October
29, 2002
Shattering
the Crystal Ball
The irony of identity is that when a lot of us find our defining moments, and reach those moments when we realize how we want our life to be, it’s not usually during one of those times where we’re the golden girls “high in a white palace” (The Great Gatsby, 127) but when we’re the ones on the bottom of the dark ocean, when we’re alone, struggling, and scared of the world.
Perhaps the time when I found my life being altered in front of my very eyes was the time when I left the unbreakable shield of childhood innocence, left behind the self that was the product of my younger years, full of submission to the wills of others, and broke free into what I truly wanted to be, left those behind who were dragging me down, and realized that I couldn’t both live my life and solve all the problems of those around me.
During my freshman year of high school, I became sick with what was closest to mono, but wasn’t, with persistent migraines, exhaustion, and fever. For a short time, since no one knew what else it could be, the doctors thought I might have a brain tumor. The discomfort and agony I had been in seemed unimportant the night I stood in Newton-Wellesley hospital, watching the Texan with his cowboy boots and pink striped shirt load my CT scan onto a computer. In those moments, I was filled with fear—fear that the worst would prevail, fear that I would be sentenced to a slow and painful death, making my past sufferings seem entirely inconsequential. Like any life-threatening experience, once I knew the worst wasn’t possible, knew my life wasn’t over yet, deep inside myself, without realizing it, I pledged to myself that I would hang onto my life and cherish every moment of it, and not let small matters get in the way of my larger purpose. Like so many other things, you often only realize how precious life is when you are in danger of losing it.
In the days before and after, I laid in my bed, just thinking. I couldn’t do much else, so I was left with my thoughts for weeks. In that time, I learned a lot about myself, began to step back from the tangled web I found myself living in, and started to straighten my life out. As I realized how quickly life could be taken away, how easily the crystal balls we all live in can be shattered, I stepped back, and, upon further reflection, realized that perhaps everything was not as perfect as it seemed, that life could have been better. In doing so, I unknowingly vowed to rectify what wasn’t quite right if I got the chance, for I owed it to myself.
The first thing I realized through my long hours of thought was that it was almost as though I was living somebody else’s life—some of the things I was doing, I wasn’t doing for me, I was doing them just to do something, to be devoted to something, to have something that I could say I did and was good at. I decided that dancing every day wasn’t something that made me happy; in contrast, it was contributing to my unhappiness: my feelings of inadequacy, my sense that I never completely fit into the established matrix, that I was just tagging along—that I wasn’t really a part of everything, that I wasn’t valued. I was frustrated that I wasn’t the best, frustrated that I wasn’t on top, and instead of centering my focus on a few areas, I threw myself at everything possible. In the process, I lost my love for the activity, and a lot of time as well. I realized that I was never going to do anything serious with dance, that it wasn’t making me happy, and because of this, it wasn’t worth all my spare time. So I quit everything but two classes.
In this time, I let myself look at the reality of my life. I stopped pretending to believe certain ‘truths’—stopped allowing myself to give my everything to others without asking for anything in return. It wasn’t that I didn’t think being a generous and thoughtful person wasn’t important, not that I didn’t feel that listening to my friends’ problems wasn’t important; it was that I realized that I rarely got any of the same considerations back. This was one of the most painful things I’ve ever realized- and nothing hurt more than getting a grand total of one phone call during a month that I was sick and constantly out of school—after calling all of my friends each day they missed a day of school for the past few years.
Before this time, I had let my fears and worries consume me. It’s no secret that part of the reason I got so sick was that I became so run-down emotionally, that the stress I was under became too much and I completely caved in. Obviously, I’m under no great burden, when looked at from most points, my life is about as good as they come, and I realize this. However, so too do I realize that too often I focus on the small things, the things that don’t really matter, those things that in the face of larger difficulty become momentous decisions. The problem at this time was that I let other people’s fears consume me as well. I took on the burden of at least two other people’s similar troubles, thinking that the lives of others rested solely in my hands.
Another thing that I came to terms with during this time was the concept of forgetting what other people thought about me every second. Not that I’m completely independent; I know I’m not. However, I realized the need to be my own person, with my own dreams, with my own mission, and that I shouldn’t try to hide what I felt. Life’s too short for little games like that. I realized that I didn’t have the time to waste waiting for people to treat me with respect, so instead of trying to be best friends with everybody, I simply sat back and let friendships evolve with the people who made me happy, whom I saw eye to eye with, who didn’t drive me crazy or make me feel worthless.
During this time, I found renewed vitality, renewed hope for the promise of the future, and renewed awareness of the beauty of life. I found what I had lost: confidence, independence, awareness. Most of all, I realized that the ultimate placement of my needs above the needs of others wasn’t a bad thing, that I should be able to place my needs aside to help others, but that I couldn’t let this get in the way of my own well-being. In a sense, I found the renewal of respect and value for myself. Out of my greatest weakness grew my greatest strength.
Most people I know have a religion, but not everyone really believes in theirs. A lot of kids I know simply go to their temple or church because their parents do. That’s how we all start out; most parents don’t let their two-year-old decide whether or not he wants to go to church or not. So I went to temple, followed the practices of Judaism, and wondered if I believed in God or not. It wasn’t until I was somewhere around twelve that I realized I did.
In many ways, I’m a fact-based person: I need proof of something before I can believe it. When I was little, I believed in God because I that was what they taught us to do. But as I got older and I began study for my bat mitzvah, I started to wonder if God really did exist. How, in our scientific world, could something so non-scientific exist? It didn’t make sense to me.
I was traveling home from Hebrew School on a cold December night with my mom’s friend Linda and her son David, who we are and have been friends with for a long time. It had snowed earlier that evening, and it was very cold. Linda’s car was far from pristine, and I’d been with her before when she’d run out of gas. As she drove down Glen Street, we noticed a car on the side of the road. It had hit a patch of ice and had crashed into the stone wall beside the road. I looked at it with careless indifference. I just wanted to get home, because it was cold in Linda’s car. All of the sudden, I heard her let out a frightened “whoa…” At the same time, the car began spinning around and around, clockwise. I was in the back left seat. In the split seconds that followed, I found myself doing what most people do when they think their life is in danger: call out to God, whether they believe in Him or not. “Dear God,” I said in my mind. “I’m not ready to die yet; don’t let me die!” I was sure that car would continue spinning into the stone wall, and I would hit it. Although my heart was pounding and I was terrified, I sat motionless.
The car suddenly stopped while I was crying out to that higher being. When I opened my eyes, I saw that the car was parallel to the wall, and I was about two inches away. Had another nano-second passed, I might not be here in full working condition today. From that moment on, I haven’t stopped believing in God. That was my moment of truth. Although it sounds tacky and sentimental, I think it was too close of a call to lay on coincidence, that God was really looking out for me. All I wanted then was to get home.
While I didn’t realize it then, I struck out from then on with a renewed sense of purpose, and although I still live for the future, I don’t let myself forget to cherish the present, for in those moments in the dark on Glen Street, death was a reality for me, and I wasn’t going to take my good fortune for granted. I knew that I had a purpose in my life yet to be fulfilled, that I needed to keep on living, and so I decided I would live, and even now I live my life in search of that purpose, I shape my actions and my choices around where I want to be in the future.
I never was ever really afraid of death. I suppose I was still under the illusion that I was untouchable, the “it won’t happen to me” attitude. After that night, part of that image was broken, but still, nothing happened to me. We drove back to my house, I basked in the brightness of the light inside and the warmth of my family, and proceeded to do my homework, trying to forget anything had happened. While I never let go of the meaning of that incident, I still didn’t fully emerge from my cloud of naïveté.
Last February, one of my dad’s closest friends died after a long battle with cancer. I was close to him as well; he was one of the people I nearly adopted as an ‘uncle.’ He lit the thirteenth candle on my bat mitzvah cake. But he died. I didn’t understand it, and even today, I suppose I still haven’t found my closure, for even though I know he’s not there, that he’s a memory, that he’s out of everyone’s lives and won’t be coming back, it’s almost like maybe he just moved to Siberia, because I never saw him when he was really sick, and I never went to his funeral.
Up until then, the only person close to me who had died was my grandfather, and that had happened when I was seven years old. I didn’t understand it then, and sad as it is, I barely remember my grandfather. I was sad then because that’s what I knew I was supposed to do. But I didn’t understand what had happened.
Eight years later, when my dad’s friend Alan died, I didn’t know what to do. I was broken because I knew I should be. In my mind, I was distraught by the loss. I couldn’t fathom that he would no longer be there. I went about my day completely out of sorts, letting trivial things go by unnoticed, for they were undoubtedly pale in comparison to the loss of someone so close to me. But I still didn’t understand death. I wrote in a journal for English last year that it didn’t make sense to me, and I tried to come to a conclusion, any conclusion:
I think the biggest
part I don’t understand about death is how the lives
of
people just stop, how people just stop being an integral part of your
life.
It’ll all come to me eventually, I’m sure. Until then, I guess I’m stuck
with
memories and misunderstanding, and the comfort of knowing that
maybe
if I don’t understand death, maybe death can’t hurt me quite as much.
I was wrong. The misunderstanding simply made it worse for me. Where I once had looked upon death as something that affected other people, it now had affected me. Not understanding it made it scarier for me, because, like many, I fear what I don’t understand. After Alan, I realized that death could happen to those I loved. I became scared that my parents would die, my friends.
Over the summer, I had flown down to Florida with my parents and my younger brother to visit my grandmother. We were eating dinner in a quiet hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant when my grandmother started heading for the floor. In a fog, I raced to the woman in charge of the restaurant and asked if she had a phone. “Why?” she asked. “Do you hear one ringing?”
“No,” I responded, “my grandmother…” She looked over and saw my parents crowded around her, and dialed 911 for me. As I stood outside the restaurant with her waiting for the ambulance, I understood why people think sometimes that others could see their heart beating. I thought mine would pop right out of my shirt, it was beating so hard, so fast.
The EMTs talked to my grandma, who had come out of her ‘fog,’ but then she went back into one, so they decided to take her to the hospital. While I was waiting with my brother for something, anything, all I could think was, “well, at least we’re here if she’s going to die.” My dad and I both thought she had had a stroke; I felt as though all my fears for her and her ill health were coming to fruition and she was going to leave this earth.
Luckily, I was wrong. She had simply had an adverse reaction to a medication, and was fine in two days. My fear, however, couldn’t have been higher. Now that my grandmother, my single close relation outside of my actual nuclear family, had come so close to death in my eyes, I became afraid that she would die. I still am.
After that event a few months ago, I began to be very afraid of dying. Of myself dying. In seeing the reality of someone so close to me being in a life-threatening situation, I realized that there was nothing more I wanted in life than to be able to live it. I want to live my dreams, to be able to go to college, become a doctor, get married, have a family, be that person who I envision so often in the perfect life. I live so much of my life for the vision of what I hope it will be that upon realizing I might not be able to live that future, I became quite imperiled.
So now, I take no moments for granted. I had gone to Florida timidly, scared to fly after September 11th. I went for the purpose of talking to my grandmother, of finding out what it was like to live when she did, during World War II and such. I had realized then that I couldn’t expect her to stay forever, that I needed to cherish the time I had. I regret deeply not asking her about it, but the situation brought forth unexpected circumstances. I know that I should just call her one day and ask her, for I don’t know when that opportunity may be completely erased. I try to appreciate the times I have to talk to her, because I have no guarantee that we’ll both be around the next time.
Just the same, I think I have learned to appreciate my own life more, to savor it, and to live for the moments I am in, as well as the moments to come.
As a person, I see myself motivated by the future, but in terms of the present, I’m more outright than I have been in the past. I just feel that life’s to short to waste time, that I need to treasure the moments I have, and the people I have them with. I know that my life is indeed a gift, from God, and I’m afraid to lose it, for I am caught up in what I once called “the promise of tomorrow.”
I believe Eleanor Roosevelt when she says, “the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams,” and I have set out on the journey of my dreams and intend to follow my own path as I get there. Even when the present isn’t going so well, I know that I will keep on going, because I have proof of those times I have gone on in the past to assure me I will be able to go on in the future. Although I sometimes am filled with the doubt that my dreams are just dreams, I cling that idea of purpose, of meaning, draw it to the front of my mind, and I keep plowing through. “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end” (Semisonic), and my beginnings are beautiful, although so many of my findings about myself come of other ends.
Out of weakness I have found strength, and out of fear I have found renewed vitality for the life which has been given to me as my own to shape as I wish. My future is my promise, my initiative, my fear; it is a precious place where one day I will be able to escape for good. I’m not afraid, for I believe that one day all the pieces will come back together and my life will once again be just as I wish it, just as I have intended it to be through all my toil. I’ve realized that I am on this earth for a reason, and all the trials that touch me ultimately serve to buoy my future endeavors and shape my identity. For as long as is possible, I shall stand on my own two feet, listen to my heart, and not let illusion cloud reality, for I am breakable after all.