3.5.2010
I'm back to blogging, at least for the meantime. I am so frightened of being found out. Of being recognized here on line where I've put so many details of my life and trailing from them so many details of my true thoughts and feelings--more than I would say to anyone in my life, excepting my doctors. But I tried, a while back, to write an entry on Word and just print it out with the intention to add it to my folder of printed out blogs. I tried to write as if I were writing to someone, to some crowd, or audience, but it just didn't work. It turned into a long piece that felt like, as my mother would often describe much of my treatment, I was just "examining my belling button." I pulled a lot of lint out but it just felt like incest with my brain--self-indulgent and purposeless. A lot of my writing feels like that. At least here I am not stuck only in my head. There is a flow out to you, my reader, that creates a sense of purpose to the information, thoughts, feelings, experiences, that I keep locked up inside of me. I can only hope that someone out there finds it useful.
So you might be wondering what I have decided about leaving my halfway house. I have decided to stay. In fact I have decided to really stay. Not just for an extra couple of months, but for an entire year, at least. Of course this is an estimate. I still have in my pocket a plan to combine my two storage units into one just in case I decide to leave while my parents are in Florida. With only one unit my father will have to pay less to store my stuff, number one, and number two, I can leave whenever I want, having just the stuff I need so all I will need from my parents is a signed lease, which can be done by fax, I'm pretty sure. Knowing I can leave whenever I need to, knowing where I want to live, knowing I will be living alone, knowing what type of apartment I want gives me a security. But the best security, right now, is to stay.
But it really isn't just security that is driving my decision. I have goals--to make my life easier, to have more freedom, to have a sense of purpose, to approach my loneliness and isolation, learning, hopefully to share my life with others (outside of blogging!) I thought, with the slightest waft of confidence entering my body, with the tiny spots of comapassion eking into the corners of my innards, with the beliefs in local farming and feeding the poor seeming like a potential purpose, that I could only pursue these things if I didn't have to leave the house for four hours a day and had the space and the solitude to produce art.
What a familiar trap I was setting up for myself! I recognized the pattern. Each time I just manage to stand on my wobbling feet with shaking knees and quivering thighs I get excited and suspicious. Move on! Move up! Go to college! Get a job! Get an apartment! Become and artist! Become a writer! Be this! Be that! Do something! Be on your own!
Be own your own. That is what it comes down to--the drive and request for me to be on my own. I think it is no longer a request but it is hard to shake the pressure of it from my shoulder; the pain is like phantom leg syndrome suffered by amputees who still feel great pain in their missing limbs. But honestly, I think it is me who is trying to fill this archaic demand. And it is exactly the opposite I am learning at my halfway house and with my friends and family--it is not about being on one's own.
My first lesson in this was two summers ago. New to my halfway house one evening I was awash in pain and paranoia and was stretched out on the living room couch pretending to read until the book found it's way to my chest and I was staring into space. People were around, but I was lost in spaghetti thoughts and succumbing to a black vortex in my chest and all around my head was a cloud of darkness. I could have lay there all evening. I could have slipped upstairs and curled up in bed, letting myself fall from the precipice of sanity that I had a fingernail's hold on. These were my two choices. Aha! Not so. On impulse I sat up, looked around, and called out to the people around me, "Anyone want to go and get ice cream?" And lo' and behold they did. I think there ended up being about five of use heading off together down the neighborhood street chatting and joking together to the best ice cream shop I've ever known. We were a group, and I was part of it, and I felt better. No PRN, no paging Dr. M, no talking to staff. I had created something with people that help me feel better. I was effective, powerful, and connected. They don't teach you this in the hospital.
So my decision to stay here is loosely based on experiences like that. Making my life easier means only doing two,maybe three, different things during the day. Being free is not about being allowed to go home for lunch or staying home late in the morning, but making room on my desk for art making and actually doing a bit when I come home in the afternoon. Being free is writing this blog. These lend itself to meaning and purposefulness. Volunteering at the farm or at a greenhouse at a local school lends itself to meaning and confidence. And learning to share myself and my life with people opens me up, showing the isolation the door. This is truly being on my own. They are not my mother's values anymore. My values have changed. Being on my own is not about living alone, paying all my bills, fixing all my leaking faucets, creating art alone, writing for no one. All of the things I have listed in this paragraph I am just starting, this week, to really do. To really do. I don't want to leave until I have been doing them. Actually doing them. For at least a year, maybe two. I don't want to run out half-cocked with great plans but not concrete experience to support them or prove them right for me.
The odd thing is, suddenly my halfway house feels like home. I am not thinking every day about when will I leave, where will I go. I have made a commitment to myself.