Part II

By fourth grade I was so angry and so sad that I was sent to my first psychiatrist. At least, that's what I'm told. I remember puzzles, a high filing closet, a cats cradle. It felt useless but I walked away with string in my hands and an art box, learned to busy my hands when my brain started to bubble. Later I'd busy my hands with razors, thumbtacks, bad poetry, sticking my fingers down my throat, overloading myself with schoolwork until I collapsed or someone noticed. And with art.

My mother brought my spool of silver wire to the hospital, my skewers for weaving it. They let me take it out when it's quiet, which is most of the time, and sit in the common spaces twirling hair-thin wires into a hollow woven tube. It needs to be four feet long to tie the way I want it to. I'd planned it out months ago, plated gold, stuffed with pearls, my crocheted noose. An art piece for my collection. I weave it here, tell the orderlies it's just a necklace, which it is, also. Impress them with my calm, with my ability, she seems so together. And I quietly work away, laughing a little at the irony, but only on the inside.

Part I

It's tempting to go back, sometimes. When I feel weak. When I want to feel like the most normal person in the room, when I want it to not matter if I'm not. Where figures drift in and out of the common spaces, in and out of touch with reality. Some fight to take their meds and more, some fight not to. I line up like a good girl. Cigarettes like freedom anticipated, counted down, bargained for just one more minute, we step outside. For once the swirls of smoke don't choke me, for once the birds don't sound so bad, but I'm relieved to go back inside. I'm not ready for all that space.

I fold myself up in bed and cry like the origami flower my roommate, a lifer, placed on my pillow my first night. She's sweet, and won't tell me what she did, only that she's being transferred to a state hospital and she's afraid she won't get out, and then she gets quiet. Her family wants her to stay behind walls, thinks she belongs. The staff watch her when she eats - they're meant to watch me too. They don't. It doesn't matter, the food is bland and I don't eat enough to make it worth my while to purge. Besides, she might hear. And that's not what I'm here for anyway, really.

My mother and brother come from a college visit straight to the hospital when they hear. My funny, airy brother, deflated, stands as tall as he can, tries to grow up enough to take care of me, separates himself from the shoulders around the room hunched in defeat. My mother tells me she's proud I asked for help, asks with their eyes why she isn't enough, what they did wrong. We play Scrabble to convince ourselves we're still who we were, awkwardly, in the common room, while a woman yells at the TV. They leave. My parents come back the next day with clothes from my apartment, toiletries, luxuries. They get permission to take me out to dinner, and I eat and eat and purge in the bathroom at the restaurant, and on the way home we pick up socks and a blanket from the dollar store, and a panicked rodent somewhere in my chest wants to bolt from the store, and it echoes the itch in my feet that wanted to bolt into traffic, days ago. And I didn't do it but it was only this time, I couldn't be sure I wouldn't and now I'm here and I quiet the rodent the best I can and walk to the car.

Thanks to BHJ for sparking the strength to begin this particular series of posts.

Wisdom teeth

He picked me up at the train station, after a month of talking, waiting, testing the waters. I sang under my breath, thrilled to be back in the city, feeling beautiful despite the swelling and pale green bruises under makeup on my jaw. I felt ebullient, wittier than ever, reveling in my strength, my lack of shame, my form fitting clothes and hair uncovered, afloat in the wind. This is what you want. Intelligence, strength, toughness. You came for me. We eat ice cream, he'll have what I have, the cold soothing on the stitches in the back of my mouth. Then it comes, a confession to make. It's just a family thing. It's culture. I don't love her. The wind knocked out of me, I pause. Should I go? Is this the life you want? You don't understand. I'm Saudi. I have to. What did you expect me to say? I hail a cab, stitch myself up, drag my bags upstairs to the new apartment one step at a time.

Echoes

I am tattooed with snapshots of who I have been: A naïve Zionist teenager with her Hebrew name on her back; a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors with a memorial etched indelibly on her arm; a girl with the ourobouros, the snake eating its tail, ancient symbol of fertility, tradition, growth, change, twisted into an infinity symbol on her shoulder; a woman growing into her skin with a declaration of self on her wrist. It shows vines twisting down my forearm and culminating at my wrist in the hebrew word “Hineini,” here I am. It is the response of powerful Biblical characters when God calls their name; not cowering, not fear. It represents the most important kind of strength, the strength to retain a sense of self in the midst of things much bigger than you. The strength not to be afraid of failing, to know that even if you can’t do everything, you can do something. Facing sexism, facing racism, facing poverty and greed and inequality, I can do something. Every time I shake someone’s hand, the word Hineini faces up from my wrist, a joyful reminder of my heritage, the tattoo and the history reclaimed intact. It is a reminder to be mindful, to not take time for granted, that wherever I am in life, to enjoy being there, in that moment. Hineini, here I am.