4:43 a.m. - Friday, Jan. 10, 2003
Freedom
I always cry in therapy.
If I was a biscuit-eating dog, I�d slobber and drool every time I saw the golden arches through the car window. Instead, I�m a PTSD vet, so it�s my lot, I guess, to start smearing my mascara almost as soon as I sit in the straight-backed chair against the wall. That�s OK, really. I don�t mind. Lately, a lot of the crying I�ve done there has been from feelings of relief, or happiness, or sometimes pride. Dr. Root seldom even comments, except to ask me to describe how I�m feeling. She just hands me the full box of tissues and then tries to keep from smiling, I think, while I rub the tissue into little white crumbs that stick to my skin and cover my face in tiny white freckles. Sometimes, not often, she still reminds me to breathe.
I probably need to spend more time in therapy. It�s become pretty much the only place I�m more or less forced to talk out loud about my feelings. That can be a bit more painful than just thinking or even writing in my diary. I think I need more time because when my appointment is ended, I find myself feeling drained, depressed and weepy for the rest of the day and sometimes longer. I don�t always feel better after a therapy session. Sometimes I feel worse. That�s how I felt yesterday; worse.
I�m not going to kid myself. I confess that in the past, I�ve dealt with those feelings after therapy by treating myself to something good to eat. Like a Seattle drunk after two hard and sober weeks in jail, I run back as soon as I�m free to the very thing that�s killing me and helps me stay depressed in the first place. I feel like I owe myself a drink. And then that drink becomes a binge. Except it�s a food binge. I�m smart enough, at least, not to keep alcohol in the house. I hate vomiting.
Yesterday I think I may have taken a step in a better direction. It wasn�t necessarily by choice, so much as it was because of the fact that I have no food in the house. Little by little, I�ve thrown it all away. I�ve learned that food is my booze. It�s literally the last thing I have left. I did a lot of drugs immediately after I came home from Vietnam. By the time my survival instinct kicked in, I was spending weekends at a house in Seattle that would qualify today, I suppose, as a crack house. Except that this house was occupied by speed freaks. Say what you want�.they are good housekeepers. I was still in the army, yet I was spending my free time in that house smoking opium and experimenting with heroin. I still miss the opium. I promised myself when I stopped that if I survived to be seventy I�d smoke opium until the end. I�ve got seventeen years to go.
It was a lot easier to deal with drinking. By 1995 I was drinking a lot, but I hated it. Drugs made me happy. That is, they induced a temporary artificial happiness. I could laugh. But alcohol is like flushing an emotional toilet. I would get more and more depressed until it seemed like nothing mattered. There was no reason not to drink, and so I drank and with every swallow, I only got more depressed than I already was.
Smoking cigarettes was small comfort indeed, but it was comfort nonetheless. Cigarettes helped me fill the hole in my belly that was left behind when I deprived myself of everything else. They even made dieting better because I could smoke instead of eating. Now I�ve given up even that little comfort. There�s nothing left but food and like alcohol, if there is food in the house, I will eat it.
I�ve eaten sugar from the canister. Worse, I�ve eaten maple syrup right from the bottle spout. I had to dump out the sugar and pour out the syrup. I can�t have milk or bread, and especially not butter in the house. Eggs, meat and frozen dinners are taboo as well. In fact, the only acceptable food forme to keep is a little oatmeal, some rice, canned tomatoes, coffee, tea, diet soda and slim fast. Oh yeah.. I got a lot of that.
So�. I came home yesterday feeling all weepy and drained. It was nothing a German Chocolate cake wouldn�t have solved, but I came home to an empty house. Ms Mother Hubbard,,, that�s me. I took to my bed for an hour, just kind of holding myself and being very pitiful. But at the same time, I was thinking hard. I was thinking of the fabulous buffets in town. We have casinos, you know. I was thinking of my friends at the Waffle House. And I was thinking how pathetic was this cycle of depression and eating. How destructive of the things I really truly want. So I made a plan.
I�ve got a bunch of paper that floats around here like� which is it, flotsam or jetsam? It floats around here like trash in the eddies in the sea. Some of it is important. Some of it�s irreplaceable. When Karen comes for coffee, I move it off the breakfast bar and onto the futon. When I�m ready to sit and do cross stitching, I move it onto the table. Then when I want to sit at the table, I move it to the breakfast bar. Is this how normal people live? I think not. SO instead of wallowing in my misery, I put a cold wash cloth on my eyes and then jumped into my van before I had the chance to change my mind. I went where?� Can you guess?� I went to Sam�s Club and bought a metal two-drawer filing cabinet. Oh, I am on a roll now! And while I was there, I noticed a desk chair that looked like something I could own so I bought that as well. I used my ATM card to pay so I didn�t have to count out the money. That was pretty painless. And then, after the poor abused carry-out guy loaded my van, I drove to the local Japanese restaurant where I indulged my by now honest hunger with a cup of egg drop soup and a sushi roll. We have a winner!
Now this morning, having starved a couple of those one-pound women in me to death, I sit at my computer in my soft office chair. The hard kitchen chair I�ve used for over two years is at the table where it belongs. My filing cabinet is by my side, ready to contain the papers I will sort and file today. I can still be weepy if I want to but I don�t want to. My house is becoming a home. I�m becoming a person. I�m a person who has nothing on earth to do except take care of herself and get better.
Today, freedom isn�t just another word for nothing left to lose.
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