and all the roads we have to walk along are winding, and all the lights that lead us there are blinding

Yet another rockus Saturday night, and of course by 'rockus' i mean depressingly uneventful. No, not depressingly, I mean, the day on the whole was a busy one. I worked from 10-4 at the restaurant, a lunch shift that had less seatings than usual for most people but about twice the norm for me, exacerbated by the 9-top birthday party full of entitled people and a loud child. I don't know what it is but some days these patrons reek of entitlement.

Then I came home, thought about doing laundry and didn't, and have spent the rest of the night exhausted on the couch with every intention of showering and I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I did watch the HBO documentary Thin by Lauren Greenfield, for the second time. It follows a handful of patients during their stay at Renfrew, an eating disorder treatment center in Florida who's facilities aren't nearly as swanky as Sierra Tucson's but has a very similar program approach (It was interesting to note that the quality of therapists and psychiatrists seemed less impressive than those I encountered at ST - I know this is nearly impossible to judge from a documentary, but that was just my sense of it). I always find it interesting to here women talk about their eating disorders - that will always fascinate me, but what was really comforting (and it sounds odd to say this, I know) was watching them struggling through their meals, waiting for weigh-in at 5:30 in the morning, confronting each other in community meetings, having their rooms turned upside-down in search of contraband, being in varying forms of therapy. This was them in that routine of finding their way into their recovery. I guess it was especially comforting to me given that this was a pretty lonely Saturday night and no one was home (I'd actually gotten bailed on for Halloween costume shopping plans with one of the girls from work so I was especially bitter) and I've been feeling particularly disconnected lately anyway. Seeing these girl's routines reminded me of how safe I felt in the day-to-day structure oat ST, how capable and full of integrity I felt. How couldn't I- the rules were simple: don't use your behaviors, be honest about what you're feeling, and follow the community guidelines. I did these things, well, most of them- I was a little selective about the community guidelines I chose to follow, but I was committed to my recovery, and clung to it. I did what was asked. It was difficult NOT to be successful when those are the expectations of you. It was a strange thing to watch those girls tonight and so deeply miss the structure, remembering how proud of myself I felt when I was there, too. It was as though they, too, had checked our hearts at the door, that we couldn't be trusted to make decisions about our lives, about our wants, about our priorities and therefore we shouldn't be entrusted such a delicate organ, rather, it should be guarded until we're of righter minds. And I think this means that one cannot have tremendous fears in treatment- we may feel they're huge and impossible but some part of us is always aware that we're fighting against our bodies, our brains, and at the end of the day we will be kept safe from all of that. I remember being fearless there. Outside of treatment we're expected to impose our own structure, handle our own hearts, our own loneliness, our own vague grasps at nights alone and how we talk back to our brains.
After the Renfrew documentary I found an intervention show where a 23 year old drug addict and bulimic named Caylee was being encouraged by her family to go to treatment. Watching her whittle down her bargain from "I'll go in a week" to "I'll to on Thursday" to "I'll go at 4:40 this afternoon" was heartbreaking. Listing the many people she mast talk to and the errands she must run, and Oh the plans she must make for herself. I just... get that. So much. As though we're movie stars and we have a thousand loose ends to tie up before we can leave town. As if we have more important things to do than change our lives, and yes, this instant. Her final willingness was so beautiful to watch. It made me wish I could decide to go to treatment all over again, and was even a little bitter that I'm no longer a candidate. Okay, proud too, but I felt a sense of loss knowing there's no place for me now. I feel so unfinished.
This is where I have to return to the kind of brain I had in Sierra Tucson. Young in my recovery as I was, I understood I would be able to feel like that every day, that I could decide to make changes whether they're the kind that would demand that I uproot myself and check into to a ranch where they have dessert on Sunday and Wednesday nights, horseback riding, and a the most powerful group therapy I've ever experienced, or whether I trying to quietly re-wire my brain while moving about the life I've made for myself. There's no movie star bigger than this fish, no one more important than me, no one with more character defects she could choose to attend to and excuses with which to avoid them,than this girl with her fingertips on the keyboard. All of my lose ends trail back to a most horrendous fear of loneliness. I suppose that's the whole 'work in progress' approach that I've been hearing about since I was 8. That day to day we are allowed - no - GRANTED an infinite amount of little recoveries. I remember driving up from the airport to Sierra Tucson with mum in that white van, and feeling the greatest relief knowing I was about to do something that would make me different, and that I would never have to feel the way I felt again. If my life can be continually punctuated by decisions that would inspire that feeling in me, I will be a happy, happy fish.

I've re-stocked my ipod, and I think before I go into work tomorrow morning for the brunch shift, I'll sit on the bench in that little park out front, and give it a listen-through.