December 13, 2007

This is just jo. I finally met my goal weight that we set 20 years ago. I finally did it. Because I'm someone who does what they say they will do. Sometime I promised I'd do. No one knows what the number is. My therapist didn't bother to ask today. Neither did my nutritionist the other day. I'm obviously still plenty fat enough looking to not worry. I tried to be honest tonight about how I'm feeling and what's going through my head. No reaction.
I don't think my treatment team believes in me anymore.
I just feel so hopeless.
Its just about impossible to make myself eat when I feel this way.

Next week I'm going back to visit my family for the holidays and that stresses me out big time.
There's so much going on and so much in my head that I feel like I'm going to explode in on myself.

Posted by pilgrim at 7:07 PM

December 16, 2007

Yesterday in our inbox we got an interesting surprise. There was an e-mail from someone in Greece who had read this journal. Caroline gets a lot of e-mails from people saying how things SHE has written have inspired them. i do not. No one has ever quoted me to my knowledge, but everyone knows that Caroline and Pilgrim write things that give people hope and stuff like that. I hear it all the time. But me, jo, i write things about depression and suicide and loneliness. No one gets inspired by me. People write "I don't know what to say" to me.

Well this girl wrote a song. That's nice, I thought. I hope its not something making fun of us....
So I clicked on her link.

http://www.myspace.com/kaschialoveslions
(Click where it says "Pilgrim Said')
You can read the lyrics that go with it.
Her voice is haunting and beautiful and incredible.
And then I realized who she was quoting....
me.
Pilgrim Said... uses my words.
She used my words from this journal, not Caroline's or anyone else's, these words from THIS stupid 17 year old teenage girl, and she took them and she made them into something beautiful.
I can't explain why exactly, but something about her doing that hit me hard, and changed something inside of me. I feel like... I don't know. Something inside me is different. I don't want to give up anymore. I feel like fighting again. I feel like trying. I'm still scared half to death of everything and I feel really small and alone but something inside changed.
Thank you Kat.

Posted by pilgrim at 9:33 AM | Comments (0)

December 18, 2007

I feel really ignored and unimportant more than usual this week.
i think i shouldn't be writing about this so I've changed my mind. the people that i wrote about are always going to come up with some fabulous justification as to why i'm wrong and they are right. not just the people i wrote about but everyone. so i'm going to take this entry down .

Posted by pilgrim at 3:33 PM | Comments (5)

December 21, 2007

Pretty soon I'll be getting on an airplace and flying back to my family's houses for Christmas and I'm nervous. Not just about hanging out with my family but just of traveling and being away from home. With the grown ups gone I'm a lot more closed in on myself and shy. I've lost weight and I don't feel as strong as Caroline always does. Going places by myself makes me nervous. I'm kind of tiny and I look about 12 years old with the attention span of a gnat. Airports and strangers and noise are hard to deal with. I just want to skip the traveling part and get to the part where we're all sitting around the Christmas tree on Tuesday morning. The big family party makes me nervous too because I feel like I don't know my aunts, uncles, and cousins anymore. I never really felt comfortable around any of them in the 1st place when I did live there and now they're more like strangers. The only people I really want to see are my parents and my sister and her kids, and my gramma. Everyone else just confuses me and makes me nervous. I keep worrying that they might tease me or find out that I have major problems going on inside or say something that'll embarass us or something. Anyway I'll be there soon.

Posted by pilgrim at 11:27 PM | Comments (3)

December 30, 2007

Well I'm back at home from my adventurous trip to visit my family.

I was one of the adventurers who was stranded in an airport due to the weather. To keep my privacy I don't feel like I can share the whole story here, but, I was helped by someone who can only be described as an angel who took over when I was very lonely, lost, upset, and feeling hopeless who not only got me booked on a flight for the next day but also slipped money into my hand before she mysteriously disappeared. I can't explain how much of an impression she made on me and how grateful I was, because we were in this great big airport, very alone, the inside kids were upset and had been chattering away for hours, everyone else was exhausted, I didn't know what else to do, and I'm only 17 and should have been accompanied by an adult in the 1st place, and I had absolutely NO idea what to do when stranded in an airport. One kind person renewed my faith in the human race for just a little while longer.
But eventually we did make it to our destination and had a very good Christmas with family. Its hard for me to open presents-- Caroline handles it so much better. I'd rather watch other people. The kids got dolls and books about dogs, so they were ecstatic. Mae thinks that Santa must have snuck her presents into my sister's house because she has a chimney. We played dolls/ cards/ coloring/ painting/ dollhouse/ kitchen/ you name it with my 5 year old niece who is more like us than she needs to be. I'm already worried about her-- she's so smart, so sensitive, so curious, so EVERYTHING. And yet I don't worry because she has my sister for a mom, and my sister takes such good care of her. My niece will have such a different life than we did. I didn't get to spend much time with my sister. Her life is just too busy, too stressful. She has too many demands on her and no help, and I feel helpess to make anything better for her. I can't do anything except when I'm there to do her dishes and her laundry--it's nothing. Our therapist is always telling Caroline-- "she's a grown up now-- let her make her own decisions." But grown up or not, she's our little sister, and when it comes to her, we're protective like a mother tiger. But we did get one night to hang out together and have fun, laugh at stupid videos on YouTube, and there's no one else except my sister that I'd do THAT with.
Its always hard to be there on vacation. Everyone inside has a different idea of what we need to do while we're there. Different inside kids want to hang out solely with "mommy and daddy" and watch late-night tv and have everything be just like things were back in 1974 when it was just the 3 of us. I miss the days when it was just me and my sister hanging out with each other, before I had a driver's license or a boyfriend and the only people we really had to play with was each other. Others want to just play with my sister's kids-- because that's who they can relate to and they don't want to be around grown ups. And still others want to just go back to the airport, get back home, and return to the dquietness of our daily routine which includes every Thursday at therapy because the only place they feel safe is on our therapist's office, and our husband who needs us at home too. Then someone else has to figure out how to make everyone happy-- everyone in the family, and everyone inside. This time it was my job, and I know I did a lousy job at it. The kids didn't get to play as much as they wanted to, I didn't get to do enough with my sister, I think I didn't spend enough time with my parents, and I only got to see my gramma one time. Other people I wanted desperately to see didn't show up for the holidays at all , and still others I looked forward to seeing had to work the entire week. I wanted to freeze-frame every second that I had with each person, and make it last so I could remember it. I tried to memorize the feeling of my nephew's skin, my niece's hair, the sound of their laughter. I tried to discretely stare at my parents while they fell asleep watching tv so I could still remember the memory when I'm old. I tried to memorize how my sister strokes her daughter's hair.
Saying goodbye to them tears me apart. I wonder how many new people we made inside each time we had to say goodbye to someone to try to find someone who could handle it? I feel so terrible leaving them, like I'm abandoning everyone on the front door step of an orphanage or something. I wish I didn't have to leave. I wish I could stay. We'd die if we stayed there though. I'm not as strong or as sturdy as I need to be, and none of us inside would be able to handle what would be required of us to live there with all our family. There's too much there where we used to live-- this week we had so much to deal with, bad memories and flashbacks, too much old stuff brought up, but those are for another entry. We have to set a boundary SOMEWHERE-- if they want me ALIVE, then we have to live far apart, and that's all there is too it.
So instead we have to say goodbye twice a year and get our hearts torn out, listen to Mae on the airplane wonder why 2 sides of America have to be so far apart when we can make it in 3 or 4 hours on an airplane, why we can be at our mom's house in the morning and our own house in the afternoon, how can that be so far apart and why can't we see them everyday?

Posted by pilgrim at 9:12 PM | Comments (3)