how to discern my own thoughts and feelings from those pouring in from outside. where am I in all of this? what has my ME become? I don't even know what the fuck "me" or "self" mean. identity, yeah--ok. sense of self, the ubiquitous "I" click-clacking around, all thought, prelude to action, absent from REaction, buried in blurred hazes my "I" calls "pain," pain those outside seem to think I've allowed to usurp my me, but I know I KNOW MY ME KNOWS INSIDE I FEEL this pain this interference this l'intrus isn't some fantastical concoction.

it makes me angry, in a way, in a lot of ways, in every way ANGRY can influence my sentiment towards those I love most dearly--ANGRY I AM ANGRY AT THEM. I thought--I expected it from my mom--but it makes me sad now and ANGRY now to admit I'm angry at my dad for his honesty. not angry that he was honest, but angry that--in his own way--he's dismissed and belittled what I'm going through in his own way, which is full of common sense and comes from a place that is nothing but love and care for me, but that I have allowed "this" to take too great a place in my life, that if I just work hard and not think about it anymore it'll just vanish--he really believes that. and I tried to tell him, but dad--it didn't come from stress, it didn't happen because I was upset or depressed--I've been that way for YEARS--it started because of a physical illness, a virus, an invasion, and progressed slowly until it occupied all my me all the time, and that's different. IT'S DIFFERENT, DAMMIT. and I guess I'm saddest that, although he has been so supportive and so THERE for me, still he doesn't understand.

I guess it feels like everything else that's ever been "wrong" with me--my weight, my loserness, my emotional outbursts, my depression, inappropriate remarks, now THIS...THIS THISNESS out of nowhere--it's my fault. MY FAULT. if I just forget about it it'll forget about me; that's what he believes. and this makes me SO ANGRY and SO SAD to be angry at him.

I guess...it just shows again again and again how impossible it is to explain to anyone who hasn't experienced complete and unrelenting chronic pain what it's like, where it comes from. I thought that visit with my doctors might have delivered some revelation. I don't know--I don't know what to do about it. I feel like I can do nothing about it. he thinks I need to grow up--I can't rely on people to take care of me anymore; I'm a grown woman and I have to deal with things on my own. I understand this reasoning, but I'm not asking for my family to hold my hand and do my work and carry me through life--I'm asking for an attempt to GRASP what I'm dealing with, and neither of my parents seem to want to do that. they have their own conclusions, their own conceptions, and it seems there's nothing I can NOR SHOULD do about it.

BUT I DON'T WANT TO DO NOTHING ABOUT IT. why do I want SO MUCH for them to just try to understand? maybe Steve will talk to my dad for me for a little bit. maybe he can explain this isn't just some wacked mental fixation but a very real physical problem that results in my being in pain at every minute of every day and CAN YOU EVEN GRASP THAT, DAD? CAN YOU? I know you don't want to--I know you don't want to even imagine that your daughter is living like this, but SHE IS. I AM. please, please please please, dad, please...just try, for me. just try.