It is after three p.m. and I’ve been in my big comfy chair most of the day. No writing on the rocks today. Today it is raining.
It is Saturday and I have no where to be. So I go nowhere. And tell myself that’s ok too.
That’s ok too. I wish I told myself this more often, starting thirty years ago when I first started to dabble in doubt.
Left unchecked, today that doubt has blossomed into a burden of shame that threatens to ruin everything.
***
My parents were pissed that I wanted to move to California. They expressed their disapproval of my decision by expressing their disbelief in me. They said that they were worried about me because they didn’t think I was capable. I’m paraphrasing, but yes, that’s the part they said out loud.
Of course I was capable! So I raged against them. We fought continuously for months while I applied for work in California. When I got a job, I left. Did they think I’d be back?
Everyone else went back. My grandparents lived in the Bay Area when my mom was born. But my grandmother couldn’t stand to be away from her mom, so they moved back east. In the 90’s my mom’s sister moved to Seattle. She lived there for several years. She got married and had a baby. Then decided she missed her mom, my grandmother, and moved back east, taking her husband and baby back with her. When I was in college, Older Sister moved to LA with a friend from high school. After two years, she’d had enough and moved back to New York City. She met her future husband within a year. Today, they live in Chicago. Which, for the purpose of this story, is basically the same thing.
I think my parents see that I am happy here and that I’m not coming back. Do they still hate that I left? Do they blame themselves?
It wasn’t all their fault. I f*cking hate winter, and the weather is something that even the Judgementalsteins cannot manipulate.
**
As if I am hardwired for doubt, I need a system reboot. Breathing deep into the code, I search for bugs in order to identify a root cause.
I breathe back to high school when my dad told me more than once that I wasn’t pretty or smart enough to be friends with those girls, referring to my friends.
I guess they were prettier. They were definitely skinnier. I was chubby (because I would come home from school every day and eat Tostitos and Easy Mac until it was time for dinner). But that does not excuse my father’s words.—Now that I think about it, WTF, dad? Why wouldn’t you say something like, “Hey, how ‘bout some exercise?”
I probably would have still freaked out because what teenage girl wants to hear about her body, especially from her father? But maybe I would have thought about what he said and started to stretch a little more.
I didn’t know then what I do now. He’s just trying to help. [Eyeroll.] Oh, Dr. Judgementalstein. How did you get so bad at this?
I also didn’t know how to exercise. Not in a way that didn’t feel like torture. At lunch, my friends would retell their hilarious and embarrassing stories from cross country practice, and all I could think was, Man, these girls love to run. I hate running. I will walk 5,000 miles. But bouncing is not for me.
I probably have walked five thousand miles. When I moved to New York City after college, I discovered that walking is one of my favorite things to do. But that’s another story.
*
Where was I? Right. The girl who felt ashamed because she wasn’t pretty enough. Today she is a beautiful woman.
I know this despite myself, only this time I am ready to give up the spite. To do this I must separate myself. No longer that girl, I sail through time, pulling apart from her story.
When she was a freshman in college and lost twenty pounds in four months. Home for winter break, her parents seemed unphased by her dramatic decline.
When she moved to New York City and for the first time didn’t have a car. Walking everywhere, the city was her gym. She walked home from work most days! From Bryant Park to Brooklyn, her walks were epic. She released the stress of it all, loving that she was checking two boxes: clearing her head, and moving her body.
When she went to her first yoga class at a small studio in SOHO that she read about in a now-discontinued Martha Stewart magazine where she learned how to stretch and tone her body.
When she cut her hair short for the first time (inspired by Christina Applegate in Smanatha Who?) and it looked f*cking adorable.
When she started to look in the mirror and know she was pretty. Like, really pretty. And then worry that people would judge her because of that.
When she made out with the boys who only made out with the pretty girls.
*
No longer that girl, I drift past her and smile. She is pretty. But I am smiling because I have become so much more than just that.
Now we are reuniting. She fits into me and we leave her emotional baggage at the gate.
**
“You’re also not smart enough,” Dr. Judgmentalstein’s voice pipes in.—I am ashamed because I am not smart enough. I never have been.
Again, I feel the pull of separation as I start to untether myself from these tired stories.
When I was in third grade and scored in the seventh percentile for spelling. In other words, 93% of the third graders in New Jersey could spell better than me.—What if I had the courage back then to call out what the adults couldn’t see? That I couldn’t see. To this day I am a little cross-eyed. I’m sure you’ve noticed some typos in my writing. That’s most likely because cannot see the the missing or double word.—Spelling was hard for a closeted cross-eyed girl like me. But that doesn’t mean I am stupid.
When I was in high school and my parents seemed be obsessed with whether or not I was in the AP class. When I struggled in the AP class and they seemed disappointed.
When my parents insisted that I take the SATs again after I scored lower than they would have liked. They hired tutors to prep me in both math and verbal. When I took the test again and got the exact same score.
When I was applying for colleges and my parents seemed panicked because of my low SAT scores. I ended up at small liberal arts school in rural Pennsylvania where submitting my SAT scores was not required to apply.
*
I am lost in the compounding shame of these memories. My body slumps with defeat.
Then I breathe new life into my lungs and grow lighter until I am hovering again.—I didn’t know then what I do now. My brilliance shines beyond the abilities of any standardized test.
I breathe in this brilliance. And I exhale what no longer serves me.
The shame of going to a college my parents didn’t really like. Older Sister went to a big university in a big city, the student body ripe with Jews. I went to a small school in a small town, where WASPs ruled the social scene. “You joined a sorority? What kind of Jew are you?” said Dr. Judgementalstein.
The shame of receiving a free college education (because my parents paid for it) and never recognizing how lucky I was. Instead, I squandered four years as a Religion major (undoubtably in pursuit of my parents’ approval) and Philosophy minor (because I’d rather write a paper than study for a test). The shame of not remembering anything I learned in college.
The shame of being so distracted with hating Older Sister, that it consumed my identity. I did not think about who I was or what I wanted. I was too angry about the past to consider any of that.
The shame of losing friends because I was too angry or too loud.
The shame of wanting to be a writer. The shame of being a writer. The shame of my parents refusing to believe that writing is a real job.
The shame of starting a blog. My first blog, in 2008, aptly named The Young and the Restless. The shame of not knowing what to write. The shame of writing what happened and then sharing it with my family. The shame of my mother’s emailed response, “You can’t write that.”
***
I read my report as if I weren’t the one that just wrote every word.
Back then, I was ruled by a Judgementalstein class. A school of thought that no longer governs my point of view.
I am becoming reborn. A new, baby Cha Cha, cleansed of the shame from another life.