Today a dark cloud fell over my
thoughts. It occurred to me how limited I am, how little I've
accomplished, what a wienie I am. Why haven't I written my books?
Why, why, why.
Immediately, unbidden, I remembered
that this “wienie” once chewed through the wooden slats of her
playpen to escape. Forget the conditions that led to that act of
desperation because they are lost to history. The important thing is
the persistence of the human spirit – of my spirit. I wonder how
many hours it took to completely chew through and force my small body
between the bars and squeeze through.
My stroke essay popped into my head
next and I thought of the years I spent struggling just to speak a
coherent sentence, to write something readable again. I remembered
the years that followed my car accident in March 2002, several of
them overlapped my recovery from the stroke event, when I could
hardly walk. Until 2008, I literally had to crawl on my hands and
knees to go up stairs.
That made me remember the couple of
months our family lived with my son and daughter-in-law following the
house fire and our subsequent eviction. Their apartment was upstairs
and of course, it was damned hard (and dignity-destroying, needless
to say) to scramble up a flight of steps like an animal.
I am not a wienie.
I was not a wienie when I pushed my IV
pole across the hospital courtyard an hour after I got out of
recovery room following my second breast surgery in two weeks' time.
It was New Year's eve 1999, the eve of the millenium. Snow spit from
a slate sky as I navigated two surgical drains and a morphine drip,
my winter coat loosely around my shoulders. What motivated this
Herculean effort? I wanted a cigarette!
I was not a wienie when I drove myself
to chemotherapy and endured that poison. I was not a wienie when I
got third-degree burns from radiation and figured out how to treat my
wounds myself since the radiation oncologist seemed helpless to
provide a solution (put VERY CLEAN room temperature wet washcloths on
the burn until the cloth is warm to the touch, remove, re-wet,
replace, repeat until the heat stops being given off through the
burn. This will take literally hours but works with all burns to stop
subsequent damage).
In 1992, when I sat with my brother at
University of Cincinnati Burn ICU after he suffered third-degree burns over
80% of his body and bagged him with an Ambu bag so the staff had more
hands to quickly change his bandages so he wouldn't have to suffer as
long, or assured him I'd take care of the leprechaun he hallucinated
while he was weaning off morphine and on methadone, or when I made
the unilateral decision for the surgeons not to amputate both his
forearms – nope, not a wienie.
When the doctors suggested my brother
would make a wonderful organ donor because of his general health and
youth, and I urged them not to withdraw life support – to let HIM
decide if he wanted to fight to live, that it was not our right to
make that decision for him – I was not a wienie.
When my son's head delivered in the car
on the way to the birth center, I was not a wienie. When I endured
years of systemic abuse as a child, nope, not a wienie then either. I
have experienced misogyny on a profound scale in my lifetime, social
and cultural systemic abuse and neglect.
When I was a divorced mother of two
trying to raise my babies without child support for my son (which
eventually accumulated to over $224,000) and I made $8 too much per
month to qualify for food stamps or child care assistance, and my
child care bill totaled 60% of my take-home pay and my father berated
me for not taking on a second job but I refused to because I didn't
want my children totally raised by somebody else – I was not a
wienie then.
I created a game out of going through
dumpsters collecting aluminum cans and glass bottles to recycle so we
had enough money to eat out once a week. It served as both an outing
and an income of sorts. I remembered thinking how my father was
probably at the symphony or a rose society meeting right then and how
horrified he'd be if someone saw me.
When I begged the man from the water
company not to turn off my water because I used cloth diapers and
mixed my son's powdered formula with water, and most of the food I
cooked required water to prepare – I was not a wienie then. And
neither was he when he went out and pretended to turn off the water
and came back and warned me he would lose his job if I told a soul.
(I never told until now. Thank you, Mister. You probably saved my
life).
The month both my grandfather and
favorite aunt died and my electricity and water got turned off and I
voluntarily placed my four- and one-year-old children in temporary
foster care so I could receive in-hospital treatment for depression,
and despite the State's promise to keep them together, they were
placed in two different homes – I was not a wienie then either.
When my agreement with the State was
that I would have two weeks post-hospitalization to adjust and heal
before my children came back home but the worker decided she would
transfer legal custody to my ex-husband if I didn't take them back
the day I was discharged – not a wienie then.
When it turned out the final straw in
the whole depression dynamic had been I simply needed thyroid
medication and if the doctor had only recognized or tested me for
that, I wouldn't have spent months trying to find someone to agree to
care for my children after I died, I didn't lose hope.
These are but a few not-a-wienie
situations out of many, many dozens more throughout my lifetime. I
won't but touch on being methodically beaten by my alcoholic lover
and the creative excuses I offered for my various injuries because
society's disapproval of interracial relationships was so much bigger
than anyone's desire to help a woman find her way out of Hell.
I'll leave it to your imagination what
it felt like to sit in a sheriff's office and have him tell me in a
patronizing tone of voice that a three-year-old's testimony against a
sexual abuser won't stand up in a courtroom, that there was nothing I
could do to save others or I'd be charged with slander. Additionally,
he offered the example that a thirteen-year-old girl was a poor
witness too “because she might just have changed her mind and been
a willing participant.” My sarcasm was lost on him when I added “I
get it, just like an old woman would be a bad witness because she
might just be senile, right?”
Having never been one to know when to
leave something well enough alone, I felt compelled to ask “So just
what IS the ideal age to be raped?” He had no answer.
Like I say, there are dozens and dozens
and dozens more of these situations I've survived. Every time I tell
even one lone story, people exclaim “How did you survive that? You
are so strong!” All I can think is “That's nothing” and “You
do what you have to do.” I don't share these experiences to elicit
pity – I do not need you to feel sorry for me. I appreciate your
compassionate spirit but do not feel bad for me.
What I do ask is that you do not judge
me or criticize my housekeeping or my weight or my health or why I
don't look at things from a whitebread point of view. I ask that you
do not presume I am unaware of the way society works, nor do you
suggest I don't understand what it means to be marginalized.
Don't tell me we have no choice in how
to view our world. Don't call me a survivor. We're all survivors,
we're all marching forward one step at a time. We are all heroes in
our own plays. Don't compare your path to mine. Just keep putting one
foot forward on your own journey. My friend Karen quotes a Japanese proverb, fall down
seven times, get up eight.
I'm here to tell you not to stop at eight.
Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.
Why? To paraphrase Yoda, “There is no why. There is only do.”
Because we are not wienies.
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