I feel as I’m being tested. My intellect, my heart, my
talents, my integrity. I work hard not to be a burden to others and to serve
everyone who needs me- from the most vulnerable patients, to my children to my
family and friends. It’s all too much and never enough. I fall short. People
around me who resemble peace create a tally of my shortcomings to throw at me
in my most vulnerable moments and I just have no margin for error. It’s
exhausting. I feel like I have so little time to control what displeases me. A few
months ago, I took the opportunity to work on my body. I changed my diet and
started to exercise and lately I have just started to notice the fruits of my
labor. This shell that holds a troubled soul has seen a lot in 40 years. Abandonment
and trauma has shaped much of who I am, but I’ve fought hard to be better from
it. Every day is an opportunity for evolution. Unfortunately, I have attracted
other wounded warriors who seek to emulate me, compete with me, keep me
isolated and as their own, knock me down and make everything ‘equal’ to squelch
their own insecurities. I felt it was time to sit down and take inventory as a
last result. Who I am anymore? When I ask that out loud, there’s always someone
to answer that for me. I felt good in my own skin the other day. That hasn’t
happened in so many years. I’ve been chubby and then skin-flabby. My body has
been a vehicle for other’s pleasure, everyone’s entertainment, to grow children
and feed them. I wore my own skin the other night and was accused of
over-tempting the under-served men in my company. I was chastised and yelled
at. I was told to cover up and to stop flaunting myself. It’s maddening how my
body is not my own and I have become responsible for everyone else’s reaction
to it.
I was a curvy kid before it was “on fleek.” I was the thick-thighed,
large derriered child in dance and acrobatics among stick-figured foes who made
me feel worthless. I was the Cee Cee Bloom among a circus of “hand-walking Iris
Myandowski” types. Being the outcast in a dance class at age 2, and with “baby
bottle syndrome” (where apple juice bottles rotted my baby teeth) left me up
for ridicule from the moment I could walk into a room. My self-perception was
shattered at a young age. I sought friendships from young girls on my block who
I thought were my friends. They ended up always making me their patient in the
doctor game, shoving crayons and pencils into my vagina and anus while they “operated”
on me. I didn’t want to disappoint them, so I let them until it started to
cause damage and I was over-stimulated in those areas with no clue as to what
it meant and how to respond. No one believed me when I sought help. Years later,
my behaviors would resemble that of childhood sexual trauma and I would search
my mind as to who could have done it.
Years later, I would learn in grad school that perhaps my Freudian development
had been disrupted during one of my psychosexual phases and perhaps these young
twats were the actual culprit.
Yet, I could still hold my head up high and stifle what was
inside. I learned to stiffen my upper lip from a cold grandmother who paid
affection out with money and porcelain dolls I wasn’t allowed to play with and
a dad who treated me like a man. My dad held my first set of fists up and
taught me to tighten my jaw and always be ready for a fight. He’d brag about
throwing the last punch and making sure every cut I inflicted counted. He
taught me to live in fear of him and he showed me that if people feared me, I
wouldn’t be fucked with. He taught tough love. He criticized me in my baby
book. He told future readers of my early development that by age six, I still
couldn’t ride a bike or get my face wet in a tub or pool. I was always scared
of drowning. I was already drowning. He kept a tab of every dollar he spent on
me, every favor… he holds this tab today and rejects me for every mistake I ever
made. He’d sooner tell you how I poured a bottle of soap on a Slip N’ Slide and
fell and broke the new braces off my teeth or how I crashed my first car three
days after I got it (no one taught me how to drive) before he would tell you I
always had straight A’s and won every award I thought he’d be proud of me for.
My mom recalls my first day of Kindergarten where I
basically told her to stop her sniffling. I walked up to class independently and
shook everyone’s hand and introduced myself. I showed everyone that I was an
amazing whistler. I taught everyone to masturbate (a discovery I made way too
soon in life) and choreographed large dance numbers on the playground to songs
I had written.
One evening, my dad heard loud music coming from the bathtub
and told my mom I probably had a radio in there and to get it out of the tub
area before I killed myself. A quick peak into the bathroom lead her to the
discovery that it wasn’t a radio, it was me.
I could sing. Mom loved to tell that story to anyone and everyone and even
re-told it at my Sweet Sixteen. I watched old black and white movies with my
mom and listened to musicals and my love for theater and drama grew. I was the
Punky Brewster in a room of Margeux’s for a long time until I found theater at
age 9. I lied about my age on day one of camp to be among the elders and was
cast in a singing role at my first pass. They all sang some version of Twinkle Little Star.
I sang Happy Birthday and replaced the name part with “please cast me” and was a hit with the directors from the start. I
befriended a few other kids who eventually found actual stardom. I was counted among the talented kids who were
absolutely going to “make it”. A legacy I couldn’t live up to while I nurtured
my need for connection by ensuring everyone else was ok while abandoning my own
dreams. This pattern would come to be a third limb and pave the porousness of
boundaries that would keep me from self-healing for many days to come.
Dad had his own psychosexual crisis and left mom for the
second of four wives to come. He’d pop in now and then to throw money on my tab
and to remind me that it was my mom’s fault that he abandoned me for a better
life. She retreated into men to salve her reopened wounds from always being
rejected and abandoned. I was alone. Everyone was quick to want to band-aid my
bleeding wrists, but few were really invested in healing me.
Older men wanted me. Top schools wanted me. I just wanted to
be accepted and loved by my boyfriend. I always held court with a small arsenal
of people who wouldn’t let me evolve. My first real boyfriend sexually abused
me and emotionally ripped me to pieces to make me submissive to him. He saw in
me a fire and wanted to keep my light like a firefly trapped in a jar for his
own personal pleasure. The one after that impregnated me when I was 18 and then
forced me to abort. That experience was my first real bout of pain. I never had
a broken arm. I never burned myself or had stitches. The physical and emotional
pain of that experience was crippling and I subconsciously abandoned him and spent
the next year hurting him and finding ways to replace the holes that were
imbedded in me. A series of bad relationships lead to more pregnancies and forced
terminations that left scars in me I couldn’t ever resolve. I was told it was
sinful and that I didn’t have the right to mourn that which I inflicted upon myself.
The Wizard of Oz was my mantra, only I’d keep clicking my heals and never wake
up home. I was stuck in the samsara of the dream world just begging to be home, but I never landed there.
Everyone else got their pieces back: brains, heart, courage… I just wanted
glittery shoes and a home to hang them in. I sought the collection of
admiration from others to fix the lack of acceptance from those who mattered
most.
I moved out of my childhood home into an apartment the
moment I could. I felt I was basically living alone, anyway and at least wanted
my own space where there weren’t as many ghosts. Mom had moved in with her
boyfriend, so it seemed like it was time to fully relieve her of the duty of
checking in with me. Great grandma
left me a great deal of money to use
on college and while I had been to all of the great ones to audition, many of
which accepted me, I didn’t want to abandon my boyfriend. He represented the
idea of home. His Israeli family was priming me for the family business and
were picking out our home. They were mad
when I found my own place and forbid him to move in with me. I was alone,
again.
I laid in that apartment every night and longed for home.
The home I left that hadn’t been a home for so long, but I felt scared and
alone and missed my bed. I’d close my eyes and listen to Basia and Bonnie Raitt
and smell my mom’s cooking and the incense we bought from the health food store
and imagine laying on our couch with
the fancy track lighting and the shiny tiles after she cleaned… I wanted that home. That house hadn’t been cleaned
and lit with good smells in so long. I stayed in that dirty casket for so long
that when I got my own apartments thereafter, I became addicted to cleanliness
and order. To me, it meant health.
I lured my boyfriend to live with me with the money I cashed
in from putting off college. We spent time using those funds to travel to
Europe and Israel and Canada. We paid bills and bought gifts and ate the best
food and did the best drugs. I took every hundred dollar bill and stuffed it
into every broken hole and paid for his love and loyalty until it had all but
run out. He lost interest in me and I left before I figured he would. I quickly
found someone else who would love me better, I thought. He loved himself more.
He didn’t want me to ever be as great as him. He’d make me let everyone know
that I was only as great as the songs I sung because he wrote them. He’d berate me for getting attention and chalked it
up to being a pair of tits. I was
never talent, I was tits. Another
pattern of gas lighting I’d come to know for the rest of my life. The more he
rejected me, the more I clung to him.
I started work as a nanny and got to connect to children in
a beautiful home. Being in a ‘whole’ family was weird for me. I was the help. I
was reminded of how far away I was from what I viewed as normalcy and
protection. I tried hard to pick apart all of their flaws and view them as
revelations that there was no perfect
anything.
I watched the Twin Towers fall on TV with those babies on my
lap... Days later, my mother’s childhood friend read in the paper that a horse
jockey died with no next of kin. It was her uncle. She was able to prove it in
a court of law and inherited his small fortune. She bought a brownstone in
Brooklyn that she intended to renovate and rent out the garden level for extra
income. My mom bragged about what a great opportunity her friend found. I
contacted her immediately and found a way to move to New York. I brought my
boyfriend with me. If we left together, he wouldn’t leave me.
My friend Shelley was in a terrible car accident that
resulted in fatality. She agreed to come up and help us drive the pets to New
York. She was going to live there, too to be with her boyfriend. She had a
symbol hanging in her car. I asked her what it was. She said it was given to
her by a friend. “It’s a Ganesh and He keeps away obstacles.” It was meant to
keep other cars and pedestrians from stepping in front of her car again. She
kissed it before she drove and swore it would protect her.
Flash forward to New York… one crappy audition for an
ensemble role that lead to a call back but was far from the big fish-little
pond reception I was used to with local Florida Theater allowing me to play the
most unreasonable roles. Here, in New York, there was 50 people who could do
what I did, but were skinnier, prettier and had the wealth and support to be
their own brand. I had run through my college money pretty quickly and the
boyfriend and I were on our last dollars. A shotgun wedding and several random
jobs lead from one occupation to the next. It was a fast-paced life that grew
me. I saw snow and change of seasons.
I’m
of course skipping some of the best parts that are for another blog on another
day…
Boyfriend, now husband and I were contemplating what
marriage meant. He also had broken parts and wasn’t sure he would ever want
children or what I longed for in the realm of “normalcy.” I missed home. I
wanted family and connection. I’d host elaborate Jewish dinners with the
friends we had collected and I so longed for a place that I felt was home. It
was all so temporary and transitional. I hoped so hard to fill these holes in
my heart. He didn’t want to ruin his chances at fame and musical notoriety with
having to support a kid. How? How could we afford it? Who would watch it?
Where would we put it? He preferred
his 12-pack of beer and chain smoking. I took his rejection as an opportunity
to replace him with someone who more closely resembled what I needed. A man who
didn’t come from a broken family (cue: The Nightmare Before Christmas “What’s This?”). Did I mention that this
guy became super healthy, remarried and now has two kids that are his whole
world? Yeah… Cue- more feelings of rejection. He didn’t not want it… He didn’t want it with me.
This new guy was fresh out of grad school and was going to
try his hand at being an actor. He had fancy friends who were all beautiful and
polished. At the heart of it, he was a mid-western guy with a set of parents
who adored him and each other. I fought hard to connect our two misshapen parts
together because he represented so badly what I wanted. He, of course wasn’t
ready for a family and I thought I had given up on that dream. We fought. We
broke up and made up a thousand times. He’d lose his job, I’d lure him with a
meal and a clean apartment. We’d sightsee and explore the strange city we came
to call home- so far from our own enclaves. Three years of up’s and down’s and
togethers and aparts. When he lost his last job, it made sense for him to move
into my apartment: a small garden-level illegal sublet that would flood when it
rained and echoed the sounds of the families who would live in the “real house”
up above. We would try to use the back patio to barbeque to be told that it
wasn’t our space to enjoy and that we were not allowed to utilize the
facilities like a real home.
I decorated the ceilings with sheets and fairies and
dangling stars and glitter and made a palace for myself. I struggled with the
desires for comfort. I fought myself with wanting to be alone and still wanting
company. When he moved in, he brought more stuff than could fit and my tiny
fairy oasis became a storage facility. Within four weeks, I was pregnant.
We struggled. At age 26, this was a now or never moment. I thought: I do this now, or I give up the idea of a
family forever. My mom was 27 when she had me. I already terminated other
opportunities for a family and lived in a bereft prison in my heart. I
struggled. This would change everything.
This would ruin my career. This would solve my hurt. We had been so up and down
for so long… is this who I wanted forever? He wasn’t sure. He asked me to
terminate. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want a baby. I made the appointment to
terminate, he begged me not to. We went to therapy to talk it out. We hated the
woman we met with. We bonded over how wrong she was. We fought. We cried. We
screamed and broke up a thousand times. Life was turmoil. This wasn’t the happy
reflection of the Babies R’ Us catalog I had always envisioned this moment to
be. With each week, a new argument had broken out. A new unanswered question of
how we would be able to make this work. We agreed that someday we would get married and someday we would have kids, but not now!
I found an OBGYN in the city and explained that I had just
landed a new job and was on probation for another week, but that I would have
insurance soon and I needed to know
what was going on with my body. I plead for financial mercy as I was an
unmarried Jew in a big city, far away from home and with no insurance or money
to get healthcare. He was an orthodox Jewish man who agreed to bill me when the
insurance came through and he allowed me to ventilate about the utter conflict
I was in about being 26 in New York with
no insurance or support and with a boyfriend who I couldn’t consistently stay
with for almost three years now... He smiled and nodded and offered to show
me what was going on inside. Having had terminations before, I was familiar
with the process of revelation, measurement and guilt of the choice I was about
to make. I hadn’t ever visited an actual OBGYN who was just there to check on
me, it was always some pre-procedural event before they showed me exactly what
terror I was paying them to incite upon me.
The doctor gently probed inside of me and showed me the spot
where there was a thickening of the uterine lining and the tiniest little splotch
within an egg? Too soon to tell. He
let me stare for a long while and told me next week, I should come back. I was
silent. I was overwhelmed with the obligation to protect whatever this was
until next week. Next week, I came back and saw a bigger misshapen blob of
collection of something and he played the song of the heartbeat for me. It was
a cacophony of madness, off-tempo and symphonic. I became a mother that day. I
cradled my belly when I walked through the crowds of New York and came home and
told him what I heard. He was as excited as I was. We both knew it was meant to
be and we finally agreed we were going to grow this thing. We agreed not to tell
anyone except our parents until 12 weeks: a superstition rooted in ensuring
that the baby was viable and that we didn’t jinx it by preparing for what was
not yet.
I bought a baby book and we would look at each week and what
parts were developing and imagined what he could hear, what he would like,
which parts of whom he would have. We picked out names and imagined where he
would sleep. We kind of knew it would be a boy. We grew closer in those weeks,
waiting for my 12-week exam to see him for the first time and get the “all-clear”
to let everyone in on the news. Slowly, things started to feel safe. I clutched
my belly everywhere we went. We walked around the city and imagined life with
our baby and everything seemed possible. Everything had hope. My body that I
loathed became thicker and I longed for when it would be the biggest. I loved
my body for growing and cradling the most important piece of me: home. This growing family was going to
finally give me home. I was grateful. I was humbled. I was so excited.
July 4th of 2006, we went to a street carnival.
We walked around and tasted all the usual flavors. We walked for miles and I
stopped to have a massage on my feet where a woman pushed on parts of my ankle
and heels to alleviate the discomfort I felt. With each thumb into my ankle, I
felt a stiff jab at my stomach. I looked at him and told him the baby must be
growing. We were at 11 ½ weeks and by next week, we were done with the first
trimester and we could tell everyone! We finished the evening at the park and
watched fireworks. I was tired and wanted to go rest and watch TV. I always
waddled and felt as pregnant as someone about to deliver, even at 11 ½ weeks. I
embraced this pregnancy with full gusto and even convinced myself I was morning
sick (I never did) or had strange cravings (far before I should).
New York summers were hot and I was tired. We laid on the
couch and watched American Idol when I started to feel cramps. I had read about
implantation cramps and didn’t think much of it. I had the overwhelming urge to
pee. I got up and went to the bathroom and… blood… I let out a wail I didn’t know was inside of me. Blood. This was repayment for the terminations. I did something wrong. I ate
something. I wasn’t meant for a home. He would certainly leave me now. Blood. I screamed. I showed him the
toilet paper and told him to call the ambulance. I didn’t know what to do. Blood. It was so little… I laid down
and went fetal. I cried and screamed. Blood.
No. No. Nonononononoooo…. My eyes
were so heavy. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak. I remember the EMT men
asking if I could walk. I shook my head violently “no.” I couldn’t breathe. I held my legs together tightly as though
somehow I could hold him inside of me. My home was a crumbling, rushing damn
and I was holding back the destruction with a weak pinky finger. The EMT said “you know what is probably happening, don’t
you?” I wailed and nodded my head. He had tears in his eyes. He was scared
for me, scared for our hope, our family. Blood…
I don’t remember the ambulance ride much, but I remember him
pushing back the sweaty and salty, tear-sopped hair from my forehead and
telling me it would be ok and maybe someday we could try again. No. no. I prayed and chanted and prayed
and chanted. I pleaded with G-d. I made promises…
My gurney was parked in a hallway in an-overcrowded ER. The
RN read my chart and shook her head before looking up and seeing my searching
eyes, desperate for answers- medicine-
something to fix it, save him! The EMT said they were sorry
for my loss and left. I wailed and wailed…
The RN coldly said “there’s
no medicine… not much we can do at 11 weeks…You’ll have to wait to speak to
the doctor.”
“11 and a half,” I
managed to blubber while the snot masked my face.
Finally, a technician came in with a machine. He told me the
doctor we had yet to meet ordered a transvaginal ultrasound to ensure that I had
“passed it all” and didn’t need a D
and C. I cried and waited for it to be over. I envisioned this horrible probe
looking around my now empty home to capture pictures of the damage before
bulldozing it all down.
“Huh.” The
technician moved his probe around and his eyes widened. We looked at him and
asked how much longer we would have to stay. We were so tired. I half expected
he was going to tell me I would need some other invasive procedure… but he didn’t.
He turned the screen towards us and… there he was… A baby. Our baby. We never
saw him like this before. Fully formed and kicking off the sides of my uterine
walls. Playing, moving, heart beating loudly while he swam around. My heart was
racing. I could barely breathe. The technician smiled at us and said “I’ve
never seen anyone so excited about there actually being a baby. It’s kind of a
nice change.”
We were in shock. I felt like both our mouths were opened so
wide and that it felt like we were smiling, swallowing the scenery, gasping…. I
watched him. Every move while squeezing hands and continuing the chanting and
praying in my head I had been reciting for hours… The doctor came in and I must
have uttered a question and motioned towards the bathroom excision of what I thought
was our baby. She went in and studied it and came out to reveal “Oh, that must have been the twin; that
happens often when the twin is not viable.” She studied the ultrasound and
smiled. “This one looks good.”
Twin? Erhm…. We
joked and tried to recall who had twins in their family. His cousin just had
triplets but whose side does it have to run on for that to happen? ….we joked
and giggled. We weren’t at all upset by any loss… we just knew our baby was
alive… He was viable. He was ok.
The doctor prescribed bed rest and extra fluids. She looked
at my shirt that I had purchased in Ireland as a souvenir and asked me if I knew
what the symbol meant. I hadn’t really paid much attention to it other than it
was colorful and had some Indian symbol on it. “That’s Ganesh. He keeps away obstacles.” I remembered the one that
kept Shelley safe after her accident and wondered why I connected to this shirt
so much. She suggested I wear a Ganesh symbol for the remainder of my
pregnancy. She winked and I knew I needed this to protect me.
We left that evening and I ordered him to go to the village
and get me a Ganesh. I wore it every day. That following January, on the last
day of the month on a frozen cold afternoon, Cody Babar arrived after 27 hours
of labor and 3 hours of pushing. 9 months later, I would feel “phantom kicks”
during post-natal yoga class and discover I was pregnant (again) with Rosalind
Viola. I wore Ganesh when she came 6 weeks early and only had to spend 5 days
in the NICU. I wore it years later when we moved to Florida and I became
pregnant again with Sebastian Moon. When I knew my child-rearing days had
ended, I would wear him from time-to-time to “protect” the kids when they were sick
or to help me during dark days. I felt scared to take it off, so I tattooed a
symbol of him on my arm. I’ve given this necklace rest and really decide
whether or not I will wear it on certain days, ensuring I don’t take advantage of
His power of protection.
These days, I’ve taken on more than I can chew. I’m that
defeated woman who’s children feed and bathe themselves these days and I no
longer am required to be their everything for every moment. That space from “home”
and general mix of chaos and need from others has given me space for self-reflection
and to look at who I was, who I am…
I’m forever grateful to Ganesh for his protection over my
family. I call on him from time to time to protect against obstacles. These
days, the biggest obstacle: is me. I’ve forgotten the blessings and protections
of my past and allowed infiltrates to darken me.
I wanted to blog about this because I want to remember. I
wanted to tell the story of that necklace and what it means to me. I wanted to
inform those who notice and who care that when it’s worn, it’s serving as a
protection against something bigger than me.
A spiritual friend posted a picture and said it was “Ganesh
week” with the same reverence as “Pet Day” or “Left-handed Person’s Day” and
with that small reminder… I felt a humbled reminder to take a deep bow to
graces bigger than me that protect me. I needed to remember that I am not
everything they call me. I’m a warrior. I’m a survivor. I struggle every day to
find pieces of me to be proud of and to be whole in a body full of holes.
Today, I will seek light and give gratitude.
Forgive my weaknesses… I’m imperfect and will always be the
chubby girl with fists up: seeking acceptance, forgiveness and love from others
and from myself.
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