered, my inner blogger monologue quite simply asks her who the fuck she thinks she is. Good thing it’s always really harsh – there’s no risk of that inside voice getting out, when it’s rarely allowed to speak.

Other things the inside voice has had to bitchslap itself from saying:

I don’t want to hug you or hold you or kiss you right now. Sorry doesn’t make it all better.

I am so embarrassed.

The words petulant, spoiled and brat in a sentence.

Because I Said So.

I cannot handle this anymore.

What the fuck is the matter with you?

I don’t want to do this anymore.

Honestly, I’ve had moments when I’ve been mentally calculating how much support I could afford to pay him, so that she could move her in with her dad, and we wouldn’t fight everyday, she’d probably have a lot more fun and so that – if I moved to the weekend parent role – I could have two days of fun time. With my kid.

So that I could actually fucking look forward to seeing my daughter, again. Instead of dreading what challenge(s), fight(s) or generally-classified rude behaviour will be encountered.

Except I can’t do that. Who Does That? You can’t break up with your kid. You can’t say maybe it’s best for everyone if you don’t live with me anymore. You especially cannot do any of that shit, the kid doesn’t think it’s their idea. If you do? Then you end up with a daughter with both mommy- and daddy-issues.

I didn’t buy mine on eBay, you know.

It’s every-but-one night. Six days a week. Until yesterday, she was going to daycare during weekdays – with her friends, who we’ve known for her whole life – and I would attempt to pick her up at 4:30. Between my arrival at their apartment and 8pm, she would lose her shit on me at least twice. I’m not talking about some harsh language or attitude, spanning a few minutes, or a general sense of the naughtiness. I mean, half an hour, plus, of:

• screaming,
• shrieking,
• crying,
• name-calling,
• stomping,
• throwing things,
• hitting things,
• spitting,
• kicking,
• and tossing out threats, commandments, direct insults and heart-crushing self-obsessed proclamations.

Two nights ago, I cried three times. I got kicked and hit and called mean and told that I hurt her heart all of the time because it seems like I just don’t care that she’s sad.

My abusive father died more than five years ago, and I said never again. Yet I grew up to become a 30 year old battered mother. And she’s not even, like, four feet tall, yet.

So, most nights, I get pushed a little further, and most nights, I actually yell back less than the night before because this is a losing fucking battle, here, and I’m not ethically prepared to let my blood boil, knowing that it greases the hinges of doors that shouldn’t open.

But sometimes, I’m brought to such an angry place that my body vibrates and that is when I end up crying and asking her why she’s choosing for us to live like this. Blaming her.

My dad used to do that, with flourish: why do you have to be such an asshole to me? Why are you the one crying?

The closer I step toward that man’s shoes, the more I panic. The more I resolve that I will not ever never will not and can not do a single thing more severe than I am now. And that’s normally when Zoë ends up in her room with the door shut, shrieking that she’s just going to keep screaming louder and louder until I let her out, smashing at the door with her freakishly powerful little fists. And I smoke and try to stop shaking.

She can’t walk down the stairs without smacking herself in the face, but she can throw a two year-olds’ temper tantrum with the coordination of a Cirque performer.

This is bad shit, here, and I have no idea what to do. It feels like I’ve done everything right and not very much wrong and followed all of the advice that’s ever been advised by the gentles, the stricts, the firm hands, the spare the rods… wait, no, not them. There is… nothing left, but for me to continue this abusive relationship and practice unconditional loving and try to root within her that she’s choosing these actions and can choose not to choose them, too. And that she’s not a bad person, but she’s making some pretty fucking terrible decisions lately.

Is she five? God, yes. Does that explain it, or give it merit, or an end-date? Fuck no.

So, it’s been a while.

And it’s partly because I’m in a new kind of hell that I’ve never visited and didn’t create with my own two hands (for once), with someone so short. I have no idea when or from where its resolution will come.

I’m thinking of becoming a praying woman.

 

So, besides the fact that I got to see a slew of medical professionals during my awesome seven-weeks-and-still-kicking cold, I see my doctor every month.

My medication’s not quite right. I’m a little too up, when I should be level. A little to frenetic, when I should be still. A little crashy, when the whole world should be peaceful.

It happens.

I’ve accepted that I have multiple conditions that are each hard to treat and that all I can do is either stop trying – did that, got the breakdown, not doing that again – or keep trying.

It’s all about chemistry and finding the proper balance of equation, but it’s more complex than ninth-grade science class was.

So, I keep going back. And he asks, every time, what I’m there for today. Like we don’t both know.

And he waits for me to volunteer how well my dishes are getting washed and whether I’m showering, or if I’m too busy watching entire seasons of television shows I’ve already watched.

Inhale-inhale-inhale-next episode-play.

And how’s my attention span? So, when you say ‘touchy’ what does that mean? How many nights would you say you’re not sleeping, now? Okay, and when you do? Oh, well, you know the recommended amount of sleep…

How am I doing with the rules? Oh, you let your daughter take a bath, without washing the tub first? That’s really great, Terra.

It took a while. But I’ve accepted that this conversational mambo is necessary, if only so that there’s one person – someone who can have an actual long-lasting effect – who sees the whole picture, all at once.

So, I go back, every month.

But now.

There’s a note on my file and every person who works at the clinic can see it, on the left-hand side of my folder, written on my patient contact form, right under ‘allergic to sulpha’.

Blood pressure and weight to be taken upon check-in. Inform Dr. X if patient is less than X/X X lbs.

This is, to me, the equivalent being known as the person who pees the bed. This is like, being the mother of the biter. This is ridiculously shameful.

If I go below those Xs, it’s recommended that I’m referred for certain out-patient therapies. Not because my eating disorder is acute, or because I’m so far-gone that immediate treatment is required, but because I’m an old-timer, and old-timers are the ones to watch.

Old-timers stay okay for years and then spontaneously start to spiral and the next thing you know, they’re barely walking and their kidneys are failing. Old-timers are the recovered heroin addicts, who just want one more dance with dope, but have lost their tolerance.

I haven’t accepted this part – that I’m not strong enough, all the time, to not see that mirror and think any of a mixture of thoughts.

Like

thesepantsfitsowellthankgodbuttheyshowalittlehipboneandIshouldkeepthathidden

or

three-digitsjusthree-digitsifIcanjuststayheretheneveryonecanthinkI’mfine

and

whydoyoulooklikethatyou’resofuckingweakeatmoreeatmoreeatmore

my personal favourite, where logic meets insanity

goddamnyoulookgoodyoucanseeverysingleribinyourchestyoudistgustingfreaklookatthatrollhowcansomeonebethisfatandweighsolittle?

A charmed life.

So, last time that I went in was just after I’d gotten sick, after I’d literally not been able to eat and after I’d been able to eat, but I just didn’t feel like it because I. Don’t. Need. To.

Maybe you do. But not me.

(logic, meet insanity. insanity, logic. you guys have nothing in common. talk amongst yourselves.)

But I knew I’d be going in, soon, so I carb-loaded over the course of three days. I ate all of the salt that I could stuff in my body and chocolate and cake and scones with Devonshire cream and jam and two loaves of bread and I drank litres of water. And I retained it all. So that, even though I’d lost seven pounds during the initial ten days of being sick, and even though I was having heart palpitations and black spots swam in front of my eyes when I stood sometimes, I managed to only have lost one pound since my prior appointment.

He put his hand on my shoulder, my doctor, and he said that this was a good thing. That I was making progress.

I don’t hear applause….

The appointment before that, I ended up crying before I left, sunglassed. He said he didn’t mean to make me cry, and I knew that, and he said that he was just concerned, and I knew that, and he said that he just wanted to see me feel better and be better and that maybe doubling my mood stabilizers would help because when you’re flying a little bit and not sleeping, it’s pretty easy to not eat.

But I cried.

Because it’s pretty shaming, to be 30 years old and have your doctor walk you to to scale that’s visible from the waiting room, ask you to take off your coat and your shoes and stand backwards, so you can’t see the number NO PEEKING.

As if I don’t have one at home.

It’s pretty awful, feeling micromanaged and so small and so broken about one little thing, like whether you starve yourself or not, when everything else is better than it’s ever been.

So tomorrow, I get to go in and dance around my sleep cycles and my need for door-shutting and explain how many times I couldn’t hear my daughter talking to me because the hockey game was on and there was a puck moving around on the screen.

But first, I get to stand on the metal plate and have my body betray me.

So, I’m going to try not to cry this time. Because yeah, I’m skinny. And yeah, I’m too skinny. And yeah, I know better.

But I’m trying to be. It just doesn’t always work out so well.