Читать книгу Fierce Joy - Susie Caldwell Rinehart - Страница 10

1

I come from a long line of strong women. My mother’s mother taught me to hold a shovel; my father’s mother taught me to hold a cigarette. My mother taught me to hold my own. Her motto was, “Love many. Trust few. Always paddle your own canoe.” They were widows and divorcées, single mothers who worshipped hard work and self-reliance. They loved me deeply, fiercely. In their eyes, there was nothing I could not do.

These brave women raised me to believe that I could be anything I wanted to be. But the way I internalized that message was that I must be great at everything. And there were many times that I didn’t feel capable of being great. All I ever saw were the outer, perfect performances of women in my life: my grandmother, receiving awards for her athleticism; my mother, in a black graduation gown, receiving her second advanced degree; my stepmother, smiling brightly as she effortlessly prepared a five-course meal. I never heard about their struggles, so I thought that the confusion I experienced was uniquely mine. I assumed everyone else knew exactly what she was doing.

My daughter, at ten, believes that she must be great at everything, too. She and I understand that women are praised for their beauty or their extraordinary accomplishments. When we don’t feel beautiful and when we aren’t the top performer, we don’t question our culture’s values—we question our worth. One evening, she sat in the fetal position on our couch, refusing to go to dance class.

“I’m not good enough. I’ll never be good enough,” she said.

“Ouch,” I responded, and tried to get eye contact, but she was looking down and away. I knew that she didn’t get the part she desperately wanted in the winter show. But to her, it wasn’t just a setback. It was proof that she was flawed, even broken. She felt that if she didn’t show up to class, no one would notice. She wanted to give up at the age of ten.

She wasn’t just talking about dance. I had heard her say these things before when she made a mistake on her homework or couldn’t read as fast as her friends. “Mama, there is something wrong with me. Everyone else can do it, but I can’t.”

I didn’t say a thing. I moved next to her on the couch and lifted her narrow shoulders onto my lap. She was wearing purple leggings and a blue t-shirt with “Dreams come true” written in sequins. I knew the feeling of not being good enough. It woke me up at three in the morning with the pain of how I swallowed what I wanted to say in an important meeting, or how I was falling short of everyone’s expectations at home. But I had long ago learned to hide that pain and to keep driving forward believing that if I kept moving, no one would notice that I was not the leader or the mother that people were counting on. I would only slow down when I got sick. Then I got so sick from the stress that I had to face my fear of letting everyone down, or die. There is nothing benign about believing we have to earn our value on the planet.

The opposite of joy is not sadness; it’s perfectionism.

I don’t mean the have-to-have-your-nails-done-to-go-to-the-store kind of perfectionism. What concerns me is the kind of perfectionism that says, “I’m so sure I’m going to be terrible, I won’t even try.” Or the kind that researcher Brené Brown points out as our constant drive to earn approval and to “please. perform. perfect. prove.”

The world doesn’t need us to be perfect; it just needs us to contribute to the common good.

I listened to my daughter cry some more. It made me very uncomfortable to do nothing but hold her. I had to trust that she would find her way, even when the world was constantly telling her that to be average is to be worthless, and if you’re not the top, you are the bottom. Fear said, “You are a bad mother. Do something, anything. Make her suffering stop.”

I know Fear. She and I go way back. She always finds a way to make me worry about something. She comes in my room at night and says crisply in my ear, “You don’t have what it takes.” When I turned forty, she said, “Poor baby, you could have been somebody. But you missed your chance.” Fear has flawless skin and a red pen. She sees a way to improve everything, including this sentence.

“I’m so tired, Mama.”

“I know, I am too.” I am tired of striving, reaching, improving myself and everyone around me just so we can have an equal shot at belonging. My daughter and I sat on the couch together as the same questions swirled around us, unanswered.

What if I can’t keep up with the world’s expectations of me? Am I going to do what feels right, or what I have to do to keep my place on this planet?

#

At seven years old, I know that the ticket to happiness is to make everyone proud. I am the youngest of three children and the only girl. I love my brothers, Jake and Derek. They are big and strong and good at everything. One morning, I am running down the sidewalk, trying to keep up with them. My feet are slapping the cement in red, leather, Mary Jane sandals. We are late for school. My brothers yell over their shoulders, “Keep up!” I am always slow. I am holding them back. My legs hurt. My backpack is heavy. It keeps hitting me in the head as I run.

They disappear through a gate into a stranger’s backyard. They have told me about this shortcut to school before, but I’ve never taken it. I open the gate. I have to make it across the backyard and to the fence. I hear a dog barking. It sounds like a mean dog with a big, low, deep bark. I put my head down and run. The dog barks and barks. I make it to the fence. I feel the chain links dig into my palms. My feet slip as I climb, but I make it to the top. My shirt catches on the top of the fence, but there is no time to loosen it. I hear a screen door open behind me.

The owner is coming out of his house. He is walking toward me, across the yard, yelling, “Hey!” There is not time to untangle my shirt. I swing both legs over and jump. My shirt rips. I land on my feet, then fall forward. My backpack and its weight push my body into the pavement. I taste blood. Then I hear the man yelling, “Hey! You!” I am up, running away from the yard, looking for my brothers. I can see the top of Derek’s head as he’s running behind the row of parked cars. He is crossing the street now. The light is yellow. I am running so fast my eyes water. I blink back the tears and lean forward. I make fists with my hands to pump my arms the way Jake showed me to. I run faster, faster. I make it before the light turns red, before the cars rush past me. Jake and Derek are standing there, smiling. Jake says, “You’re good. You’re fast.” They are proud of me. I kept up. I didn’t make them late or hold them back. They think I’m fast. I feel their approval in my heart. I am hooked on their praise.

#

I am ten years old. I make a club with four other girls. I am small and skinny with a short, bowl haircut, buck teeth, a flat chest, and bony knees. They are tall, long-haired beauties. There are rules: we must play together and only together at recess. We must wear a brand of sweatpants called Cotton Ginny but they must not be the same color as anyone else’s in the group. This morning, Natasha breaks the rules.

“She came to school in the same color sweatpants as Sarah. Twice,” Ria says accusingly.

“I’m sure she did it on purpose, just so Sarah couldn’t wear hers,” Carrie adds.

I look down at the painted hopscotch lines on the pavement and throw my rock, then hop quickly from square to square, being careful not to step on the lines. I don’t say anything. Fear’s voice is loud in my head, “If you speak up, you’ll be kicked out too.” Natasha is my best friend. We have known each other since kindergarten. Most days after school we sit together on her porch swing, eating Ritz crackers with peanut butter and laughing. Being with Natasha feels like being home.

“Let’s vote,” suggests Sarah. “Raise your hand if you think Natasha should be kicked out of the club,” she says, staring right at me. Then she raises her hand. I look at Carrie and Ria. Their hands are high in the air. I don’t remember lifting my arm. I don’t remember agreeing. I just want them to stop looking at me. I must have raised my hand because Sarah smiles.

“There. It’s unanimous,” Sarah says with triumph in her voice.

Natasha is no longer a part of our club. But I am safe. I am still in. She’ll be fine, I tell myself. I walk home from school just a few sidewalks squares behind Natasha. I hear her crying. I want to go to her, tell her I am sorry, make her peanut-butter Ritz crackers to make everything better, but I don’t. I am afraid. I’m with Sarah and Ria and Carrie. I want to belong to the club. Sarah is talking. I have no idea what she is saying. But I throw my head back and laugh loudly anyway. She puts her arm around my shoulder. I know what that means. She approves. I’m safe.

When my mom asks me how school was that day, I don’t tell her how sad I am or how badly I hurt Natasha. I push my feelings down.

I show my mom my perfect score on my spelling test. “Good for you,” she says. Then Dad, who lives across town, comes over to take my brothers and me for the weekend. I overhear my mom tell him about my perfect spelling test and how I beat all the boys in the city track meet. He looks at me proudly. “Is that true?” he asks. I nod. He picks me up and gives me a big bear hug. “I’m so proud of you. You’re my star!” He says. I am Dad’s star. I look at my parents. They are both smiling. I understand something important. Winning track races and earning perfect test scores is the way to make my parents happy. It’s as if I’ve unlocked a secret door. All I have to do is get good grades and run fast; then we’ll all be happy, together.

#

I am eleven. I am staying at Dad’s house for the weekend. I never see Dad just kicking back, the way some fathers do, in front of a Sunday football game on TV. Dad is always in action mode. We grow up on a lake, so sailing is a regular activity on Sundays in the summer. I’m sure we went out on nice, sunny days, but I only remember the slate-gray ones.

One day, when a storm is brewing on the lake, Dad steers the boat toward the darkest patches of water because “that’s where the wind is.” My eyes are glued to the far side of the lake where lightning burns its way from sky to water and the clouds are as black and flat-bottomed as cast-iron skillets. Dad waves happily to the captains steering their boats toward the sheltered harbor, then says to us kids, “Why are they going home when it’s just getting good?” To Dad, the storm is far away, and the lake is big. We can always choose a different heading. What is terrifying to me and those other captains is exciting to him.

So, we watch the lightning the way I imagine other families would watch fireworks, except that they would be safe on their checkered blankets on land, while we float in a tiny boat on a big lake between fierce explosions of thunder.

“Hey kids, isn’t this a great show?”

Our plastic, yellow slicker hoods nod “yes” in the pouring rain.

“Uh oh,” my dad says suddenly.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“The halyard is stuck on something…Susie! You’re the lightest. Come scamper up the mast and untangle the lines,” Dad says as if he is saying, “Come throw the ball with me on the lawn.”

“What about those dark clouds?” I ask, nervously.

“Plenty of non-threatening sky to the west,” he responds.

I am thrilled to be asked. This is a job reserved for my brothers. There’s no time to be scared. But it is cold and windy, and I don’t really want to go. The weather will hold. Don’t let him down, Susie. He’ll never ask again. Partway up the mast, I can’t stop shivering. My teeth knock against each other and rattle my jaw. The wind vibrates the rigging and makes a loud, howling sound. Everything is shaking. Gusts of wind whip my hair across my eyes and I can’t see. I’m not that far up, but I can feel the whole boat rock from side to side beneath me. The storm is still far off in the distance, but up here it seems so close I can touch it. Dad’s smile is wide as he looks up at me. I know that look. He is proud of me. I am not delicate or soft. I’m tough. I’ll do anything to win that smile, to earn his love.

“Come on down!” Dad shouts up at me. I can’t tell if he is saying that because he doesn’t need my help anymore, or because I have failed him. I cling to the mast as the wind pushes and pulls me. I swing way out over the water on one side of the boat, and then way out over the water on the other side. It’s time to climb down, but I can’t center myself.

#

I am thirteen and in junior high now. Fortunately, Natasha and I are best friends again. I quit the Cotton Ginny club and showed up at Natasha’s house with a box of Ritz crackers and a jar of peanut butter. I apologized and told her that I knew I’d been a jerk. I had let the fear of not fitting in blind me from what really mattered. “I hurt you, and I’m sorry. Being in a popular club is not worth losing you,” I told Natasha. She opened the door, and let me in her house. We cried, then laughed, and promised we’d be braver in groups from then on.

Soon, we join the school orchestra; she plays alto saxophone and I play trumpet. We meet three new friends: Teza (flute), Alli (violin), and Jill (trombone). With them, I am relaxed, even funny, totally myself. Around everyone else, I’m nervous and I pretend to be someone I’m not. I steal candy and smokes from the neighborhood store because I want everyone to think I’m cool. But with Alli, Teza, Jill, and Natasha, I am truly brave. I am vulnerable, nerdy, and square. I even read Jane Austen books in front of them. There is no pressure to perform, no expectation to be cool, no need to be perfect.

When I am with these true girlfriends, my inner voice is louder than Fear’s voice. That inner voice says, Write poetry. Return the things you stole. Be there for someone who needs help. Run because you love to run. There is a power here that feels different than when I am motivated by anxiety or praise. It feels bigger, lighter, and freer.

Together, we are more powerful than alone. We make things happen. We run for student council. When we want to do something for the school, we go into the closet at the back of the cafeteria, our office, and plan it out. When a tornado strikes a small town nearby, we break several school rules to launch a giant fundraiser. We don’t put limits on ourselves.

When some friends of ours complain that they are afraid to go into the ravine near the school because of a “violent gang” that hangs out there, we march into the ravine and make friends with the gang. They were not violent. They were just a bunch of boys who looked different and dressed differently. They had been told enough times that they were stupid and didn’t belong, so they started to believe it. They stopped going to school. They hung out in the ravine, smoking cigarettes and acting tough. All we had to do was be brave enough to reach out and let them talk. We listened to their stories. And we kept showing up in the ravine, inviting them to be our friends. Eventually, they agreed. Soon the ravine was a place we’d all go to climb trees, play music, and place branches across the creek to build bridges.

The problem is not that things aren’t going well. The problem is that I have learned somewhere that more is better. I am doing too many things. I am pulled in so many directions that I forget to pause and recover. I’m a straight-A student, second trumpet in the band, and a star on the track team. I have medals and awards hanging on my bedroom wall: fastest 800-meter run, fastest 1500-meter run, best speech, French prize, valedictorian. Plus, I am chosen to be in the high school musical as an 8th grader. I love it all. I don’t want to give up anything. But it’s taking a toll. I’m sick a lot.

Already this year I’ve had bronchitis and now the doctor says I have pneumonia. Why does my body hate me? None of the other kids get sick. I must be weak. I am coughing so much my ribs and shoulders ache. “She should stay home from school for at least a week,” the doctor says. I can’t miss a day. I’ll be so far behind that I’ll never catch up. My mom tucks me into bed. Then she leaves for work. I feel terrible, and I don’t mean the coughing. I feel like I am letting everyone down. Plus, I may lose my spot in the play if I miss a practice. When I can’t take lying there any longer, I sneak out of the house. My mom comes home from work to find me gone. She searches everywhere, and calls Natasha and Jill. Then she comes to the high school auditorium to take me away. I don’t want to go home. I don’t want my mom to be here. This is embarrassing. I make myself as small as I can behind a fake rock on stage. But then I give myself away when I have a coughing fit. She walks on stage and drags me home.

“Why didn’t you stay in bed?” she asks, worried.

“Mr. P doesn’t like the kids who miss rehearsal.”

“I can’t stop you. Pneumonia can’t stop you. What is it going to take to slow you down?” My mom asks.

I don’t even understand the question.

#

I am sixteen. I love poetry and writing. When I write, I know what I think. I understand how I feel. It brings order to my chaotic mind. I fill pages and pages of my black, hardcover journal with my poems. I also have a crush on a boy. We are studying together at the library. I open my journal and decide to leave it open when I get up to go to the bathroom. Maybe he’ll read my poems and fall in love with my words. When I return, he is gone. In the margins of one of my poems, he has written, “If there is an original thought in here somewhere, I can’t find it.” I can’t breathe. It feels like someone dropped a bookcase on my chest. How could I be so stupid? I stop writing. I will never write again. He’s right. It has all been said before. I slide the journal in a box and seal the lid, then bring the box to Dad’s garage. I place all my other journals in cardboard boxes and stack them on top of one another. I will never share my personal writing again.

Then one night I stay awake past one in the morning while my family sleeps. I am working on an essay for history and I keep rewriting the first paragraph. I can’t get it right. I don’t have anything original to say. Even though I have an A in the class, it feels like I’m going to fail. So I sneak into my brother’s room while he is sleeping and open his bottom drawer. I pull out a stack of papers: math tests, science projects, English assignments, and a history essay on the civil rights era. I flip through it to the last page. A teacher has written in bold cursive, “Excellent! A.” I see a way to get the grade I need. You can’t do that! I immediately think. I wouldn’t have to if the teachers weren’t working me so hard, I counter. It’s their fault I’m so tired, I say to justify my actions. It’s their fault I can’t write my own essay. I have no choice.

I read through my brother’s work. It’s really good. My teacher will be impressed. And since my brother goes to a private school across town, my public-school teacher will never know.

I walk back upstairs to my room. I start copying the essay, word for word, onto a fresh sheet of paper. Weeks later, my teacher hands back the essay. He has written in all caps, “ORIGINAL! A+” I am elated. Then I remember it’s not my work at all. My mood caves. I am not an original. How do I tell the truth? I want to roll back the clock, do it over, confess to my teacher. But Fear says, “Then everyone will know the real truth: that you are a fraud.” I burn the essay. No one will know who I really am.

#

I am nineteen. I go to school at an elite college in the Northeast. On the outside, I am effortlessly cool. On the inside, I’m convinced that I don’t deserve to be here. I don’t have what it takes. I believe the college made a mistake, or maybe I got in only because I added geographic diversity. I miss my friends from home: Natasha, Teza, Alli, and Jill. We are scattered across North America at different schools, and my confidence feels scattered too. I learn to read others and assess quickly who they are and what they want. It helps me get into upper level classes and frat parties, but I haven’t learned to read myself. I don’t know who I am; I am too busy trying to impress others.

The voice of Fear says to me constantly, “You’re not enough. Someone else is smarter, faster, prettier, more motivated.” I hear it in class, in the hallway of my dormitory, in the locker room. I try to drown out Fear’s voice with more accomplishments. I get As. I set records on the track.

I lead several clubs.

But I can’t seem to write a ten-page paper for a literature class on a subject I love. It’s three days overdue. My professor calls me to his office and says, “Everyone has turned theirs in, except you. Have you started?”

“How can I start if I don’t know what I’m going to say?”

“Oh, I see. You want it to be perfect even before you begin. Let’s try something. Give me the worst five pages you’ve ever written by Friday.”

He can’t mean that. But he looks serious.

“I’m serious,” he says, reading my mind.

Friday comes and goes. I don’t know how to turn in something terrible. My professor calls me back in.

“How about you give me whatever you have by Tuesday.”

“All I have are crummy sentences and quotations.”

“Great. I’ll take those.”

I know what my professor is trying to do, but I can’t turn in something average. I think, It’s so late, it needs to be extraordinary. So, I stay up all night and write a paper that is ten pages longer than the assignment, with a dozen extra references. I turn it in, finally, ten days late. Then I’m sick for a week. I assume that everyone’s college experience is like this: all-nighters, followed by sickness, followed by all-nighters, followed by sickness. In my world, it is.

On the upside, I have a boyfriend. He is older than me. I look up to him and want to please him. The first time we have sex, I leave my shirt on. I’m ashamed of my flat chest. He’ll be disappointed. I move like a gymnast to dazzle him with my flexibility. I don’t notice that he is trying to slow me down. I am so busy trying to entertain him, I feel like I’ve got a top hat and cane. He doesn’t ask what I like and don’t like, but it doesn’t matter. I have no idea. I feel empty inside.

When things aren’t working between us, I can’t bring myself to break up with him. Fear says, “How can you end it? You started it. You are selfish and cruel.” Instead of telling him that my feelings have changed, I avoid him. Then I cheat on him. The relationship ends. I am devastated. But I am also relieved. Then I feel bad for feeling relieved. I move so fast into the next relationship I don’t take the time to think about who I am and what I want. I just want someone to hold me. I just want the emptiness I feel to go away.

#

I am twenty-one. It’s a sticky, hot afternoon, and I have one more sales call to go. I graduated from college and I am selling knives so I can go hike the Pacific Coast Trail. Yesterday, I drove one-hundred miles to sell a bagel spreader. Today, I knock on the heavy door of a three-storied, red-bricked home to sell a carving set. This address was given to me by a friend of a friend. A woman dressed in a tailored gray blazer and skirt lets me in. She is short, but towers over me with her suspicious stare and firm handshake. I ask for a tomato and a penny. I dice the tomato then decoratively coil the penny into a pig’s tail with our best-selling kitchen scissors. I look down at my notes for the final question, “So, Mrs. Bartlett, do you want the Classic Carving Set with scissors or the Holiday Carving Set with a tomato trimmer?” Then I stop. I know that name. I suddenly know exactly where I am. This is Noah Bartlett’s kitchen and I am pitching his mom a carving set. Years ago, Noah and I shared first prize in a schoolwide essay contest.

Noah’s mom suddenly recognizes me, too. She looks at me hard and does not mince words, “Noah is in China. He is writing his second book with his Princeton professor. And you…” She pauses and looks at me with a mix of pity and judgment, “What are you doing?”

“Selling knives. So I can go hiking,” I stammer.

“Don’t you have any ambition?”

The words sting. Everyone is doing more and succeeding more than I am. If I am as smart as those elementary school teachers thought, why am I working a job that has me driving a hundred miles to sell a bagel spreader? I’m a disappointment to my parents. I get out of that house as quickly as I can. Then I quit. I hike a long section of the Pacific Coast Trail, but only after I polish my resume and send out fifty applications for “real” jobs. I am going to change the world.

I become a teacher, like my mother, my aunt, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother before me. I love my job. I like the look of concentration on my students’ faces. I love clean chalkboards and the smell of sharpened pencils. I imagine all the discoveries my students and I are going to make as we read and explore new ideas. But I am surprised by the question I hear most often. My students ask, “Is this right?” as in, “Is this answer right?” or “Did I do this essay right?” They don’t ask questions born from curiosity, but from fear. I understand my students’ desire to please and to perform too well. But that doesn’t help my students who collapse on my couch in anxious tears. They say, “I’m so tired of needing perfect grades, perfect test scores, and the perfect body.”

How do we banish the idea that we have to be perfect before we begin?