Lonely Snowman at the Flatiron Building. Oliver Fluck Photography. |
It begins in October, on my birthday, which is also the
anniversary of my brother Phil's death. Then there is Thanksgiving, Christmas,
and New Year's.
I exhale only on the first business day after New Year's
Day.
These holidays were hard when I was an abused kid in a
less than perfect family. These holidays are hard now that I'm a single adult
with a less than perfect life.
There was some respite years back when I was a young
adult, away from my natal family and before I was hit by the twin meteors of a catastrophic
illness and being politically incorrect in academia. These two events made me
really poor, and really poor is never really popular.
I remember my 24th birthday when my tall,
adorable, married boss, who, according to the grapevine, had a crush on me,
threw a surprise, candlelit birthday party for me above a sheep stall in Nepal.
Everyone was there. There were heartfelt toasts with raksi, Nepali moonshine,
and yearning glances and furious gossip. One of the great nights of my life. The
next day he sent me a poem by runner. Handwritten on that translucent, lumpy, handmade
Nepali lokta paper. I
still have the poem. If the skinny bastard wants to deny this, I can produce
it.
I remember a Thanksgiving party I threw in a closet-sized
dorm room in Dom Studencki Piast in 1988 in Poland. Communism was falling. Nobody
partied like young Poles on the verge of yet another liberation in their long
history of captivity and release. You would not believe how many gorgeous,
pale, crazed young Poles, and how much Sodom, Gomorrah, and Gatsby, we packed
into that tiny dorm room.
I remember an intimate, Berkeley, Christmas Eve gourmet
repast prepared by Simon Stern, now a successful professor, then my fellow grad
student, and an atheist of Jewish descent, who celebrated Christmas for me.
Those rare, long-gone days are jewels covered in dust in the
bottom of a quilted box way back in storage. They've begun to smell of mold.
Now it takes everything I have to remain upright,
functional, and dry-eyed.
My birthday. Thanksgiving. Christmas. New Years. Twenty-four
hour doses of hell.
I am so alone on these days, and in such overwhelming pain,
of a full buffet of flavors – rage, grief, nihilism – that inevitably I have to
ask, "Why am I here?"
I used to be Facebook friends with poet Mary
Krane Derr. My cherished Facebook friendship with Mary came to an abrupt end
on November 30, 2012, when Mary met the fate she long expected. Her body finally
quit.
Mary had been born with a chronic health condition and
she was always spilling out and spelling out her body's various malfunctions in
graphic, hapless, Facebook posts.
Mary rebelled against the concept that the afflicted
exist in order to provide spiritual growth to more fortunate people. Mary
didn't want to be constantly ill and on the verge of death – and she didn't
want to go through this as a learning experience for others. She wanted to be
healthy, goddamnit.
Me? I think it's possible. If God is in control, and if
the world makes some kind of someday remote sense – very big ifs – if the chaos
that we see, if you pull your focus far enough back, resolves itself into an
intricate and magnificent design– maybe those of us whose lives pointlessly
suck are here to say, however mutely, to those whose lives don't suck – Be
generous. Be grateful. Be aware.
The other day I had a strange encounter. A former student
approached me. The student described in detail my having helped her years ago.
She said that she had been totally alone and that no one else had realized she
needed help. No one knew what to do. I alone, she said, had recognized her
need, known how to help, and helped.
Here's the thing. To this day, I have no memory of this
event. I've struggled to add up her face and her story and my help and I don't
remember. And this isn't the first time this has happened to me – it's happened
about three times. Someone I can't place and don't remember says that I was
there at some key moment and did some key thing that made a positive
difference.
So. Maybe that is why I am here. For those key moments
when I help a stranger I'll quickly forget. And maybe I have to endure the
torture of these autumn holidays, for however long I have left, so that I'm there
at those important moments.
I am not always as alone as I am on my birthday, Thanksgiving,
Christmas, and New Year's. I test as pure extrovert with no introvert
tendencies. I am compulsively verbal and I like people. I like one-on-one contact
and I actually like crowds.
My human contacts, though, are seasonal. I'm not
important enough to anyone to be remembered or treated with any tenderness or
intimacy on my birthday. I have no family so Thanksgiving is an impossibility. On
Christmas I can always pretend to be Jewish and go to the movies and a Chinese
restaurant. I've never been either cool or sexy so New Year's is really not
that big of a deal; it's just that it is the final punctuation at the end of
the Fall suicidal despair marathon.
One of the social gymnastics I must perform is being nice
to people on the days after holidays when my acquaintances come trickling back
into contact with me. "Hi, Danusha! I just spent 36 hours ensconced in the
bosom of my family, cavorting and frolicking, surrounded by my grandma's apple
cheeks, my spouse's passionate and affirming embrace, my siblings' caring and
sharing, and my children's, niece's, and nephew's adorable, youtube-worthy antics!
How about you?"
What I want to say is, "You will be pocked by
plagues and wracked by famine, a scorching wind shall smite you, vengeful
midgets will trip you up, and an abominable beast with ten heads and a burning
eye in the center of each head will rise dripping, from the depth of churning
seas turned to blood to obliterate you with his rod of iron."
But usually I just say, "Hey, great!"
On a more serious note.
I have moments of celebration. Last summer I tossed together
an essay, "Top Ten Reasons I Am No Longer a Leftist." It took me two
days to write. I submitted it to an online publication and it "went
viral," or as close to viral as anything I write will ever get. I was
satisfied by that, and I shared my sense of satisfaction. Some of my Facebook
friends slapped me on the back and said "Way to go" and shared my happy
moment.
And my Facebook friends have shared my sadness, too.
I recognize that I'm being a small, miserable putz when I
am unable to be happy for them during their moments of celebration. Yes, they
have family and I don't. I should not begrudge affirmation. I don't know their
secret pains, and none of us knows what the score is going to be at the end.
So, yes. Happy Birthday. Happy Thanksgiving. Merry
Christmas. Happy New Year. May I be as happy for you as you have been for me. And
may the happiness I feel for you expand my soul as the sorrow you have felt for
me has expanded yours.
I don't normally close blogs with a list of instructions
for any potential readers, but I will close this one with just that. Please
don't feel sorry for me, or try to comfort me, or feel obligated to send me an
invitation. Being the charity stranger at someone else's family feast is worse
than being alone.
I feel compelled to write and to share what I write. I am
always eager to write. I always feel high when I write. I always feel better,
and better able to face any task, any chore – including surviving the holidays –
after I write. And that's why I posted this.
Don't ever stop writing
ReplyDeleteDonna, thank you.
DeleteThis picture I took when I spent the holidays in the NY. My friends had left the
ReplyDeletecity to see their families and I was stuck in their apartment with my canceled
flight to Germany. I spent Christmas alone stomping through the snow when I met
this fellow lonely snowman.
Nice to see he has found a nice home on your blog.
Oliver thank you for the photo and the story behind it.
Delete