Читать книгу Big Love - Scott Stabile - Страница 11

THE COUGHER

I had an unusually inspiring experience at the San Francisco airport. I was relaxing in one of the airline clubs, because I’m fancy like that, eating pasty oatmeal topped with stale granola out of a cardboard bowl (see, fancy). I was doing my best to drown out the CNN election coverage, when a room-shaking yet succinct cough exploded from somewhere near the self-service espresso counter. The sound was extraordinary, like something you’d expect to come out of a bear or an elephant or even Godzilla, but definitely not a human. A thunderous boom, it made me jump a little in my seat.

I studied my fellow club denizens but couldn’t figure out who was behind the cough. Surely not the tanned, elderly woman dripping in diamonds and sipping her morning Chardonnay. She couldn’t have produced such a sound. It wasn’t the petite businesswoman, either, in a chocolate-brown pantsuit, typing away on her laptop in between bites of biscotti. All children were definitely out; this noise came from someone full-grown. But no one looked embarrassed or guilty or like a radioactive monster on layover from Tokyo. It was as though it hadn’t happened at all, like I had imagined the sound. Until it happened again, the same exact expulsion, every bit as enormous as the first one. This time, however, I was looking right at the culprit when he let loose — an older man, probably in his early seventies, casually dressed, reading USA Today, completely unfazed by the blare that had just exploded from his body. So unfazed was he that he didn’t even bother to cover his mouth. He let go right into the sports section.

For the next half hour, as I finished my oatmeal, downed two mini-muffins, and started on a bagel (because, free food), the man let out his monstrous cough about every minute. Like clockwork. If it was possible to hide his cough, or at least downsize it to a lower level on the Richter scale, he showed no interest in doing so. I had no idea what he was thinking, of course, but he didn’t appear bothered by the cough at all, or even, more incredibly, the least bit self-conscious about it. I wasn’t the only one alarmed by his sonic boom, either. More than a few people cleared the area after a couple of rounds. The tanned, elderly woman practically sprinted out of there, wine in hand. The cougher, however, just sipped his coffee and read his paper as he violently hacked his way through the morning. This was clearly his norm.

When the man got up to leave, he walked right by me and smiled a kind, sincere smile. I nodded and smiled back. Little did he know, in the short time I had listened to and watched him cough, he’d inspired me in a profound way. He became my airport club hero that morning. I still think about him and his cough regularly. Which sounds strange, of course, if you don’t know the reason why.

Hello. My name is Scott, and I’m a cougher. I cough all the time. Not just cough, either. I sniffle, clear my throat, swallow hard, and blow air out of my nose while making a chee sort of sound. I hem and ahem and snort and hack. In short, I make a whole lot of irritating noise with my nose, throat, and mouth, a symphony of gurgles and air and phlegm. Every day, throughout the day.

My coughsnifflechee is one of the things I’m most self-conscious about (nestled somewhere among my crooked teeth and back hair). Nobody likes to cough constantly, just as nobody likes a constant cougher. It’s distracting, annoying, even fear inducing in closed spaces. In movie theaters, I cough. On airplanes, I clear my throat. In restaurants, I ahem. In yoga class, I sniffle. No matter where I am, I’m making unnecessary noise, and unlike my hero in the airport lounge, I’m always aware of my coughsnifflechee and the probability that others are, too.

I’ve coughed for most of my life. Though I can’t pinpoint exactly when it started, my first memory of coughing with any sort of regularity was in high school, not long after my parents died. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. As far as I know, and I’ve seen doctors about it in the past, my cough isn’t reflective of any physical ailment. That suggests it’s emotional, or psychological, and I believe it is. When I get nervous, my coughsnifflechee goes haywire — before business dealings and unfamiliar social gatherings and important relationship conversations. Any time I’m the least bit insecure or uncertain of an outcome, I devolve into a hacking mess. Usually, and luckily, the extreme of this happens when I’m alone, before engaging in whatever it is that’s induced my fit. Conversely, when I’m on vacation, completely relaxed, and especially when I’m immersed in nature of any kind, my cough relaxes. I can go days without coughing. Okay, not really. But a few hours, for sure.

About ten years ago, I stopped coughing, cold turkey. I pulled up to my favorite LA tennis court, about to go play a match, and told myself, “Enough with this cough. You’re done. Now.” And I was. I made it six months with no coughing. But I had to concentrate on not coughing all the time. Fighting back the coughs with my mind, swallowing them down instead of releasing them. It never became natural. It never felt good. All that effort proved more irritating than the cough, so I surrendered to my coughsnifflechee, and it’s been with me ever since.

There are many spiritual explanations for coughing. One website I stumbled on states that chronic coughing or gagging is the result of divine punishment coupled with a satanic attack. Now, that’s disheartening but might explain some of my recent nightmares if true. In the world of metaphysics, a cough suggests an imbalance in the throat chakra, the chakra associated with self-expression and communication. These imbalances are likely to occur when you’re unable to say what you need to say, when you’re having trouble expressing yourself. Since I often have trouble saying exactly what I want or need to say, especially when it’s vulnerable, provocative, or potentially hurtful to do so, that rings truer than a satanic attack. Thank goodness. The cough, however, has never completely disappeared, even after I’ve mustered up the courage to speak some hard truths. In traditional Chinese medicine, every organ is associated with an emotion, and the lungs are the organ of sadness or grief. A persistent cough could represent grief that is suppressed or unexpressed. Hmmm. The cough began after my parents were killed. And I’m certain, even with all the grieving I’ve done over the years, there are suppressed pockets, possibly abysses, of grief still within me. I’m giving it to traditional Chinese medicine for the win.

I may not know exactly why I cough the way I do, but I do know how it’s made me feel over the years: frustrated, scared, embarrassed, and ashamed. Frustrated because it’s tiring and annoying to be coughing and clearing my throat all the time. Scared when my hypochondriac mind tells me I’m giving myself throat cancer or that my coughing will eventually swell up my throat until I can’t breathe (clearly, my hypochondriac mind has never been to med school). Embarrassed because I know some people are thinking, “Geez, that guy makes a lot of noise. I hope he’s not contagious.” I’d be thinking the same. The shame, however, has been the hardest. Isn’t it always?

My shame insists that my cough reflects some major character flaw, a weakness within me, something to be hidden at all costs. Especially because my cough appears to be solely emotional, which suggests I’m not nearly as emotionally sound as I, and the many thousands in my social media community, suspect me to be. What kind of personal growth teacher–type person can’t even get himself together enough to stop coughing? What kind of healer can’t heal himself? Shame uses my cough to convince me I’m a fraud. When I let it.

Like any senseless bully, my shame only grows stronger in my silence. It feeds on secrecy, on my unwillingness to acknowledge those things about which I feel guilty or regretful or humiliated. Shame tells me I’m unlovable — a flawed, vile monster — and that the world is unsafe, overflowing with people who want nothing more than to judge and condemn me for my appearance, and ideas, and choices. My shame tells me to hide.

I spent nearly every moment of my time in college underneath a baseball cap, to keep my fellow students — even my closest friends — from discovering that I was losing my hair. My shame told me my balding head wasn’t just unusual at that age but also ugly and something to make fun of. I wasted so much emotional energy on my hair loss, and on keeping it hidden. I sat at the back of the computer center, facing the entrance, so that no one could walk up behind me and snatch off my cap, because, as we all know, college computer centers are hotbeds of cap-snatching. When I went to bed with a woman, I waited until we turned off the lights to take off my hat, and I kept her hands off my head at all times, lest she discover the secret of my baldness and run screaming from the bed. Even around my family, who had all watched my three older brothers go bald in their twenties, I kept my hat on. As though it were glued to my head. And during my waking hours, it was. Once I finally got over the shame of losing my hair — aided more by my move to San Francisco and the sudden popularity of shaved heads than by my enlightened realization that we are all beautiful, exactly as we are — I felt almost as ashamed of my vanity and that it took me so long to get over the shame of losing my hair. A tricky bastard, that shame. It works every angle.

Hair loss and coughing are just a couple of examples on a too-long list of things I’ve been ashamed of. Add to those my chimpanzee-like body hair, frequent halitosis, turned-in front teeth, and gray hair (what’s left of it). Not to mention the shame I’ve felt about my father’s gambling addiction, my brother’s heroin addiction, and my own social media addiction. Then there’s my shame over never wanting children and not being crazy about animals (or children) and being just a mediocre uncle at best, and a shitty one at worst. I’ve got some OCD going on at times, and a hearty germophobia, both of which I’ve deemed shameful too often to count.

No list of shame would be complete without my life’s greatest shame of all: being gay. Dealing with the shame around my sexuality put all my other shames to…shame. As a gay teenager, I understood myself to be not just unusual, but vile — a sinner, an abomination, a pervert, a less-than male, a pussy, a faggot. It was a secret never to be revealed. I stayed closeted throughout college, only hooking up with other closeted guys when I was too drunk to stop myself, and always feeling sick and ashamed afterward. I enjoyed dating and sleeping with women, too, at the time, so though I longed for more emotional and sexual connection with men, I fulfilled some of that need with women. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t my truth.

My move to San Francisco in my twenties did more than help me get comfortable with my hair loss, however. The Bay Area broke down the door of my closet, and I finally started to accept myself. I can’t and wouldn’t want to imagine my sexuality any other way. But even now, at forty-five, and long after I’d grown to love myself as a gay man, I get surprised sometimes by residual gay shame. I watch myself think homophobic thoughts, or judge myself as too effeminate in moments, even though I don’t believe in the idea of being too effeminate. I believe in being the most authentic version of myself, however that ends up looking and sounding. I believe in truth.

Shame, however, lives in lies. It sees beauty in standards set by magazines and movie stars and tells us we’re disgusting and need to hide ourselves when we don’t meet those standards (which is always). You are ugly, it taunts. Shame sees success as money and power and toys, and makes us feel little and worthless when we don’t have enough of these things. You are a failure, it seethes. Shame sees our most painful experiences — betrayal, heartbreak, abuse — as reasons to blame ourselves for being hurt and as the strongest examples of how utterly flawed we are. You are broken, it whispers.

Shame snakes its way into all areas of our lives, telling us that how we look or what we’ve done or what’s been done to us needs to stay a secret. Yet the real secret about shame is that it can’t survive being revealed. The moment we speak of the things we’re ashamed of — to a friend, to a support group, in a book (hello!) — shame’s reins loosen, and its power dissipates within an air of honesty and ownership and acceptance. The truth is, we have nothing to be ashamed of, none of us. No matter how we look, or who we love, or what we’ve done. We’ve all made mistakes, we’ve all done wrong, and we all have reasons to ask for forgiveness. But not from a place of shame. Shame only suffocates any possible growth, any lessons we can learn from our circumstances and our actions. It doesn’t allow us to acknowledge our truth. To silence shame, we must announce it. We must speak of those things about ourselves that make us sweaty and nauseous to consider, the things we spend too much energy trying to hide. Which is why I’ve been dreading, I mean so excited, to announce the shame I’ve carried about my coughsnifflechee (and crooked teeth, and aversion to pets, and all those other things I listed) to the world. Because what’s the big deal, anyway? Nobody is perfect. But we can all do our best to be brave.

That brings me back to the airport club cougher. I sat in awe of his willingness to let his cough — a Herculean battle cry to my Pee-wee Herman croak — freely do its thing. Sure, I would’ve preferred he covered his mouth, but no doubt he knew his cough wasn’t spreading anything. It wasn’t an interloper, the effect of some contagious bug. It roared with the confidence of one who’s lived in that body for years. I wonder, how long did it take to grow with such power? Was he ever self-conscious about it? If so, at what point did he finally say to himself, “Fuck it, I cough. I’m not gonna worry about what other people think.” I suspect age has something to do with his nonchalance. I hope I don’t give a damn what people think when I’m in my seventies. Not because that’s so old, but because it’s plenty of time to work through our insecurities. I’m forty-five, and with each year that passes, I find myself saying fuck it to a lot of things I worried about before. This is a good thing. My fuck it signifies growth.

I’m happy to say I’ve become more relaxed with coughing freely in public places. I know that seems like a strange goal to have, but as I can attest, there’s a lot more peace in acceptance than resistance, especially of things we can’t change about ourselves. As long as my cough is here, I don’t think it serves me to try to deny it — not that I could.

What haven’t you surrendered to? What is it about yourself you’re unwilling to accept, or you’re afraid others won’t accept, that you’re keeping secret? Can you imagine, for a moment, how different your life would be if you stopped resisting who you are and instead embraced the fullness of you — quirks, physical “imperfections,” insecurities, and all? You get to decide how much power shame has in your life. You get to declare what you keep hidden, and what you express. Pick one thing you’re ashamed of and share it with someone — a friend, a stranger online, your hairdresser, anyone you can trust. See how much lighter you feel, instantly, when you announce your shame. The more willing you are in sharing your entire truth, the freer you become in all areas of your life. The more often you speak of your shame, the less shame you’ll have to speak of. This is a beautiful thing.

I hope one day, when my throat chakra gets balanced and my grief fully releases and Satan quits attacking me, my cough will miraculously disappear. I do believe it’s possible, and I’ll never lose hope in that reality, because (as I said earlier) it’s seriously annoying to cough all the time. Until then, I doubt I’ll ever grow to love my coughsnifflechee, but I expect I’ll continue to accept it more peacefully, without all the frustration and anger and shame I’ve felt about it for so many years. I may even become as nonchalant about my cough as my club hero was about his. One day, if I’m lucky, I may finally figure out how to be comfortably, determinedly, and gloriously shameless.