Chapter Two – Suzy Henderson

I was six, and it truly was a beautiful autumn day in Georgia.  That morning, I had awakened from a dream that was still shimmering around me.  I couldn’t remember the specifics, but I was sure that it was one of my bird of paradise fantasies.  These were recurring nocturnal experiences that I had colorful feathers that shined in the moonlight and that I could fan my wings into hypnotizing patterns.  Sometimes, I envisioned that I lived at the treetops of a rainforest canopy and ate figs and flower blossoms.  I sang in notes that only my soul mate could hear.  For some reason, that day, the dream would carry me through the perils I had to face.  This was a miracle to me.

I went into the bathroom with my mother to brush my teeth.  My front tooth had recently fallen out, and though I looked slightly awkward with a large gap in my mouth, I felt as though I was glowing.  Dream-soaked mornings were my favorite part of my life as a child.  “Here in the moment I belong, in a waking dream.  The night is young but isn’t long, if you know what I mean.  Always beautiful, the thought of what might be.  Close your eyes so you can see.”  Decades later, Kylie Minogue explained my feelings that day most appropriately in her song Love Affair.

My father had not been around recently; he was, in his normal breadwinner fashion, busy at the hospital that week and had been sleeping in the doctor’s quarters in the south wing of the building.  I had come home every afternoon that week and hoped to see his canary yellow Mercedes parked in our driveway, and when it wasn’t, I could feel my heart shatter.  I loved him more than anyone else, yet I could not figure out why, as I barely knew him.  Sure, he threw me around a little bit, and sometimes I would bleed, but I wanted him to understand me, to accept the black sheep in his flock.  I believed that he felt the same way: that some strange force was keeping us apart, and that this did not seem natural.  I intuitively felt that my distance from my father would shape every decision I would ever make and would shade my life in dark tones, particularly when I would try to become romantically involved with men. 

But on this morning, I wasn’t thinking of the situation, which invariably saddened me the numerous times it had occurred during my childhood.  Being a distraught six-year-old was definitely an aberration, but I felt normal that day.  I wasn’t behaving like a lost fawn, but like the cunning cub of a fox.  I felt a glimmer illuminating my eyes, an inner strength that was unfamiliar but totally comfortable.  I was happy.    

“Ok Alif, fix your hair and put on your clothes. I’m going to wake up Farzad and Imran.”  My mother was a strikingly beautiful creature with the kindest, deepest eyes I had ever seen, and the most luxurious, thick black hair.  She seemed to float from bedroom to bedroom, gently waking up each of us from slumber with a kind whisper, telling us that the morning had arrived.  Though she sometimes lost her wits because of the frustration of having to raise four small children practically alone, in my soul I knew how much she loved me and always would.  We were a handful, the Dharamsi quartet of swarming monkeys.  We were mischievous, manipulative, slightly dysfunctional, and sometimes belligerent towards one another.  My sister was the leader of the pack and guided us through various forms of misbehavior, and my brothers and I revered her leadership abilities.  In retrospect, though, I think that I may have been the worst of all influences.  We enjoyed tormenting our parents, each other, and anyone else who was brazen enough to cross our paths, and we got away with unimaginable deeds, like pulling our cantankerous grandfather’s hair, or flipping birds at our obese neighbors across the street, the Foos, whom we playfully called “The Foofers.”  No wonder my father showered our mother with diamonds: she underwent immense difficulty in her task to tame her offspring.  My fraternal twin brothers were particularly rowdy, but only because each was compelled to defend the other.  They got into numerous fights at mosque with many notable delinquents who were, quite frankly, jealous of them.  People always seemed to be threatened by their obvious, unbreakable connection.

I tried quickly to recoup from the blows Suzy had less than skillfully landed; I worked so hard to remind myself of the miraculous epiphany I had earlier that morning.  I was a bird, and I could fly so much higher than Suzy could.  I could see things that she would never witness, as her hatred was a blindfold.  I could not blame her for what she was at that point in her life; the intolerant ideologies of her society had shaped this poor girl into their own private vehicle.  She was so young, and I had to believe that she wasn’t being her “authentic self,” to quote my current spiritual gurus.  I needed to prove to her that God loved me as much He loved her.  Why wouldn’t he?  It was counterintuitive to me.  

Stay tuned for more of Chapter 2...

So many times I’ve been too afraid to do this, to write down exactly what I’m thinking. “You didn’t score high enough on the SAT,” says a voice, “you’re not smart enough. Stop trying and just give up on those racing thoughts in your head. They won’t mean anything to anyone but you.” Self-doubt is my tragic flaw. It’s pretty paralyzing; let me tell you. It even led to my dropping out of medical school.

Yes, I'm a medical school dropout.  Impressive, huh?  After rising to the near top of my class, I had a numbing anxiety attack while studying for the first part of the medical boards, during the summer between my second and third years. The attack was fueled by my use of an amphetamine, which I was taking so that I could stay up late and concentrate on my work. But the drug also made me horribly temperamental, more so than I was naturally, and I began to experience what I described later to my psychiatrist as crying fits and fierce bouts of anger that resulted in many expensive, irreplaceable glass collectibles being thrown against the walls of my luxury apartment and shattering to pieces. I had to get out of Baptism-soaked Augusta ASAP.

To conceal the actual reason for my leaving from the administration of the Medical College of Georgia, I managed to secure a last minute research fellowship at the prestigious National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland and moved away from Georgia immediately following the event, locking the memory of my anxious tendencies into my subconscious yet again. Yeah, this wasn’t the first time I dropped my life and ran and wouldn’t be the last.

A year later, while I again attempted to study for the first step of the boards, a similar scenario took shape, including the use of amphetamines during my studies, sleep deprivation, substantial weight loss, and mood alterations that alienated my family and friends. I began smoking packs of cigarettes a day to calm my nerves, but this of course did not help. High on stimulants, I wrote a letter to my medical school, imploring that they let me take a little more time off to deal with my mental deterioration. When they refused, I sat on my couch for two days and ate Milanos. Intense moments of anxiety followed by depression and suicidal ideations, that was my life’s paradigm, and I would be forced to endure it again and again.

I was watching television one night and wished to be like so many of the people I saw. Reality TV had reached its summit and reined the networks. So many people were powerful, relentless, fearless on these programs. They were pursuing their ultimate dreams, whether it was to be a successful fashion designer, or to own their own restaurant. They were beautiful human specimens with thick, shiny hair and classical features. I managed to convince myself that I was like them, and that I had their bravery.

I walked into the bathroom and looked in the mirror to witness this newfound courage registering on my face. A strikingly attractive Indian man looked back at me, but really this was someone I didn’t know anymore. Physical attractiveness, as is the situation, is normally associated with strength. Yet, I knew that my strength had been depleted. Blindingly shiny, large opal eyes, olive complexion, wavy black hair with specks of gray (at 28, this was acceptable to me), and a muscular physique seemed like a winning combination. I smiled. Looking in the mirror, I understood that I was beautiful. So many crash diets, appetite suppressing pills, eating disorders, and intense exercise programs showed themselves in my 30-inch waist, broad shoulders, round ass, and flat stomach. “My skin regimen is working,” I whispered as I peered into my magnifying vanity mirror; I had succeeded in minimizing my pores and evening out my complexion, and I had achieved the perfect sunless tan. Teeth bleachings had left me with a hypnotizing smile. I was plucked, waxed, moisturized, exfoliated, and fragranced to perfection, and I had built myself to be so fuckable.

Sickeningly, however, even that physically attractive body I saw was giving me the same message, that I was a feeble human being, completely devoid of any worth.

I lifted a hand mirror to see how much hair I had lost on my crown so far. My smile took a nauseatingly swift downturn. “It’s driving me crazy,” I yelled at the reflection glaring back at me. “Why can’t it just stop? What is God doing to me? I’m trying so hard and nothing is working! Are you listening to what I’m telling you?”

Alopecia areata, an autoimmune condition caused by intense periods of stress, had ravaged all the hair on my body. I had patches of my beard that had disappeared, and two quarter-sized areas of hair had fallen out on the top and back of my enormous head. The disease started to manifest midway through my second year of medical school, a time that I had tried so hard to forget. My body was attacking itself, and I saw this as a signal from God that my obsession with being perfectly beautiful had gone too far. I hate you God, I frequently thought to myself.

Gay men are an interesting case study. Many of them are like poor old Narcissus, so taken by his own attractiveness that it drowned him. I was no different, and I held myself up to ridiculously unreachable standards of beauty. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” My physical being was the only thing that mattered, that made me appealing to others, and that had any value. All the other parts of me were shit, and I used the shell of my physicality to cover up those unappealing fragments. My infatuation with my appearance was destroying me, supplying me with mental health deficiencies that became more apparent and more severe by the hour. A pyre of manic symptoms was growing inside of my brain; it was waiting for my arrival so that I could be roasted. At that point, I was essentially bipolar, giving into my temper one minute, and the next sobbing on the floor. Sometimes booze and cigarettes helped. Actually, they helped a lot.

Yet again, I decided that being dead was better than being bald, which was equitable to being ugly. Tears flooded my darkened, red eyes. In my normal fashion, I began planning my funeral inside of my head. Would I have music? If so, would I want to dedicate songs to anyone that I love? Do I want to be cremated? Do I really want to be remembered? To that last question, the answer had always been no.

But without fail, every time I became suicidal, descending into that dark pit of misery, suddenly a light would appear, and I would follow it, painstakingly climbing out of the abyss. I would start to recollect all the wonderful things about the time I had spent so far on this earth. I loved to laugh. Humor was like heroine to me, and I just couldn’t get enough, ever. I remembered what it was like to lose complete control of my body as I chuckled. I would recall my infatuation with the people who had made my existence so colorful. Through my countless depressive spells, I had learned that my intense love for my family and friends would never let me lock myself in my BMW, hit the ignition, and sit there in the garage while carbon monoxide filled my lungs and saturated my blood. My beautiful sister had just begun a family. I still hadn’t made amends with Jil or Ty. Farzad had recently gotten married, and I needed to see what his children would look like, as they most definitely would be as dazzlingly gorgeous as he is. Noureen’s acting career had only started to take off, and I was finally mending my relationship with my father. My mother couldn’t live without me. Imran scored in the 99th percentile on the medical board examination. What does his career hold in store for him? At that moment, I wasn’t ready to leave it all behind. Not yet, Alex.

I sobbed, feeling that my life was being taken away from me. This was an all too familiar notion. First I can’t get through medical school because I’m a psycho, now I’m losing my hair. I’m not supposed to have anything in my life. I hope I contract HIV. If I did that, my parents, my sister, Noureen, and my brothers would be grossed out by me and would not want to be around me anymore. Then I’d be completely off the hook. No one to live for anymore and no reason to feel guilty for taking myself out of life. Then I could contract an opportunistic infection, like maybe pneumocistis pneumonia, hopefully at a CD4 count of less than 40, and I would die swiftly. See, this is what worried me. I never really cared if all of my fantastical thoughts of suicide actually led to death. I didn’t care if I was dead; but I did care if I hurt everyone in my life by artificially expiring. And that night was no different.

I began to justify taking my life again. I considered all the things I hated about my family. The very same people whose love kept me alive also seemed to pass judgment on me in a carnivorous fashion. My family had always looked upon me with watchful eyes, anticipating that I would take flight and then invariably collide with a mountain, the smoke billowing from the remains of my existence. My heart would tell me they were only doing this out of appreciation for everything that I was and that they were simply trying to save me from my demons. But when I sensed that they were monitoring me, I felt suffocated. Was this strangulation only self-induced?

Caution: don’t believe everything I’m telling you about the way my family approached me, as it could just be my paranoia talking. Something always whispered to me that my family was trying to control me. “They want you to be just like them,” some annoying part of me would nag. See, I felt as if I instinctively saw everything as limitless, and for some reason I always experienced my family’s love as condemnation and restraint. I would pout that they just didn’t get me. It was inevitable; in the end, I would disappoint and hurt them, because I couldn’t be exactly what they wanted. Maybe they did understand me, but I merely lived in such a foggy world, wrecked by fear, that the truth was always concealed; I could not reach it, as I had built wall after wall to protect myself from any pain. I couldn’t let go of my past; I had been betrayed so many times that I would now keep a safe distance between my family and me. “Why do they care about me so much?” This question burned inside of me. “Stop loving me.” I know that I distorted the love of others: my college lover Ty, who protected me ferociously, and my high school partner-in-crime Jil, who only saw splendor in me.

My my; how disappointing it all was turning out to be. From nearly being a doctor to being nearly 30, living with my parents, single, and lounging around eating Cheetos while watching television, and on top of it all, I was going to be bald. Television was my antidepressant, and Cheetos were my sedative.

My circle of rationale never led anywhere. I liked to chase my own tail, round and round. They love me; they love me not. I love me; I love me not. That chilly night in North Carolina, I was determined to gain control of the entire, shitty, embarrassing situation, stupid thoughts and all. I removed my clothes, picked up the clippers, slid on the number six guard, and started buzzing away. As my delicate hair floated down onto my shoulders, the bathroom rug, and the tile floor, which I might add, my mother had just cleaned, my only thought was, “There should be more hair falling down. This is so fucked up.” Earlier, I had applied minoxidil to my scalp, and now the solution coated the clippers, my hands, and my forehead, acting like glue and making the hair clippings stick to everything. It was a big mess. I attempted to catch all the hair in a towel that I placed at my feet. I wanted to make a ceremony out of all of it. “God thinks he can just take whatever he wants from me. I’ll show him. I’ll take my beauty away before he can.”

After I had rinsed off in the shower all the sharp clippings that had begun to dig themselves into my skin, I carefully wrapped the freshly shaven hair inside of the bismuth pink Ralph Lauren towel. Looking into the mirror once more, I saw someone completely different looking back at me. Someone who had been debilitated, whose life had essentially been cut short by no fault of his own. My face was swollen from crying, and also from using a vasodilating nitrate vapor, which acted as an aphrodisiac, while masturbating earlier that night. I picked up the folded towel, and walked out of the bathroom into the enormous living room my parents had built solely for the use of my siblings and me. My tan Pomeranian, Aiko, crawled out from underneath the couch to greet me. She heard me opening the door to the back yard and was hoping to sneak out with me.

I lit a cheaply pungent citronella lantern, and began my descent to the dock. I saw nothing but the lake ahead. Aiko, the epitome of faithful sidekicks, hurriedly trailed behind me, the nails on her paws scratching against the cherry red brick walkway, and her short legs moving so rapidly that they were indiscernible under the low light of the moon. She feared for me as if I was her own pup.

I was emotionless, stoic. The reflection of the moonlight on the lake was, however, pretty spectacular, and this calming scene was hard to resist. The light hit each small wave rising from the nearly motionless surface of the lake in the same place. But I resisted the lulling effects of the natural beauty surrounding me. I felt no better about seizing control of a situation that I had seen as hopeless, but certainly not any worse. Moments later, however, as I felt the wind brush over the skin on my crown, I became infuriated. Gritting my teeth, I rapidly dumped all of the hair clippings out of the folded towel and into the lake. “Goddammit; there’s not much hair.”

Fatigued by my thoughts, I dragged the towel back up the brick walkway leading to my parents’ enormous house. Somehow, everything had magically changed. The night was so beautiful. Every star in the black sky seemed visible. The air smelled of freshly-cut grass and jasmine, which came from the bushes my mother had planted shortly after our move to Lake Norman. The ambiance was soothing, and made me heavy with exhaustion. I turned back to see the lighted dock behind me. Drained by the psychotic tantrum I had thrown earlier, I shut the door.

Well, nothing actually got figured out, lots of insults where hurled about, and we ended on an ambigous "lets see where it will take us." But, I'm not ok with that; I like having a plan and knowing where we are going. True, I don't know if I want to spend the rest of my life with this person; a lot of things right now make me want to say "hell no!" But I love the bastard; he's my family. The whole situation is very confusing and mind-fucking for me, nevertheless.

We have two options for the future: 1) see who gets the best offer, and go with the best offer for us, or 2) simply go our separate ways respectfully. Here's the crutch: I'm a completely inflexible bitch. I refuse to spend my life anywhere except west of Kansas-Nebraska-Oklahoma-Texas (yes, perhaps a bit unrealistic when looking for a career in academia...but it's a stipulation of mine anyhow). So, the "best offer" option already has a lot of strings attached on my end of things. Here's the second crutch: he is in the top 1% of our program, working with the most famous of our faculty, but ever since we got together (in the middle of his ph.d. journey), he has not performed like he used to (I feel deeply guilty about this). What this means to me is 2 things: 1) He should not give up his sheer success in this job and the amazing situation he is in (even I'm jealous!), and 2) we are in an unhealthy spot if one of us is unable to shine in all aspects of life. Plus, I do feel guilty, and if he gave up what he has for me, I think that guilt would eventually destroy me and us.

So, in my desperate attempts to solve this predictament, I have an inkling of an idea, although I have no idea if it would work. And, furthermore, I'm not sure if this is necessarily fair to my partner, either.  I think it might be possible to go our "separate" ways career-wise in the sense that we both get jobs on our own, move to that place, work our asses off for the 9-month academic year, but still stay together. We could spend summers together, alternate between visiting each other twice a month, spend the holidays together of course, etc. I think this could work beautifully on many levels, but I have worries about this: we aren't spectacular at long-distance relationship stuff (our conference-goings have proven this); academia might not be lucrative enough for us to actually be able to visit each other consistently; we could easily grow apart; I'm not sure I'm "independent," mature, and confident enough to keep up a relationship like that (although I've never done it, so who knows). I know one of my professors does this, but he's famous and one of the few "rich" in the English world. Plus, his wife isn't an academic.  So, I know it can work, but what type of people need to be involved to pull something like that off for the rest of their lives (until retirement or what not)? Is it fair to my partner? What are the dangers of doing something like this? How does one go about strengthening a relationship enough to perform this feat? Is it even plausible???

Perhaps, luck does not quite describe it, since the process is not about luck but about learning to control the affective effects of writing a scholarly book. But, I think this puts too much meaning into "a dissertation." And, I think the depression being undergone by so many ABD grad students at the moment is largely because they have inflicted a hyperbole of meaning into the process of writing a dissertation instead of just letting it remain in the content of their dissertation. 

There is something to be said, also, for the way academia and life constantly get in each other's way. Bills, grocery shopping, keeping in touch with family and friends, and non-academic hobbies often become obstacles and annoying distractions when dissertation chapters are due to your chair or, vise versa, when the dissertation work makes you forget to pay your bills. I am still paying for the later one...credit card companies just love charging interest and late fees even if you have a great record of paying your bills on time. Bastardos! Regardless of credit card debt, though, the only option that seems available to remedy this conflcit between life and academia is to make academia one's life, an option I tend to resist.

Thus, I have decided to take my dissertation a little less seriously. I'm not going to think of it as having a complete field-altering purpose, especially since most people who will read my scholarship are already stubbornly set in their own arguments. And I'm not going to believe my dissertation is more meaningful and significant than, say, a firefly in my garden, especially since fireflies are cooler to watch than my diss probably will be to read.  And quite frankly, I'm sick of the "failure" thing; it is solely a fabrication of academia's center-of-the-earth syndrome, at least in the academic process I'm going through. And, although my department (as a whole) seems to get perverse kicks from making this feeling of "failure" pervasive among and between grad students, I'm done with the "failure" thing.

We'll see how long my resistance to the dissertation animal known as depression lasts...  If I become one of those awful Cymbalta commercials ("where does depression hurt? Everywhere. Who does depression hurt? Everyone. Depression hurts, but you don't have to.") where even the dog is depressed, I think I will have to just burn my dissertation and chant incantations againt evil spirits or something.

D’après ce que j’ai compris, UnVoice, ça fait taire les souvenirs. Ils vous font asseoir confortablement, vous font gentiment parler de ce qui ne va pas… puis on vous met sur la chaise électrique! Cette opération, c’est carrément aussi dangereux que l’abus d’alcool ou de drogues : troubles de la mémoire, oubli de détails importants… et possibilité de développer certaines psychoses. Masuko m’a expliqué que certains se retrouvent avec des psychoses graves, comme de la « démence post-traumatique » ou, plus souvent, des symptômes d’« Alzheimer » sans égard à leur âge.

Les risques sont plutôt minimes, mais vu les conséquences, j’y penserais à deux fois…

My Fake Baby: Living Doll

(Click on the link above to view the clip and see if your jaw doesn't drop.)

This a new British documentary about adult women who buy handcrafted dolls (called "Re-Borns") and treat them like real infants. Sort of like men who buy those Real Dolls (see Lars and the Real Girl) and treat them like sex toys girlfriends.

As a single woman who dodges the same questions over and over again ("Why aren't you married yet?" or "Why no kids?" My answer: Just lucky, I guess) my take is this:

Are you kidding me?

Does anyone think to perhaps steer these women to therapy? There must be a huge, gaping emotional hole in their lives for them to PLAYING WITH DOLLS. Yes, even though they must cost a small fortune (I'm guessing half the cost of a Real Doll) they are no better than the "lifelike" Thumbelina doll I had when I was seven years old.

Why is it that a single woman cannot feel complete unless they shoot out a kid? I especially like the reactions of their parters. Not only are these women childless they will soon become divorced, too.

To my dearest friends: if I ever become mad and buy one of these, and if you do care deeply about me, shoot me in the head. Please.

Note: School- and industry-related posts will begin next week.

My husband just walked into the room peering over my shoulder quipping, "What is it all about?" He went on jokingly in his Miss Sophia voice, "I guess that depends on who you're asking. Some say it's about money, some say it's about time, others say it's about love...and I loves Harpo, Lord knows I do/maybe my sister Odessa can squeeze in/I'll kill 'im dead!" (I add) "Not if he my man, and not if she be a big ol' heffa!" Yes, for him another day of channel surfing, clicking back and forth between the Color Purple and Championship Poker. Gotta love it. He must be on his hundreth plus sit down in front of his bigscreen HDTV commiserating with Mista as he redeems himself from years of abusing not only Celie as well as himself, but also abusing the modicum of privilege and power bestowed to him during a time in history when black men had little else to proffer.

Long after the TV has been turned off and the day takes on a less subdued sense of mania, I reflect; when all is said and done, I suppose what it's all about has more to do with redemption than anything else. Could it really be that simple? What do you think? TMS