This all has very little to do with why I can't sleep. But whatever comes out, I guess. Better than nothing.
Four years, four months, as we go into may. That's how long this damn disease has lasted. I know it's not a disease. But "disorder" makes it sound so...benign. Disorder. The lack of order. The opposite of order.
The natural order of life. Man and woman, together. Birth, then maturity, then love, then sex, then birth. Order.
Man and woman, falling apart. Birth, then maturity, then love, then pain, then confusion, then clarity. Then hope, then determination. Then pain. Then disappointment, then willfulness, then pain. Then desperation, then doubt, then pain. Then frigidity, then rejection, then pain. Then hopelessness, then hate, then pain.
Disorder. Yeah, I guess that covers it.
This is the fifth month of 2007, the year I said I would overcome. The year I said there were no other options, none but one, and I put it out there, I pushed on with that unfailing tenacity, refused to let myself become what I knew it would kill me to be. Asked for your support. Maybe even got it. Who knows?
Determination, then relapse, then pain.
Stand, then fall, then pain.
I was putting a lot of eggs in the EFT basket, EFT being a therapy that's so new age and ridiculous that I was too embarassed to even mention it here. Everyone I explained it to was skeptical, but me, I couldn't afford to be. It was my last hope.
Is my last hope. And I don't have the strength to hope for it, really. This ridiculous, hookah-lighting, meridian-groping, touchy-feely west-coast voodoo. "Your subconscious is your soul, you understand." Said the man who's time I rented to the tune of $125 dollars and hour, and what insurance company is going to pay for this stoner-scented sermon? "Everything is an energy field, there is no solid matter."
"Oh, I understand." I heard myself say. I heard myself say this, because I have to buy whatever this hippie has to sell. He's the only one left who claims to have an answer.
"You say you never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He ain't selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And says 'Do you wanna make a deal?'
How does it feel?"
~Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone
This whole last ditch effort is based on an effort on my part to believe. That I can still be helped. That there is still a way. That there is still hope. If only in attached to some naturopathic nonsense that the girl I was raised to be would laugh her ass off. I'm not going to go anywhere with it if I can't have a little faith, and so I'm crossing my fingers, aligning my chakras, watching out for black cats and praying to the heavens, swearing, promising, pledging to believe. It's about faith, pure and simple. Faith, that most gracious of virtues. Faith, the willingness to put your whole self into something that can't be proven, can't be touched. There's only one problem.
I
HAVE
NO
FAITH.
I'm a catholic girl who grew up to realize that, no matter how they wanted me to believe, none of what they were saying it made sense. I'm a coward who would love nothing more than to believe that an afterlife is waiting out there, like an eternal safety net, but it just seems so goddamned implausible. I'm a hopeless romantic that wants to believe that, against all odds, my husband really is the one person on Earth who I'm the most compatible with, and somehow, somehow we were meant to be, willed to be. But I can't, for the life of me, figure who it could have been that was willing it.
And yeah, I can consider the possibility that a mind-body connection that western medicine can't explain is out there. Maybe meridians and pressure points and the fucking tooth fairy all have great potential. But not for me. And I lose a little bit of the self that I lived most of my life being every time I try to convince myself otherwise.
And for what? So I can become more and more then person who believes, truly believes, that my marriage was the will of the heavens, that stars aligned, that we'll make it to forever, one way or another. So I can become more and more the person who's going to turn out fucking wrong.
"Why are you scared to believe in god
When it's salvation that you want?"
~Bright Eyes, We are Nowhere, and it's Now
It doesn't help that, when I have lost track of whatever faith I had for myself, and need it, I turn to the people who are supposed to carry an endless supply for me, just in case, and find out they've dropped the ball. Asking "Will I make it through this?" I get back equal parts apathy and indignation.
This angers me, because throughout all my shit, I never stopped believing in these people. The people I love, they are the only alter that I pray at. No matter what mistakes they've made, I believe in the worth and potential of these people. And if something means something to them, is to them what overcoming vaginismus would be to me, I would never fucking dream of letting them question whether or not they'll make it there, not if there was anything I could do to stop it. If their life depended on having faith in something, I'd give it to them when they had none of their own, I just would, I'd just have to. It angers me that they don't know to do the same for me.
But it's downright satisfying to know that I'll have my revenge, when there's no one left to believe in them the way I needed them to believe in me.
"For all you know, this could be
The difference between what you need
And what you want to be."
~Matchbox Twenty, The Difference
Friendship, then love, then reciprocity, then disappointment, then pain. That's pretty much the order I'm used to.
Maybe I make up too many rules for my friendships, I've noticed myself doing this a lot lately. Thou shalt have faith in me commensurate to that which I have in you. Thou shalt recognize and celebrate my pain. Thou shalt not recognize and celebrate your own.
It was working pretty well, till someone called me on it. I owe him an e-mail.
On with it.
