Untitled 137 by Cindy Sherman. I would humbly submit a title for this photograph: “Messy Woman”
I bought a 3 day parking permit at the Trenton Park and Ride parking lot because I thought I would need that much time to get to New York City and back. I was back in my car in less than 48 hours.
I picked up a flavorless frozen pecan pie from Giant on the drive home.
I walked in the house by 11AM on Thanksgiving morning. I proceeded to spent the entire day eating my way through the pie while watching Dead Poets Society, The Family Stone, The Holiday, and While You Were Sleeping.
I travelled to NYC to not sit at home alone, feel sorry for myself, eat junk, numb my brain, and cry.
I went all the way there and back to end up doing all of that.
Do you know what they say about going to New York City to not feel sorry for yourself on Thanksgiving?
You can’t run from yourself.
***
I almost didn’t go. I briefly considered, several times, to stay home and pretending to my kids during our bedtime phone calls that I was in the city. Oh I did so much walking today! . . . Yeah, I went and had pizza at our old pizza place . . . Delicious! . . . Oh, um, vegetarian. Can’t wait to take you guys back there next time.
That thought made me feel a little sick so I considered heading over to Pittsburg instead of NYC. My brain reasoned that it might be safer. Because safety was my concern about this whole going away on my own thing. Yup. Pittsburg over New York. I really considered Pittsburg over New York. And safer how? Another part of me shaking her head in disgusted disbelief. Pittsburg, I havered, with no data or experience, had to be more parochial and, thus, safer.
The thought of travelling alone terrified me for some unfathomable reason.
No, it’s fathomable. This is what happens to a mind whose reality gets twisted and questioned, including the reality about herself, for 12 years inside an abusive marriage. She goes from adventurous, fearless traveler in her twenties/thirties to a fearful middle aged woman in her late forties second guessing a visit to a city 2 hours away for a mere couple of nights.
I used to travel alone often to countries that didn’t even speak English. This was back when there was no smartphone, when I had little to no money, and all I had to help me navigate around my unfamiliar surroundings was a guide book with some useful phrases and a small map. I stayed in hostels, ffs. Never had an issue with fear.
Yet 20 years later, this smarter, wiser, 47 year old woman, with access to a smartphone with GPS technology, Uber, and Google at her fingertips, could not stop running scenarios about getting mugged, having my purse snatched, or raped. Let’s remember that I once lived in Manhattan. In the years I lived in that glorious city, I actually can’t recall a single time I felt like I was in danger beyond the usual level of caution and awareness of my surrounding that every woman exercises as she moves in the world. But to have my Spidey sense go off? I felt it once, very acutely, in London. Felt it twice in Toronto (to be fair I’ve lived in Toronto the longest), and zero times in Cambridge, Boston, New York, and Rapid City.
But the idea of going nowhere or to Pittsburg over Manhattan, lying to my kids, was . . . . What was more unacceptable than either of those two possibilities, was having to live with a Hairee who was a scaredy cat and a liar.
That is not who you are, I said. Or, that better not be who you are.
***
I’ve never been a good liar.
Partly, it’s because I don’t believe that my nonverbal communications can keep pace with or honor the verbal dissembling. I’m bad at faking. I just can’t seem to commit to a role and a story that isn’t true.
The other more pertinent reason is that I feel that lying is beneath me. My body finds it disgusting, like putting a sweaty sock in my mouth. It’s gross. Lying feels masochistic. The neon sign over my speech bubble would say, I don’t deserve to do this to myself. So this goes back to the mismatched verbal and nonverbal communication when I lie. I can’t convince myself lying is a good idea, because of my disgust reflex in my lizard brain rears its annoying amphibious head. I don’t have control over this part of my nervous system or at least it’s very difficult. It stands to reason that I should not assume I can convince someone of a lie.
This is not me blowing smoke up my own ass. I’ve lied to myself plenty! Let’s see: people pleasing, co-dependency, an internal critic that shames me till I’m the size of an amoeba. What’s the lie in those behaviors? That I’m worthless unless someone else find me worthwhile. For that lie, I managed to convince myself thoroughly for decades. Where was my lizard brain when I needed it?
***
The last time I visited the Museum of Modern Art or MoMA, was right after my sister got married in 2012. My eemo (mom’s younger sister) and cousin (eemo’s daughter) flew all the way from Korea to be there for her wedding. Why not visit New York while they were already on this side of the Pacific?
Cindy Sherman’s work was on special exhibit at MoMA that year. Sherman is a photographer who takes pictures of herself while playing with identity. It could be rudely and idiotically called navel gazing, as is often the misogynistic accusation when a female artist shows unabashed, unchained, and unfailing interested in plumbing the depths of herself in order to understand humanity. But it’s not navel gazing.
Cindy Sherman gets dressed up as different people, and takes picture of them. The people she becomes are types and yet utterly individual, individual because Sherman takes on their personas with total commitment and creativity. This level of commitment and creativity translates into compassion. She never places herself above the identities she tries on. It never feels ironic. And she somehow captures the spirit of all of these people in a single photograph. What is so jaw dropping about the photos is you can’t believe that they are all of the same woman being all of these different people. She is totally authentic while being totally hidden.
Her art defies the very idea of identity and authenticity while fiercely championing them at the same time. It’s a contradiction you have embrace not just to enjoy her art, but to love yourself.
Anyway, the exhibit was spectacular. The work, the curation, the display. The company, especially. It was perfection.
You know how sometimes we shake our heads at someone being an idiot and we’re like, “Man, if I were him/her/they . . . I would [fill in the blanks.]”
The truth is if you were her, you would do exactly the same thing.
What this means is that we are capable of being anyone given the same circumstances and that we as we know it is but the mere and unique sum product of our experiences. We are not born with an inborn identity. We are all of us made.
That’s what Sherman showed off at MoMA to such spectacular effect.
And I got to experience that with my mom who was a college trained oil painter and art teacher before marriage, my aunt who loves fine arts, my cousin who is also a trained artist and a successful private art instructor for kids, my sister who has exquisite taste, and me, a wannabe artist and trained writer, whose authorial ambitions might still possibly make it out of the ICU.
I thought about all of these art loving, art doing women in my life, these women who have had a hand in shaping my sense of beauty. These women with so much trauma and water under the bridge that they hardly talk to one another any more.
I couldn’t help but look for them in the other patrons. Were those two women, standing in front of the Seurat, sisters? Cousins? Niece and aunt? Who are you now, my dearest women family members? My eemo? My cousin? My sister? Even my mom? Do I care who they are or think they are? I don’t. I miss you and love you no matter what.
***
Things I did while in NYC:
Browse the Christmas market at Union Square, walk to Rockefeller to see the unlit tree, go into the NYC public library but get denied entry into the Rose Main Reading Room, because I couldn’t prove I was there to study, because I wasn’t there to study, eat dan dan noodles at a small bao restaurant, walk around Korea town, buy some treats at Tous Les Jour, visit MoMA, visit Chinatown and have BBQ pork on rice at Hay Hay BBQ, wash and sweat at The Spa Club in Koreatown, watch the entire Netflix series, The Man on the Inside, walk around Bryant Park Christmas market, visit Central Park, ride the subway a lot.
Not one time did any one look at me funny, make me feel odd or out of place, glance at me with pity for being there without my kids, think how lucky they were that they weren’t going to be spending Thanksgiving alone like that pitiful middle aged Asian woman in the middle of a high conflict divorce shuffling around New York all by herself.
***
My mother called me on Saturday, 2 days after Thanksgiving. I told her I went to NYC alone when she asked how Thanksgiving went. She thought it was on Friday. I tell her it was on Thursday. What was I doing in NYC alone? she asked with disbelief. Did you meet friends there? she asked hopefully. I told her why I went and no I didn’t meet any friends. I didn’t want to meet any friends. “That’s probably for the best. Sometimes you just don’t want to see anyone.” Because when you’re pathetic who wants to be seen or see anyone? That was the tone of her voice.
This is why I didn’t call her. I missed her, though, while strolling alone through MoMA.
***
When I told my friends I was going to NYC, they all sent me digital high fives. Yes, do it! Do something nice for yourself! Of course you should do something nice for yourself! What a great idea! Treat yo self!
The self-care industry is full of “you go, girl!” products and experiences. Get your nails done. Go to a spa. Get a facial. Get a massage. See a therapist. Do yoga. Eat at a nice restaurant. Have a drink in a fancy hotel bar. Go on a solo trip. Treat yourself to a Broadway play. Go watch a movie in the theatres. Eat pizza. Buy a new face cream. Crochet. Or some other hobby. All these different ways to “care” for yourself involves spending money in the pursuit of pleasure. Money buys pleasure. It does not buy happiness.
I used to think they were the same thing. They’re not.
***
On the second day of my visit in NYC, after a terrible night’s sleep, walking all day around MoMA, knee stiff and sore, chilled by the late November evening, and feelings terribly lonely, I did decided to treat myself. When happiness is this out of reach, you reach for pleasure.
I found a Korean bath in Koreatown. I hadn’t been to a Korean bath since 1999 in Seoul when my aunt took me and my sister to a really nice place with several different temperature hot baths. “You go in naked as a baby and come out naked as a baby,” said the attendant with the kind eyes in the ladies locker room when I asked her hesitantly what I should do about being naked.
So I walked around naked. I got into the large bath naked. I sweated naked in the steam sauna. I was naked with other naked bodies. This being New York there were bodies of all different shades and sizes and ages and hairiness. We soaked together, sweated together, showered naked beside each other sitting on low stools and looking at ourselves in the mirror. Vanity, like nudity, is treated as purely natural and free of any moral values.
This is new: the dry saunas were coed. I wish we could have been all naked there, too, but everyone had to wear spa issue terry cloth shorts and t-shirts. I think they should end this heteronormative nonsense and realize that I saw plenty of women I wouldn’t have minded fucking.
All in all, I sweated and soaked and washed and bathed for 3 hours. I took a half hour nap in the stone sauna room, sweated in the salt sauna room, drank cup after cup of cold filtered water. Sweated some more. I conditioned my hair twice. Clean, I also felt very clean, definitely. Knee felt better. I felt more relaxed. How was your visit? Oh very nice, thank you. I did not tell the lady at the front desk, But I’m not happy.
***
While on the NJ Transit riding into NYC, a friend from Toronto suggested enthusiastically that I get in touch with a mutual friend and sent me her phone number. Sure why not, I thought. This NYC friend immediately texted back and we promised to solidify details for a meet up the following day. Another friend from Boston just happened to be in the city with her family for Thanksgiving. She reached out after seeing an IG reel I posted about my first night in NYC and invited me to join her for brunch on Thanksgiving morning.
I thought I would feel good about these invitations to connect.
The truth is I’ve never really understood why I have friends, especially the friends I have.
The women friends in my life are ambitious, smart, and funny. They’re educated, continuing to get even more educated; they have careers, have employees, own businesses, own properties, own investment portfolios. Most are happily married with kids or are about to be happily married. They speak more then one language. They travel. They vacation. Alone, with family, with each other. They have sophisticated palates and enjoy food. They’ve lived in different countries. They live in famous cities. They give great advice because they have wisdom earned over decades of life experiences with more wins on their bottom line. They exercise, survive life threatening illnesses, bury parents, see therapists, treat themselves to selfcare as a matter of routine.
Sure they have flaws. I mean I’ve heard everyone has them so they must, too.
The point is, each and every one of them is a human being I respect and admire in more ways than one. And they’re fun.
I honestly don’t know how I managed to befriend such humans.
But in my darkest times, I actually don’t know why they bother to give me the time of day. There are days when I have a lot of trouble locating the qualities that draw such women to me, and even when I do locate a couple of virtues, I continue to be astonished that these qualities could outweigh the vices.
***
It helps that I hide my weakness so well. I’ve spent my entire life hiding my weakness. Psychology calls this weakness shame.
Shame has been the loudest, most consistent throughline to the narrative of my life. Everything I have done, it seems to me, has been in service of trying to manage shame. Repress it, circumvent it, hide it, ignore it, pour it into an engine that fuels being badass and fearless and reckless and mouthy.
Divorce made me aware of my shame. I honestly had no idea the extend of its presence, force, and magnitude in my life until this traumatic event. Divorce is a trauma, so ordinary that people treat it the same way they treat childbirth–something that happens every day like the sun rising and setting.
While I have become aware of this shame and I’m working through it, finally, at the age of 47, I still struggling with my habitual ways of dealing with it when it surges up in my brain and body.
This is what happened in NYC when invitations for connection from these friends came in. This trip to NYC was my way of trying to ignore the shame, quite unconsciously, of being alone on Thanksgiving. I had no one to cook for, to celebrate with, to be thankful with, to eat with.
It would make any normal mother feel sad. Any mother who has been there for every ordinary and special day of every year of her kids’ lives until the divorce would miss her kids on Thanksgiving or any other day. It’s the contrast however between her living a totally different Thanksgiving while other people carrying on as they always have during this time of year, that makes her miss them more, makes her feel even more alone. The relative aloneness during these times when connections are at their peak all over the country, rather than the philosophically objective aloneness of everyone, sharpens alone into lonely.
For me, my loneliness wasn’t experienced solely as a temporary condition of my situation. It felt like a condition of me. Even though I consciously, objectively knew that being alone this Thanksgiving didn’t say anything about my core identity, I felt like it had everything to with it. Shamefully alone.
What shame? my friends would undoubtedly guffaw. I can hear some of them laughing at me gently, firmly. I can even see myself putting an arm around my shoulder and whispering in my ear, Don’t you dare think about calling yourself a loser.
This shame is what I learned to feel as a child when I needed someone and nobody was there. When nobody listened to me. When nobody believed me. When I was dismissed, derided, devalued. When I was beaten and I would dissociate so that I wasn’t even there for me anymore.
This is called abandonment trauma. I wasn’t physically abandoned by my parents. But I was emotionally abandoned by them every day for decades. It feels like every single day of my life with them right up to present day with very few exceptions.
And I did what all children do when they find themselves living in situations and with people who continuously let them down–I determined quite naturally and unconsciously that I was being abandoned because I deserved to be abandoned, that I was abandoned not because the situation was bad, not because the parents didn’t know how to show up, but because I was bad.
So consistent was this state of affairs, I learned to abandon myself. I did this because I was ashamed of my Self. I didn’t deserve my dreams, I didn’t deserve to have my feelings recognized and validated and tended to, I didn’t deserve to have my body respected.
Ways I abandoned myself since I was a kid, an abbreviated list: completely erasing from memory the childhood sexual abuse, not attending an art college, losing my virginity painfully to a stranger, abusing drugs in my twenties, never enjoying sex but pretending to come, hurting my body with disordered eating.
Ways I abandoned myself as an adult, an abbreviated list: giving up my writing career to support my ex’s career and raise my kids alone, giving up on being financially independent, blaming myself for my abusive marriage.
Ways I abandoned myself most recently: declining invitations to connect with friends while visiting NYC.
***
Being a human being necessarily means that sometimes shit happens. During these shit storms, we feel unmoored, unstable, unraveled. This is not a state of existence that is kind to women in particular, especially middle aged women of color going through perimenopause. Women of a certain age are expected to keep it together no matter what. We are expected to make sure that even while life seems to be falling apart around them, they still do their hair, put on makeup, raise the kids, clean the house, go to class, plan for retirement, start dating. Do whatever you need to do to mind your business, and for God’s sake do not be mess.
Meanwhile, when things are falling apart, human beings tend to assume a self protective stance, physically and emotionally. Our bodies get tense and stay tense. This can give us literally a pain in our backs, headaches, diarrhea. The raised cortisol levels in our body decreases the health of our immune systems and we get sick more easily and take longer to recover. Psychologically, we become myopic and our peripheral vision narrows. It’s hard to see big pictures and plan for the future. Stress makes us more emotionally and psychologically unavailable to ourselves and those around us. The last thing we want to do is reach out and love people when we are locked in this defensive posture in our bodies and our minds.
But this is precisely when we need to reach out and connect with those who love us. It’s the only thing that will ease the tension in our backs as well as our hearts. But it is so very counterintuitive.
***
My mother used to wake up in the middle of the night with a terrible pain in her leg. Back then, she routinely worked 12 to 16 hours a day, mostly on her feet, managing a convenience store by herself. Her diet was poor, she was perpetually dehydrated, and she worried about money all the time.
She would yell for me in the dark, “Hairee! Hairee!” moaning and crying with distress. I would stumble in the dark, heart pounding, to her room, and find her face locked in a crazed look, twisted in pain, her body jerking in the bed in the dark trying to say, “Leg! leg!” After the first time this happened, I knew what to do, but the first time was confusion and terrifying helplessness. She was in so much pain she could barely talk. So it took what felt like forever to figure out what was wrong, let alone figure out how to help her.
Once I knew what was wrong and I knew what I had to do, she wouldn’t let me to stretch out her calves and massage out the cramp. I had to tell her multiple times that I needed pull her toes toward her shin. In order for me to do that she had to roll onto her back from her fetal position on her side and let me straighten her leg. She would just shake her head saying, no, no. She couldn’t think for the pain. She would make these guttural, animal like noises while grabbing her leg to protect it from more pain. When I tried to roll her on her back myself, she would growl at me. I got angry from fear and yelled at her: “Umma! Umma! You have to let me help you!”
Every step took forever. First get her on her back. Then peel her hands away from her leg. Lower her leg. Peel her hands away from her leg again. Push her toes toward her shin. NO, NO, NO! Too much! Slowly, much more slowly. Little by little her body would unclench. Her fingers, her face, her shoulders, her stomach, her back. And finally her legs and feet and toes. By the end, we were both spent and sweating. We both looked a mess. I gently massaged her offending calf while she splayed there on her bed, duvet falling off the mattress, totally exhausted and spent from the pain. I kept going until she said she thought she was okay now, you should go back to bed, yes, I’m sure, go back to bed, thank you.
The next time this happened, there was far less confusion and my mother rolled onto her back more quickly. But not because she was in less pain. She had learned to do the counterintuitive thing: to let me stretch out her cramp even though that was that last thing her body wanted to allow.
Pain makes you freeze and want to remain frozen. At first. Once you reach down, though, and pull on your toes toward your shin, the pain dissipates. Afterwards you lie there in bed breathing heavily, splayed out in bed with exhaustion, hair everywhere, sweaty.
You look like a mess.
And this is how I didn’t want to be seen by my friends. Deep down where my shame of abandonment still hangs out, I don’t believe that even my friends want to see a messy woman. Not really. We all drink from the same cultural river. Even feminists can be sexist without even realizing it. A messy woman, a crying woman, a screaming woman, an angry woman, a lost woman, a divorcing woman, is one of the most unseemly sights in civil society. And I am all those things these days.
Compounding this culturally ascribed shame of messiness is my shame of abandonment. Part of me continues to believe that I don’t deserve to be seen and known when I am confused, when I am misbehaving, when I have inconvenient feelings, when I am bad, when I am a mess.
And so I declined offers of connection.
But during times of turmoil, it is the simple truth that we are all messy. So to pretend or feel as if I must pretend to be otherwise is a lie. Treating pain as unseemly is a lie.
It is a lie to be tidy when I am a mess.
***
It was the day after Thanksgiving. My friend, whose brunch invitation I had declined, texted me:
“I am kicking myself not acting on my gut feeling. I had a sense that the rush split was about not wanting to be seen in a “certain way. I should’ve been clear maybe that I know what that feels like. And that it’s so more than ok, that it’s so normal, and so important to allow yourself to receive at this time. Allow self to get the slightly longer hug, that extra squeeze that lets you know another human feels your pain and knows it. We’ve all bee in this kind of pain at one point or another in life. I see you as a warrior, as a fighter for yourself and your children, and fuck I know how being in (what might feel like) the middle of a phase can feel so out of balance, like we are not our best selves somehow, but that’s just an ugly lie, a lie that comes from some pretend culture where ppl are “supposed” to be a certain kind of “best selves.” Hope I’m making sense. I love you, and I know you are your best self every day. Even the days we can’t move, that’s the best self for that day. Love you!”
I didn’t cry when I read the court ordered custody arrangement. I didn’t cry when I began to dread my solitude leading up to Thanksgiving. I didn’t cry when I put up my Christmas decorations early to buoy my mood in anticipation of depression. I didn’t cry while spending 2 weeks planning my solo trip, havering between NYC and Pittsburg and home. I didn’t cry while walking around NY alone. I didn’t cry while eating Chinese BBQ alone. I didn’t cry at MoMA. I didn’t cry when I came home early. I didn’t cry when I spent Thanksgiving eating flavorless frozen pecan pie and watching movie after movie.
But when I read this text, I finally knew the real reason I had declined her offer, because she knew. She had the wisdom and compassion to see through my excuses to the real reason. She saw me more clearly in that moment than I had been able to see myself.
And then I cried and cried.
***
When I finally saw my children on Friday evening, I asked them what they had for dessert on Thanksgiving, thinking about the utterly disappointing pecan pie I had mindlessly gorged on the day before. They hesitated, both of them. I realized they didn’t want to tell me because they felt sorry for my having missed out.
“Listen, you guys. I get the feeling that you’re feeling bad for me that I didn’t get to have any Thanksgiving dessert. So you don’t want to tell me about all the tasty treats you had. But it is not your job to make mom feel good by hiding good stuff that happens to you. It’s not your job to make me feel good period. It is totally okay for you guys to have enjoyed Thanksgiving dessert without me. This is how Thanksgiving will be every other year from now on and that is not your fault nor is it your job to protect me and my feelings about how Thanksgivings are now. Your job is to live your lives and figure out who you are. Enjoying Thanksgiving is part of that living, and I’m so glad you get to enjoy Thanksgiving with or without me. I can handle it. I mean, I went to New York and I had a great time! I’m living my life, too. So. What did you have for dessert?”
They proceeded to list all the pies, ice creams, candies, and sodas they had consumed. I was happy for them.
***
The following Tuesday I went to class. “I love the days when I have school,” I said to my younger son the night before over bedtime phone call. “It makes me feel like I’m moving towards my career goals and that sense of forward movement makes me feel good.”
During our mid-lecture break, I told a small group of women in my class that I went to NYC for Thanksgiving. They naturally asked me how I enjoyed myself.
I could have lied by listing the things I did, the things I saw, the things I ate.
But having very recently learned to be kind to my messy self from my friend, I decided to say instead, “I was lonely. I mean, there were the high notes that New York can’t help but provide, but underneath those notes, there was this constant chord of loneliness running through my visit.”
I told them about how scared I’d been to even go to NY in the first place, how unfamiliar and annoyed and puzzled I’d been with my fear given my experience with traveling alone. “I was imagining getting mugged or raped, having these catastrophic fantasies about visiting a city I used to live in. I couldn’t understand why I had to push myself to do something fun for myself.”
“You know,” said a classmate, who is the CEO of her own PR company, “I feel like being alone, doing things alone, is sort of like a muscle. You haven’t had the chance to exercise that muscle in a long time. So it’s no wonder you felt hesitant and maybe not as strong as you’d have like to feel. But give yourself time and practice and you’ll feel stronger and stronger.”
Another classmate who teaches yoga and has two daughters around my kids age said, “I think it’s normal to have thoughts about possible dangers while travelling alone after having kids. You’ve been so used to doing that with your kids, imagining worst case scenarios as a way to prevent disaster, trying to keep them safe. It’s no wonder you were thinking that way for yourself now as mother, whereas you didn’t think this way when you were single and childless.”
It never ceases to amaze me the quality of the women, who by my sheer luck, it seems, come into my life.
The question of whether the universe is fundamentally friendly or malevolent or indifferent is one that every person must answer. And there is really only one right and useful answer for a human being.
If you think the universe is malevolent, then there is no point to bothering with anything. Pain is all there is and meaning making will lead inevitably to death. Living is in direct contradiction to a malevolent world view. It’s completely pointless. Why have a view at all?
If you think the universe is indifferent, meaning is a game we play. Meaning making has no validity beyond ourselves, no real force in life or the world because there is no value outside of the individual. This view of the universe may be attractive to those who are pragmatic, individualistic, rational. But it fails to capture the reality of human nature and experience in the context of family, community, country, world.
In a friendly universe, one knows that she cannot survive, or even understand who she is, alone. The power of the collective human consciousness is as real as stars and galaxies and as all encompassing. Meaning making, the kind that heals trauma is only possible if one believes in a friendly universe where hope is real when shit hits the fan, when spirits and bodies get mangled by the the sudden touchdown of hurricanes. It is the friendly universe and only the friendly universe that reaches out to help you up, dust you off, put a blanket around your shoulder, and invited you to breakfast.
That is what these women did for me this week. Even the women who live far away, women who are estranged from me, estranged from each other, they were with me, too, with the love they showed me in times past. They are all members of my friendly universe, giving meaning to my life, offering me a company and a seat at the table when I feel alone.
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