Four women want their hair back. I do not. I must remember that no two bald people are the same. How could they be? But this doesn’t stop me from wanting to find someone who cherishes being bald as much as I do. All I can do is love myself. I own my disease.
You go into your kitchen one morning and pull the small frying pan out of the bottom cupboard—the one to the right of the stove, one of the two or three in this rented house’s kitchen you have to close just right if you want the latch to catch—because you are determined to eat better and save money and because you love egg sandwiches with cheese for breakfast.
You see what looks like a mouse turd.
Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Objects may include anger, confusion, love, envy, longing, loneliness, lust, fear, apathy, delusion. And, then, grief.
I was adopted when I was two years old, from China, with seven other girls. Our parents called us the Rat Pack, a clever play on words, on their part, due to the fact we were all born in the Year of the Rat, according to the Chinese Zodiac Calendar. This name stuck, of course, and we have called ourselves The Rat Pack for as long as I can remember.
When asked, “How many brothers and sisters do you have?” I might give any of the following answers: only child, oldest of 3, or oldest of 5. All true. This is what it means to be a stepdaughter.
Maybe, something deep inside me felt, if I tell myself—and everyone else around me—a story, the pain will go away. And we all do this, to a degree. We have a life narrative we tell ourselves—a story about who we are that we grip onto for dear life.
My best friend Monica is there with me. She's crying too. Our parents think we're being melodramatic. They think we'll forget each other. Make new friends. Get over it. I don't. Not really. Not for a long time.
Have a good day at work. Feel proud of yourself and fortunate for your job. Remember that you are an expert in something besides parenting. Send your friends articles about work-life balance. Feel validated when they agree with you. Then have a bad day at work. Tell yourself it doesn’t matter, because you might change careers. Wonder where that came from.
I close my eyes. I draw my breath up to my collarbones where it lingers. I purposely hold it there. I watch the pause and wait for it to right me. It kind of does. On the exhale, the breath floods my belly. A wind sound fills the back of my skull. My jaw bones soften. I am finding my way back to what needs my attention. Back to now. Now is breath and sensation.
A year ago in my university’s newspaper, I wrote, “I conquered an eating disorder.” What I meant was that I didn’t use the margins of my notebooks to tally calories anymore.
The thing that struck me about this year of my life was how I was treated by the medical profession as a person dealing with anxiety plus a mysterious medical condition. I was told repeatedly that I was nut case.
Finally the tears are done, and left is the sound and feel of my feet hitting the dirt, the sky, the blurred edges of the dark world. As I run home, there is are minutes cupped in darkness and silence, no cars or people passing by, and in these moments, something comes over me. I hear only the thud, thud of my feet hitting the sand after every kick, and my breath. I feel the unblinking presence of the universe, and myself inside, running as humbly as a red blood cell tumbling through the aorta.
