You Are My Teacher
There is at least one moment of every day when I hurt so badly it takes my breath away. Sometimes I can see it coming like roiling clouds over Nebraska cornfields, advancing over my inner landscape and covering me as I cower in a ditch. Other times it slips between my ribs like a shiv - stealthy, sudden, and deadly. Actually, the phenomenon could spawn a million metaphors, but the end result is always the same: I am left gasping, reeling, feeling that I cannot continue inhaling and exhaling without losing my mind.
Anything can trigger the pain – a smell, a song on the radio, someone’s body language, an article about women’s rights, someone’s defiance - even someone’s fragile hope. Any tale
of cruelty will trigger it and, absurdly, kindness also is a surefire pang.
Every day.
Every day I try to go back and undo what cannot be undone. To prevent what I did not prevent. To see what was obscured. To know what I did not know.
Every day.
Every day I see their white, pinched, frightened faces. The pictures flash in front of my eyes in black and white, but the pictures have a smell of bitterness, and taste of panic and hopelessness.
Every day.
Every day I feel what it must have been like to be so cruelly violated by a crazy man who spoke softly in the dark - a crazy man who spoke of love.
Every day.
It happens in crowds, in the shower, at the office, when I’m driving my car, when I’m making
love, making dinner, making plans, making music, making a scene.
On good days it happens only once or twice. Over the years I have learned to survive by opening myself to each moment, to accept it, to watch it from the corner of my eye until it shows me whether it plans a glancing blow or a slow torture session that will have its way with me regardless of any work, community, or personal agenda I might already have set.
I take a deep breath, hold it, and let it drag me under.
So far I always have surfaced, either with barely a ripple or gasping for air with lungs on fire.
It happens. It hits me. The air leaves my lungs. I breathe again. I keep going.
This is what living with real grief is about. It becomes an appendage, really – a bizarre and obscene new phantom limb that can be felt but not seen. When I look at people whose stories I know to be tragic, I wonder if they have similar experiences, but I never ask them. I wonder, when the terrifying, annihilating moments steal into my consciousness, whether any companions of the moment can tell it is happening. I hardly ever talk about it – where on Earth would I begin? Not one of those million possible metaphors would begin to describe
it.
Before the incest was known to me but after many other terrible things had happened, my counselor once tried to give me a tool to use. She said I should thank the perpetrator of my children’s abuse. She said I should learn to say, “Thank you, for you are my teacher. Had
you not done those horrible things to me, I would not have learned that I do not
deserve them.”
Boy, was I pissed. Thank him? Thank him? I had absolutely no intention ever to become that evolved. You can keep your enlightenment if it involves any iota of magnanimous
feeling toward a monster – toward a cruel and evil force that I mistakenly allowed into my life - a force that very nearly ended my life, getting away.
I never will be the person that my counselor is. She is amazing, wise, kind, evolved, fierce – in ways that I can only admire. But over the years I find I have assimilated this tool she gave me, in my own way. Each time the pain strikes, subsides, and I find myself still breathing, I say my mantra of thanks:
Thank you, for you are my teacher. Without you I never would have learned that we did not deserve the terrible things you did.
I never would have learned that our basic human rights are the most precious possessions that we have and, once taken, must be restored at all costs because they are our only hope for healing.
I never would have learned that I can stand up to insanity and remain sane.
I never would have learned that I am ready to do anything it takes to be there for my kids when they need me.
I never would have learned that my most important responsibility as a human being is to tell myself the truth about my own life.
I never would have learned that the only thing more terrifying than telling the truth is not telling the truth.
I never would have learned that living afraid is worse than risking death to get away.
I never would have learned that real evil walks among us, but if we decide to kick its ass it can never really hurt us, even if it kills us – because we will die laughing in its face.
I never would have learned to stop being ashamed of the parts of me that are unlovable and embrace all of myself with fierce loyalty and protectiveness.
I never would have learned that I don’t care who hates me if I know that what I am doing is the right thing.
I never would have learned that in the midst of the sadness, anger, and despair I am at my core an optimist.
I never would have learned that my heart is so large that it can break daily yet love with a depth for which there is no measure.
I never would have become so truly alive that I can blaze like a million candles that will never burn out – even when I do, finally, cease to breathe.
with love and hope,
Another Mother
Anything can trigger the pain – a smell, a song on the radio, someone’s body language, an article about women’s rights, someone’s defiance - even someone’s fragile hope. Any tale
of cruelty will trigger it and, absurdly, kindness also is a surefire pang.
Every day.
Every day I try to go back and undo what cannot be undone. To prevent what I did not prevent. To see what was obscured. To know what I did not know.
Every day.
Every day I see their white, pinched, frightened faces. The pictures flash in front of my eyes in black and white, but the pictures have a smell of bitterness, and taste of panic and hopelessness.
Every day.
Every day I feel what it must have been like to be so cruelly violated by a crazy man who spoke softly in the dark - a crazy man who spoke of love.
Every day.
It happens in crowds, in the shower, at the office, when I’m driving my car, when I’m making
love, making dinner, making plans, making music, making a scene.
On good days it happens only once or twice. Over the years I have learned to survive by opening myself to each moment, to accept it, to watch it from the corner of my eye until it shows me whether it plans a glancing blow or a slow torture session that will have its way with me regardless of any work, community, or personal agenda I might already have set.
I take a deep breath, hold it, and let it drag me under.
So far I always have surfaced, either with barely a ripple or gasping for air with lungs on fire.
It happens. It hits me. The air leaves my lungs. I breathe again. I keep going.
This is what living with real grief is about. It becomes an appendage, really – a bizarre and obscene new phantom limb that can be felt but not seen. When I look at people whose stories I know to be tragic, I wonder if they have similar experiences, but I never ask them. I wonder, when the terrifying, annihilating moments steal into my consciousness, whether any companions of the moment can tell it is happening. I hardly ever talk about it – where on Earth would I begin? Not one of those million possible metaphors would begin to describe
it.
Before the incest was known to me but after many other terrible things had happened, my counselor once tried to give me a tool to use. She said I should thank the perpetrator of my children’s abuse. She said I should learn to say, “Thank you, for you are my teacher. Had
you not done those horrible things to me, I would not have learned that I do not
deserve them.”
Boy, was I pissed. Thank him? Thank him? I had absolutely no intention ever to become that evolved. You can keep your enlightenment if it involves any iota of magnanimous
feeling toward a monster – toward a cruel and evil force that I mistakenly allowed into my life - a force that very nearly ended my life, getting away.
I never will be the person that my counselor is. She is amazing, wise, kind, evolved, fierce – in ways that I can only admire. But over the years I find I have assimilated this tool she gave me, in my own way. Each time the pain strikes, subsides, and I find myself still breathing, I say my mantra of thanks:
Thank you, for you are my teacher. Without you I never would have learned that we did not deserve the terrible things you did.
I never would have learned that our basic human rights are the most precious possessions that we have and, once taken, must be restored at all costs because they are our only hope for healing.
I never would have learned that I can stand up to insanity and remain sane.
I never would have learned that I am ready to do anything it takes to be there for my kids when they need me.
I never would have learned that my most important responsibility as a human being is to tell myself the truth about my own life.
I never would have learned that the only thing more terrifying than telling the truth is not telling the truth.
I never would have learned that living afraid is worse than risking death to get away.
I never would have learned that real evil walks among us, but if we decide to kick its ass it can never really hurt us, even if it kills us – because we will die laughing in its face.
I never would have learned to stop being ashamed of the parts of me that are unlovable and embrace all of myself with fierce loyalty and protectiveness.
I never would have learned that I don’t care who hates me if I know that what I am doing is the right thing.
I never would have learned that in the midst of the sadness, anger, and despair I am at my core an optimist.
I never would have learned that my heart is so large that it can break daily yet love with a depth for which there is no measure.
I never would have become so truly alive that I can blaze like a million candles that will never burn out – even when I do, finally, cease to breathe.
with love and hope,
Another Mother