Peek-a-Boo

I've always loved a game of peek-a-boo with a baby.  They are so adorable. How they really believe that when your eyes are hidden by your tricky, face-stealing hands that you have actually disappeared. And the  look of pure joy on their faces when you suddenly reappear.  As if in those two seconds when your eyes were covered, you were completely lost and the baby is so happy to see you again.  This human-to-human acknowledgment--this I-can-see-you--is such a powerful force.  In a peek-a-boo game with a baby, you would never rob them of your reappearance by keeping your eyes hidden.  You know that this would cause distress and distrust.

There are compartments of my life with which I often play an adult game of peek-a-boo.  In these games, rather than covering my eyes and then uncovering them, I remain frozen in some sort of stop-motion.  My hands covering my eyes.  My eyes, even though shielded by my hands, squeezed tightly shut to totally block out these sometimes painful realities.

One compartment I shielded myself from for years was my weight.  Up until about three years ago, I was a five-times-a-day weigher.  I weighed myself first thing in the morning, naked.  Then again after I put my clothes on to see how many pounds clothing added.  Then after I ate breakfast to see how much I gained by eating a meal.  Then again when I got home from work.  And again before bed...  And after I went to the bathroom (yes, number two.). My obsession with my weight a proverbial albatross hung around my neck.  It determined the day's fate.  Whether it would be happy or it would be cursed.

After years of living this way, I decided enough was enough and I threw away my scale, a both liberating and terrifying move. I tried to trust  my body and be kind to it, all the while fearing food, and, more than that, fearing that the tightening of my waistband was indeed because of a rising of the number on the scale that I no longer owned.

I fooled myself into thinking that this liberation from the daily check-in was a liberation from an obsession with weight.  But this wasn't true.  I still worried.  A lot.  Any time I went to the doctor's office, the only place I had to step on a scale, I turned around. Although my clothes kept getting tighter, as long I stayed in blissful ignorance about the actual number, I believed that it was within a moderate range of what it used to be.  Until last February.  I had my annual physical and the physician's assistant, who has the tact of a wart hog, walked in and said, "Well, your weight's up to #@$" (insert whatever number you consider astronomical.).  I couldn't believe it.  In my peek-a-boo, eyes-closed reality, I had gained around five pounds.  In this new, eye-opened reality, I had gained over twenty.

My mentor often says, "Too see is to be free."

In this moment, I felt anything but free.  I felt terrified.  Disgusting.  Unlovable.

I didn't rush out and buy a scale.  Nor do I now believe in weighing myself once a week or even once a month.  But I do believe in being honest with myself and my body.  It and I are one, after all, and I can tell when it is unhappy.

I recently took a nutrition course that changed my life and my relationship with food.  This class taught me how eating whole foods acts like medicine.  Now, I focus not on how much my body weighs but on how it feels after I eat certain foods.  The partnership between my body and me will last a lifetime and I'm entering it eyes-wide-open.

Another area where I've often frozen in the eyes-covered phase of peek-a-boo is my finances.  I've spent years diving in and clawing my way out of credit card debt, as most Americans have.  This vicious cycle exhausts me.  A few years ago, I wracked up trouble not by purchasing anything huge but by making a string of seemingly insignificant purchases of $20-$30.  'Tis amazing how quickly a few $20 purchases can add up to a thousand bucks.  Part of the reason those small purchases piled up for  me so quickly is that I rarely looked at my statement, simply paying a couple hundred dollars on the card each month but never really knowing exactly how much the balance was.

It was as if I believed that if I closed my eyes to it, it didn't exist.  Or that some Magic Money Fairy was going to wave his magic debt-forgiving wand if I turned the other way.  Although I still struggle in this money cycle, tracking my purchases and looking at the sometimes painful reality of the number on the statements has proven the only way to clear my debt.  To see is to be free.  To see the reality of the debt.  To absorb it.  To be frustrated about it.  This reality, eyes-open check is the only way to understand the patterns that got me there in the first place and begin to live in a way that breaks those bonds.  To free myself of those debts.

In the days of Sex in the City, I read a lot of how-to dating books, many of which taught school-marmy type rules about what a woman should or should not do in order to snag a man.  One of the most popular, and the one that pissed me off the most, was He's Just Not That Into You, by Greg Behrendt.  In this book, as many of you know, Mr. Behrendt, aka Mr. Painful Soothsayer, claims that if a man is not calling, setting up dates, committing, etc., then he's just not that into you.  This truth hurt.  And so, as I did in many other parts of my life, I decided to blind myself to it.  In fact, one might say I was hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, and speak-no-evil all in one when it came to my dating life.  An ostrich with her head in the sand, if you will.  As if, if I just ignored the signs and pretended that all was hunky-dory with these non-committal men, then they would suddenly come around and be Mr. Perfect.

Recently, I've realized that this truth applies to my current love-life situation.  Oh, man.  Has my head been in the sand on this one for a long time.  Years, people.  Years.  My affections aren't totally unwarranted, but my belief that this man and I would some day be together--that he is somehow my destiny--has been perhaps the biggest peek-a-boo game of my life.  Not the peek-a-boo where you take your hands away from your eyes and see what's before you. The freeze-framed, eyes covered and squeezed shut one.  The one that, in one's imagination, makes the unwanted situation disappear, but in reality actually allows it to fester.

Just two days ago, I had an epiphany.  It went something like this: Ooooh.  I get it.  If he's not following through as if he wants more with me, he must not want more with me.  Duh.  

And almost just like that, the curtain came down.  I see the truth.  And although it stings (let's be honest, a lot), I do feel a little freer.  A little more excited about the possibility of beginning a relationship with my eyes wide open rather than covered and shut.

And I'm no longer mad at Greg Behrendt. I realize that he just wanted to set me and all the other peek-a-boo-playing women free.

Little Ms. Perfect-No-More

This morning I took a kickboxing class, a class my friend fondly calls ninja training.  I love this class. For fifty minutes, we punch and kick the air as if it were an opponent.  All the while, I picture whichever person or issue giving me the most grief at the moment. Mentally working towards a TKO.

There are people in the class who can literally kick higher than their shoulders.  And some of the kicks are called flying kicks, where one is supposed to sort of high jump forward, kicking their imaginary, floating opponent.  All Crouching-Tiger-Hidden-Dragon-style.

I, being rooted to the earth by Muscular Dystrophy, kick only a few inches off the floor.  And jump-kicking I can only do when dreaming--maybe that's why I have so many dreams where I'm flying.  God's little way of letting me experience my feet leaving the earth.  If I'm being honest, I envy them a little.  They look like they're having such fun defying gravity for those few stolen seconds.  Of course, everything we cannot do always looks more tempting simply because we are denied it, the proverbial puppy in the window from our childhoods.  Can't I have it, please, mom?

This morning, a thought struck me as I lost my balance during  a lunging move.  Teetering on the edge of my right Nike and feeling a little bit pissed off that I couldn't do the full move everyone else was doing, I realized that I have changed.  I am no longer perfect.  I know, I know, it came as quite a shock to me, too.

The more surprising part was that instead of thinking shit in this eye-opening moment, I thought free.  In this moment, I actually congratulated myself.  I realized that, even though I can't do all of the ninja moves, I have a ninja heart.  To be out there.  Kicking and punching and elbowing despite being disabled.  And it wasn't one of those I-deserve-an-award-because-I-am-so-brave-to-be-defying-this congratulations.  It was an I'm-not-perfect-and-I'm-proud-of-that one.

My need to be perfect started young.  Having a disability that, starting in my three-year-old mind, had to be defied caused me to want to perfect whatever I could control.  Can't you picture it?  A little three-year-old girl.  Hands on hips.  Feet stomped firmly to the earth.  Face set.  Ready to push the boundaries.  Ready to say a big FUCK YOU to MD.  I guess that's what my life has been. A giant middle finger pointed at this imaginary, or not so imaginary, Goliath called Muscular Dystrophy.

The need for perfection plagued me in so many ways.  I began people-pleasing in kindergarten when I told Mrs. Oretegon that I would show the new girl around, not necessarily because I wanted to be nice but more so because I wanted the teacher to think I was nice.  Because I could not gain popularity through sports and was sort of an ugly-duckling, I gained friends by being the nicest girl at school.  Not to say that it wasn't at all genuine.  But there was so much sass in me that gurgled under the surface.  A bubbling mass of quick-wit and snarky sarcasm I didn't dare set free.

In addition to the need to please people, I also work(ed) so hard to perfect my body.  Over-exercising.  Under-eating.  Of course, all of this restriction can only lead to rebellion.  Look at Czar Nicholas II and the Russians.  That did not end well.

I was always the "good girl," never rocking the boat.  I never swore.  I never played Spin the Bottle. I never lied to my parents about where I was going or with whom. I didn't even have my first drink until I was 23.

What I've just been realizing lately is that not only has this need to be perfect affected my life in the obvious ways.  Those ways that I can analyze for myself.  It has also subconsciously affected my life-choices.  Freud would be be beaming at my self-awareness.  Although I am so very proud of the work that I do, it was my fear of failure that stopped me from pursuing a career in Psychology or medicine.

I am also sure that my need for perfection has prevented me from forming a bonded romantic relationship.  In my 20s and early 30s, I always wanted to project only the best sides of my self.  The ones that would surely attract.  And I feared that when a man saw the parts of me I deemed ugly, he would run away.  Or even if he didn't, how could I survive in a relationship that wasn't perfect?

This need for perfection is, of course, a human condition.  We all suffer from it in varying degrees.  We project ourselves as something we are not so that we can hold the jest up.  This damages.  Damages our self-worth. Damages our relationships.  Damages our hearts.

2012 has been a birth year for me.  The authentic me.  The one who isn't perfect but is beautiful anyway.  And that imperfect me is still saying F-You to MD; it's the fact that she's doing it out loud for all to hear is where the beauty lies.

I dare you to let your authentic show.  Flash it just a little bit.  It won't hurt you, I promise.  In fact, it will set you free.

Shadow Puppets

My day job is English teacher.  I teach students to love literature.

Sigh.

If only that were true.  What I really do is try to get them to look at literature differently--to look at it through an analytical lens so that then they can look at the world that way.  Can see the symbolism in the mundane.  Can read a little deeper into a sunset or a tree or a raven.

This December, I will be teaching Joseph Conrad’s novella, The Heart of Darkness, for the first time.  I read the book when I was in high school and to this day I have only frayed-edged memories of the book. But I have always remembered one line: “Mistah Kurtz--he dead.”  

When I recently reread the novella to prepare to teach it, I got goosebumps at that part.  Those four words the symbol of so much loss and yet so much freedom.

For those of you who have never read it (and for the rest of you for whom it's been decades), let me give you a brief refresher course: the narrator of the novel, Marlow, spends days sailing up river through the untamed Congo in order to meet this enigmatic man, Mr. Kurtz.  To Marlow, Kurtz is a fantasy.  A destination.  An answer.  Both esteemed and feared.  For Marlow, Kurtz is larger than life.

The way Marlow describes him, he reminds me of a shadow puppet.  You know, the ones your friends used to make when you were at a slumber party.  Where someone held a flashlight up and your friends' tiny hands became giant butterflies or barking dogs or fire-breathing dragons.  This is Kurtz.  The Shadow Man.

Enduring danger, the uncomfortable, and the foreign, Marlow puts his life on hold to meet the dying Kurtz and return him to his home.  His whole life dedicated to the task.  So dedicated that his single-mindedness in reaching Kurtz becomes nearly hallucinatory.

When Marlow finally meets Kurtz, he finds him to be a somewhat normal man.  A man with command and stature, but ordinary in his humanity, in his weakness.  He dies, after all.

I, and I know I'm not alone, have so many Kurtzes in my life.  So many end goals. So many Shadow Men.

These are the drives that move us forward.  The ones we focus on so intensely that we almost become delusional in our quest to achieve them.  In our minds, they are the shadow shapes on the wall.  Giant.  Indistinguishable. Elusive.

For Marlow, Kurtz acted like a magnet, drawing him ever-forward.

The Kurtz in my life with the strongest draw is a man I've moved towards for the past few years of my life.  Like Marlow, in my mind, he lies at the end of the river. Powerful.  Mysterious. Seemingly the only answer to this long journey. I have spent years working to understand our relationship--the ways in which it works and the ways in which it's broken.  I have sailed the river of hope towards him, enduring the savagery of unfulfilled emotions.  Dramatic, I know.

Recently, I have realized that this man, my Kurtz, is only a man.  It is I who shines the flashlight on him and makes him bigger than he really is.  I do this because I like the idea of it.  The intangibility of it.  How no matter how hard I try to grab at those shadows and capture them, I can't.  It is in this mystery that he has power.

There are are Kurtzes in all of our lives.  Those fears or hopes or drives or people that we have made larger than their actual size.  The ones we blindly plunge towards regardless of our lack of real understanding about them, finding that, when we reach them, they aren't as life-answering or life-changing as we thought they would be.

I'm certainly not arguing that we should live without goals.  But goals are different from these forces.

Perhaps that's why that line--"Mistah Kurtz--he dead"--resonates so powerfully for me.  In Kurtz's death, Marlow had the opportunity (although most literary scholars would argue that he never seizes it) to find freedom and see Kurtz for who he really was. Just a man.  Not a shadow.

In the death of these mysteries, there is freedom to see life as it really is.  The life that is now.  In this moment. Not the one that lies at the end of the river.  We will get there eventually anyway; we might as well enjoy the tangible experiences and love and people who are here, now.

C No More

At UC Irvine, my alma mater, everyone majoring in Psychology and Social Behavior knew Professor Jamner.  His Seinfeld-like mannerisms and non-traditional lecturing style made his classes some of the most sought after.  Like a good patient, I took two: The Human Pain Experience and Human Stress.

I accredit Doctor Jamner for the high expectations I set for my students.  His expectations for our midterm and final seemed nearly impossible at first; the directions on the study guide read something like this: Below are seventy-five short answer questions, eight of which will be on your midterm.   Prepare yourself. 

During the days leading up to the test, my roommate and I, droopy-eyed and foggy-headed from lack of sleep, wrote out answers to all seventy-five questions, then spent hours quizzing each other, trying to memorize all that we could.  Although I loved his teaching style, I abhorred his testing methods.  But, as is usually the case when expectations are high (you will thank me some day, dear students), I remember the most from his classes.  Especially the tidbit about how I'm "doomed" to always feel stressed because of my lack of being a true A.  No, not bra size--A, as in Type-A personality disorder--ahem-- I mean Type-A personality...which I label a disorder because "those" people can be so un-fun.

College was, gulp, nineteen years ago.  And I remember that Doctor Jamner taught me this: It is a fallacy that there are only two different major personality types, A and B.  In reality, there are three: A, B, and C.  You know, Type-As, like little border collies, organize and control the world and the people in it; Type-Bs, the fun-loving mutts of the world, roll their eyes at the As behind their backs and then get everyone drunk.  

The little-known step-child of the group is Type-C.  Type-Cs pour everyone shots, hoot and holler, and then quickly clean up all the little red cups so that the place looks a little more tidy.  Type-Cs are Type-As disguised as Type-Bs.  They are the people who want the world to think they live on Margaritaville time, while secretly they love to punch the clock a few minutes early.  And this lack of being true to themselves causes unhealthy amounts of stress.

This is me.  

Often, I am told I have "such a calm presence," seemingly unruffled by both little annoyances and major catastrophes.  Cool as a cuke.  My slow-paced walk might be somewhat to blame.   Or my seeming level-headedness.  True, I'm not a handle-flyer-off-er.  I don't yell.  I don't flip people off on the road (although I'm often muttering The Big One at them as I drive by) nor do I cut them off...unless by accident, of course.  Wink wink.  My house would not pass the white-glove test and my desk at work looks more post-Apocalyptic than an i-dotter and t-crosser's space.

But it's true.  

Don't let my flip-flops fool you.

I am an A.

I like control.

And order.

And fairness.

And rule-abiding.

And color-coding with Post-It notes.

This life of ours is filled with too much stress as it is; there's no need to add any more to our adrenaline-filled, cortisol-pumping systems by not being true to ourselves. 

I am shouting it from the cyber-mountain-top:  I AM AN A! 

And a damn fun one, at that.