 Photo by Lacie Slezak on Unsplash
A Place for Mom ... you've seen the ads, right? They offer in-home care services for your beloved, if not doddering and diminishing, mother whom you would prefer to outsource, thank you very much, because you're busy living your best life and no thanks to your mother. I didn't have to make that difficult choice for dearest mommy, a Jewish woman with the sensitivity of a Nazi Schutzstaffel guard. She went out on her own terms. But it occurred to me that I have, over the course of my life, created (even harbored and held onto) A Place for Pain. In a journal entry from September of 2017, I wrote: The issue today is abandonment. No, that's not right, the issue is anger. The day has turned into night and and time is running out and my anger is stuck in my leg masquerading as pain. Rather than let it rip, I turn my anger inward, cradling it, a commodity I can't sell but I can transmute (like Christ!) into pain. Having not been allowed to express anger in my family-of-origin home—a home that was mostly silent, lined with eggshells and hollow hearts—that emotion remains baked in the cake. It has to live somewhere, so why not my leg?
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Sept. 30, 2017 The writer's job, says Jonathan Franzen, is to "say the unsayable." I intend to do that here. After pain plagued me for countless years, I started to like making myself hurt more. It's occurred to me that I must hate myself for digging my nails into my callused skin, but I do it nonetheless. For me (and 5% of adults, 17% of adolescents and 17-35% of college students in America), my sick is soothed by pain. No science can deconstruct this. It's illogical. It's emotional. And now it's honest. Most important: no one talks about it. It's taboo. So let me go there. I pick my skin. Until it bleeds. I dig my index nail into my outer thigh to form a callus. Then I dig my nails into my callused skin. My comfort, my callused thigh, is decidedly distinct from, say, a soft, pink blankie or my mother's handkerchief scented with Chanel No. 5. Self-destructive soothing is just another form of self-hatred. And yet, I. Can't. Stop. I walked the Los Angeles Marathon in 8.5 hours recently, as if I knew time was chasing my callused thighs and me. I am proud of that long, brisk walk nonetheless. The clock ticks, the sand runs through the hourglass. This is no time for secrets. I hope people who self-harm know they are not alone. Life hurts. We do our best, even it our best is yet to come.  Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash
1.20.25 I always wanted to be a baby boomer. I missed being a boomer by about one year. My whole life is a series of misses. But to be a baby boomer…that could have solved all of my problems. Boomers are broadly accepted as the post-WW II behemoth generation of achievers with (quoting AI here): a strong work ethic, optimism, focus on personal achievement, and involvement in social movements. Instead, I was born into a silenced cohort of one. For many years, I thought my name was Shut Up. It was shut up this and shut up that all day, every day. When I asked my driven father a question, his harsh retort was invariably: “Shut up." A typical exchange on a Saturday morning: Me (age 7): Daddy, can we go to the park? Father (looking at a document on his desk): Shut up. Or me at a public event: Daddy, can I have ice cream? Father (turns for one tenth of a second in my direction whilst in conversation with someone important): Shut up and go find your brother. I was an inconvenience to him, an interrupter. If I popped up into his line of vision, he would say: Oh, it’s you again, what do you want? Nothing, I would respond, eyes downcast, swallowing my words, wants, dreams. I stayed that way most of my life. Silent Char. Only our dog Freckles, the Springer spaniel with his bloodshot eyes, listened. Those eyes said everything. They said, I love you no matter what, Silent Char. When Freckles wasn't running away to impregnate one of the neighbors' dogs, he was snuggling with me on the kitchen floor (linoleum, cold), with my arms wrapped around his tummy, We inhaled and exhaled together, Freckles having conquered the world (or at least the dogs on the block), me having remained silent and stuck. Fear and anxiety pinned me in place. My only saving grace came in adolescence. When my peers were breaking out from head to toe with pimples, my skin was flawless. No acne whatsoever. My scars were on the inside. In all the years that my father was in my life, he never called, sent a card or gave me a gift. On Sundays, his one day off a week, he had a standard (some would say rigid) routine. He got up early, watered the garden, the sidewalk, the outdoor furniture. He then made himself lunch, washed the dishes and locked himself in his study for the rest of the day. He emerged for dinner, ate without engaging us in conversation, then returned to his study. He did not need a Do Not Disturb sign on his door, His demeanor said it all: Do not disturb me, you are a hindrance. I do not want you. You are a mistake. Try not to be seen and never heard. I took that ball and ran with it—straight into isolation, drugs, addiction, and more silence—a generation of one (but not done).  , Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
2018 I had to share a bathroom with my brother when I was growing up. To describe him as emotionally constipated at the time would be unkind (and too on the nose), but he was. And maybe I was too. I would lock the door so he couldn't get in. I would use up all the hot water so he couldn't take a shower. I wasn't doing anything that he didn't do to me, but I was, to put a fine point on it, a bad sister. He reminded me of that at every turn...until recently. We've mended fences and I'm grateful. Now at age 73, with the benefit of life's rearview mirror, I know that the best revenge is living well. As women, we often forget that. We don't have to be a dumpster fire, drawn to drama, clinging to trauma. We've got this. I now have three bathrooms and get to drift from one to the other while gazing and reciting Louise Hay's positive affirmations. All this is to say Stuart Smalley has nothing on me. And yet, reports from those who know me (starting with me) are that I've struggled with the notion of sharing and still do. As a diabetic, I—no news alert here—have cravings. Sugar is my north star. I'm drawn to it. I can't look away and I want all of it. I've never said: I'll have a cookie, thank you. Or: Sure I'd love a slice of cake. Or: Just one scoop of ice cream for me, please. You get the gist. One was not and will never be enough for this diabetic diva. I want it all. I think it started with those damn Prell commercials. Christie Brinkley or some svelte, equally annoying perfectionist, was washing or swaying her voluminous, shiny mane in slow motion whilst I, with my stringy, dull mop atop my head, was trapped in comparison mode. Unfortunately, we didn't have a 12-step program for people with damaged hair, so I muddled through on my own, not sharing. I felt "less than," and therefore needed "more please." Something to fill the existential deficit—which is why it was hard for me to share. But I'm working on it. I now genuinely want me brother to be happy, whole and steeped in hot showers for the rest of his days, for example. This, my people tell me, is progress. I also want him to know I care now and cared then, despite all sisterly-selfish behaviors to the contrary.  Through decades of therapy, I've come to understand that my mother never grew up. She related to her children, then, as a child. We were her dolls, Charles and Charlene (a la Ken and Barbie), raised in a doll house with her doll dogs. Our inconvenient emotions were not welcome in the facade that was our home. Anger would not have matched the fabric.
So it still animates my words on the page; it still occupies my dark heart. A heart that knows the truth but can't reconcile it all to set myself free. Free from her limitations, her failures, her cascade of daily judgments and microagressions that left indelible marks on my psyche. She was a child, after all, as I remind myself daily, paving a path to forgiveness. I've done my work. I often wonder how it would have all turned out had she done hers.  Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
September 22, 2017 I am 72 years old and I can't wait to live. I'm excited about life. This is novel! I feel undeserving which is hard to admit. I've never been able to to enjoy life because I was stuck, physically and emotionally. Now that I'm healing, courtesy of my higher power and support team, I'm allowing myself this moment of contentment. Surveying the situation, sated. This is finally MY LIFE, curated by ME. Suffice it to say, it took awhile. It feels grand, my kind of grand, that fills the empty hole inside. The hole that aches after decades of not being nurtured. The kind of grand money can't buy. For, you see, my empty hole is beginning to be filled up—not with candy, doughnuts or jewelry—but with a beautiful, ineffable "something" I've been searching for my whole life. The ticket, I think, is simply to look around and notice the people, the positive, the goodness. And to receive all of the above because we're worthy of being loved. Each and every one of us, even me.  Photo by Sheila Swayze on Unsplash
One of my earliest memories is that of the wallpaper in my bedroom. It was filled with horses. Horses running—gorgeous legs extended, manes windswept, eyes wild and free. It was our first, "starter" home as a family, and any three-year-old girl in her right mind would have counted herself lucky to have that equine wallpaper. It was all good until my parents turned off my light. "Nighty, night," one of them would whisper, tiptoeing backwards, leaving my door one-inch ajar, as if the sliver of light from the hallway could fend off what was to come. Tried as I might, each and every night, those damn horses didn't stay in place for long. As soon as I drifted off in my twin bed, I would startle awake, sitting bolt upright, head on a swivel. Without fail, the horses woke me up, leaping off the wall straight at me. I managed to stay ahead of them by the skin of my teeth, jumping off the bed in a full sprint, down the hall, into my parents' room. I would launch myself, a human torpedo, smack dab into the middle of their king-sized bed. Come to think of it, there was plenty of room between them, in bed and in life. I would snuggle in, some nondescript deli meat to their sandwich bread. The warmth of their skin and the softness of their nightwear enveloped me. Despite the repetitive stress and momentary, nocturnal terror, I didn't want the sweet, rescue respites to end. In those moments, I felt loved. Like all good things, it was not meant to last. Two years later we moved, leaving the horses—and the welcome snuggles—behind forever. It would be a very long time before I could recapture that sense of being safely held. |
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