You’re annoyed.
You shift uncomfortably in the ottoman as you check the time on your iPhone and note that the doctor is now forty minutes late. You try not to think about all of the barf germs that you’re now merrily collecting on your favorite ugly pajama pants as your daughter, the one with curls like a halo begins to pull on her shirt, the one she insisted upon wearing, indicating that she, too, is highly annoyed and would like to take off this shirt and GO HOME, thankyouverymuch.
Your toddler son is engrossed in a game of Angry Birds on another iPhone but stops his game for a couple seconds to cough that worrisome I-smoke-three-packs-a-day cough that’s sent you all on a field trip to the doctor in the first place. You frown but quickly turn it into a smile. Even with this annoying bout of what you think is bronchitis, everything is just as it should be.
You are happy. Finally.
You think about the first time you were ever in this pediatrics office; nearly two years ago now. Your new infant daughter tightly clutched in your arms, the frightening MRI images of her precious head on the computer, the referrals to the new neurologist – one who will take your insurance – and you remember how you wept. In public. Again.
You remember those horrible, heartbreaking days well, although the colors are fading into the background, the sights and sounds and triggers all fading into a dusky shade of their former vividness.
You won’t forget. Ever. You know that on your deathbed, you will remember, as those are days you can’t forget, but now, they’re losing their power.
Life is moving forward.
You think of the year that seemed like it was never going to end. The year ends tomorrow.
All of those things you thought you’d never leave behind, all of those things have been put squarely to bed.
Those dragons have been slayed.
Certainly, there will be new dragons to battle, but for now, you stand with your daughter, the one with curls like a halo, proud and triumphant over the bodies of the fallen dragons.
A smile plays on your lips as you think of what’s to come. Of the people you’ll meet and the people you’ll learn to love. Of all of the things that you’ll do with the next 365 days. This year, you know there is hope because there is always hope.
The doctor finally comes in and greets you by saying, “I can hardly believe you’re the same people!”
And you smile and laugh, because you know just what she means.
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
-Leonard Cohen “Anthem”
I used to believe that the universe was a random place. Everything that happened to us was simply, well, random. If I ran into you at the store, it was only a coincidence, not something that was “supposed” to happen or part of a preordained master plan with the two of us merely bit players on a much broader stage.
I don’t think I believe that any more.
Certainly, I believe there are many random parts of life. I don’t believe in some gigantic playbook that dictates when and how I will go about my day:
Tuesday, January 24, Becky Sherrick Harks will have Cheerios for breakfast at 9:45 AM and she will remark that they smell like pee. Delicious pee!
but I simply do not believe that what happens to us – the connections we make, the experiences we have – I cannot believe that they are entirely random. Maybe I’ve had too many weird, fucked-up experiences in my life. Maybe my brain is trying to find patterns where there are none. Maybe I’m just grasping at something to make it all more meaningful, I don’t know. Frankly, my Pranksters, I don’t really care.
This is the way I started 2010:
I approach 2010 full of renewed hope for the future, because no matter how full of the darkness I feel, I can feel the light on my face and I know it’s all around me. Soon it will be within me.
I am hopeful.
I have hope.
Happy New Year.
Days after I wrote this, I randomly found the famous tattoo artist through a referral on The Twitter who started my phoenix tattoo. She’d had a cancellation in her booked-months-out schedule and could fit me in right away.
Phoenix Tattoo Outline
Months later, when I went back for more work on my phoenix tattoo, I’d find out that she had just been diagnosed with an encephalocele. Like my daughter. I do not need to tell you that the odds of this are cataclysmically tiny that I’d find another with precisely what Amelia was born with.
Starting with that phoenix tattoo, I vowed that this would be the year that I Brought Aunt Becky Back and I have.
The process, however, has been excruciating. It’s incredibly difficult to take a look at the life you’ve deliberately crafted for yourself and realize how fucking miserable you are. It’s brutal to have to mourn everything you’ve swept under the rug when you were all EYE OF THE MOTHERFUCKING TIGER, AUNT BECKY. Especially when you feel you have no ally with whom to share it with. After all, there are people with no legs in the world. How can you possibly hate your life WHEN THERE ARE PEOPLE WITH NO LEGS?
There were days when all I could do was curl up on the couch and weep. My heart broke over and over again. The darkness obliterated the light and it was all I could do to make it from sun-up to sundown again. It wasn’t the kind of darkness that a pill can help. It’s the kind of darkness that you simply must slog through.
Eventually, though, there were entire hours that the darkness would just…leave.
Those hours melted into days and soon, the darkness only tinged the periphery. The rest of my world was bathed in the most wonderful rich, vibrant colors.
It was like I had begun to wake up after a long sleep. I felt like myself again for the first time in a very, very long time.
When I saw that Leonard Cohen was playing in Vegas, my jaw dropped ungracefully open. Kismet.
Sometimes, when I was adrift in the darkness, it was his words that kept me going. Whether or not you care for his music, his words are beautiful. And words – all words – are more true a love than anything I’ve ever known. Letters strung together into words elegantly arranged into sentences that flow into paragraphs can make my heart soar; make me weep, and give me hope. Words can cut into the darkness.
I found myself alone in the theater, watching rapt as Leonard Cohen sang and the tears inelegantly rolled down my cheeks. I’m certain that had anyone noticed, I’d have been locked away at the hospital for such a vulgar display of emotion, but I simply didn’t care.
Listening to him in that dark auditorium was like neatly wrapping up the year in cheesy wrapping paper, like vindicating my sorrow and sadness and allowing me to finally release it. It felt like the end of an era. It felt like a new beginning.
I’ll never escape the darkness entirely, I know that. It’s part of who I am and it’s what drives me. You cannot go through hell without bringing a little darkness back.
But in that light, in those un-random connections, I will find redemption.
I will find me.
Phoenix Tattoo
I was somewhere over Chicago when the drugs began to take hold.
Subterranean Homesick Blues squealed through my earphones and for a split second the airplane was submerged into complete darkness. I opened my mouth to shriek; to warn everyone that we’d reached the abyss and just as my vocal chords let out a squeak, warm color returned. My seatmate turned to me; he clearly hadn’t seen the black, and as I moved to explain that we’d hit the edge; there was no going back, when I realized that he’d see it all soon enough.
We were going to Las motherfucking Vegas.
I couldn’t explain myself properly at this altitude. Instead, I grinned a fake toothy smile, hoping it passed for the real deal, mumbled something about vodka and turned up the volume on my iPod, my eyes darting to the bag on the floor. It was filled with a dazzling array of uppers, downers, grass, cocaine, mescaline and some ether thrown in for good measure. The ether, for sure, was the hardest to procure. I wondered if I could get away with using some mid-flight.
As the plane touched down in McCaren Airport, my seatmate began to weep openly, which scared me. I don’t handle emotions and I knew the tears meant that he too was entering the abyss.
Welcome to Vegas, motherfuckers.
Email me if you’re going to be there so that we may swap phone numbers. Because we need to HANG OUT. Have no fear, I am no longer sunburned. In fact, I am pasty white. “Blinded By The Light,” white. BUTT ASS white. So you need not fear my redness. Only that I may make you act as my attorney. Which, DUH.
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