22. Feeding the Invalid

This is a story about feeding the invalid or as I like to say “Feeding the In-valid.” The in-valid is a form of parasite, like a tapeworm, that thrives on negative energy, self-loathing and regret.  You know it by the nagging voice inside your head that whispers “You’re not good enough.  You’re not loveable.  You don’t deserve to live.”  My mother said that to me once, “You don’t deserve to live”.  I know she didn’t mean it, she was angry.  But the words stuck.  They invaded my heart; the seeds took root and began to grow.  Soon a little “in-valid” was living inside me demanding to be fed.  Decades later, the nagging voice of the in-valid still seeps into every aspect of my life. 

A few months ago, I was talking to a friend about looking for work. He’d been looking for months and was discouraged.  I told him that once I applied for seventeen jobs before I was hired. He didn’t believe me.  I said, “I’ve got the rejection letters to prove it!”  He was dumbfounded.  “Why on earth,” he asked “Would you keep those?”  I shook my head and grinned because I knew why I kept proof of my failures.  I was feeding my in-valid.

It’s amazing how much energy it takes to keep an in-valid fed.  When life doesn’t naturally feed the in-valid, when the little creature is emaciated and nearly vanquished I search out food for it.  Again and again, I choose situations and people who will reaffirm my feelings of self-loathing.  I find men who will never love me or maybe men who love me but not enough.  When I am feeling most vulnerable I seek out friends and family members who won’t even acknowledge me.  I keep records of unanswered email, unanswered phone calls.  I develop and kind of proxy relationship with voice mail.  It is a decimal place short of stalking. 

Sometimes I insert myself into their lives.  I crawl back begging acceptance and like all those times before I am welcomed with cold shoulders and tepid touch.  I open hearts and wallets to try to purchase loved ones.  I am always a day late and a dollar short. 

Case in point: I just moved into a new apartment.  I lived for eight years in a little run down house in the high rent district.  I was the neighborhood’s poor relation.  Surrounded by million dollar mansions owned by baseball players and high tech CEO’s – I alone was single story.  I think my little house was the grandfather of the other houses.  Built in the 1960’s it had been owned by a Japanese couple for 40 years.  A friend from church bought it and confronted with the cost of the retrofits and updates – she looked for an undemanding tenant and found me. 

I had been living in one bedroom apartments and often had to find room for my Lilly Beth and the Tater Tot.  The close quarters added to the other problems in our strained relationship.  I choose the three bedroom house so that we would always have enough space.  But as they say – humans plan and God laughs. After the first year Lilly Beth and Tater Tot never came back to the little house with the garden.  In fact, I never saw them again.  The little house never became the home for family dinners or movie nights.  We never had a family Christmas there.  No birthday parties.  I rented a big house with a garden and then I lived there alone.  I bought a new double bed and slept in the recliner.  My motto should be “space to let”    

Then a few years ago, the loan for Max’s new house fell through, I was battling an antibiotic resistant pneumonia and Max was between homes.  He moved into the room I had planned for Lilly Beth.  There has always been a natural rapport between me and Max.  We tend to see things the same way.  Lilly Beth saw that and it made her feel isolated, but there it is! I understood Max but Lilly Beth was always a mystery to me.  Nevertheless being roommates with Max was not easy.  There were plenty of door slamming nights.  But there were even more “Ok I see your point, and I’m really sorry and I was wrong” mornings.  Our relationship grew up and so did we.  It was good.

I loved the little house and did my best to care for it. The original owners were skillful Japanese gardeners.  The yard was beautifully landscaped.  One shady corner was terraced and filled with ferns and other shade lovers.  When it rained the water cascaded naturally down the rocks and pooled near the ferns.  I worked on the garden whenever my health permitted.  I brought the peonies back to life, planted lily of the valley and learned to prune lilacs and Japanese Maples.  The first year Tater Tot planted tulips on my birthday and every year after they bloomed for Mother’s day.    

One day I was gardening in the wheelchair.  Some of the flowerbeds were terraced and I could reach them from the chair.  I was so busy pruning that I didn’t realize that I had overreached.  I bent forward too far and the electric wheelchair and I tipped over.  Max was inside working on the computer and heard the crash. His face was full of terror when he ran out the door. Then he saw me, covered in dirt and grinning from ear to ear.  He gave me his very best imitation of a stern look and helped me up.  He just looked at me and said, “You are just having a heluva good time aren’t you?”  I just grinned and shook my head.  Then he said, “I think you’re done for today.” 

Finally Max found his dream house and moved out.  The emptiness was more than I could bear.  The walls echoed.  For a month I waited each day for him to come home from work.  When the sun went down and it got dark I’d realize that he was home already, just not here.  Without Max to help, the gardening was out of control, the bills were mounting and I was exhausted most of the time.  I knew that like Max it was time for me to move on.

To be honest, I didn’t choose the little house as a place to live. I thought it was a good place to die.  It was a place for the kids to visit but mostly it was a good place to hold a wake. Things didn’t work out the way I envisioned. It wasn’t the house filled with family and it wasn’t the house where I died.   It was a house where I dealt with death – but not my death.  In that house I lost a sister-in-law, a mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law, a brother and a mother.  It became a place of morning, a place to grieve and a place to remember.

Shortly after my mother died, the depression was intolerable.  That’s when I met Joshua, the therapist. He had one of those gypsy childhoods.  I’d mention a city and he’d say, “I lived there too.”  I had a feeling that his mother and I may have been cut from the same cloth.  He had all the degrees and the credentials, he knew his stuff. But he had a talent that can’t be learned.  He heard everything you said and the things you couldn’t speak.  He didn’t try to direct you; he just let you find your way.  He was a steady hand, a friendly ear and a Godsend.

As he helped me say goodbye to my mother and brother other things came up.  Memories that were at first fractured began to reveal a picture.  A story emerged and old mysteries were solved.  Joshua helped me find myself.  As a consequence I looked at the little garden house and knew it was time to leave.  It was time to find a place and a life that fit me. I didn’t need a house for a family that would never live there.  I was not in a hurry to hold a wake.  I wanted a place to live.  It was time to let go and move on. 

Seattle if full of neighborhoods, all of them intriguing.  I looked for a new home for months.  I looked at the “Sleepless in Seattle” houseboat, the Pioneer Square artist’s loft with the freight elevator and the exposed brick, the tiny cottage tucked in a hillside, the senior housing where they stick a few walls in a 500 square foot studio and call it a two bedroom and I looked at Condos, duplexes and apartments.  I looked in the U District, Capitol Hill, Beacon Hill, Mercer Island, First Hill and the International District. 

I found a two bedroom condo in the International district with hardwood floors and a view to die for; I could see the China gate from my living room.  I was walking distance from the Uwajimaya market and five of the ten best take out places in the city.  It was single woman heaven. I filed the application and started to pack. 

One of the first things I always pack is an Army trunk I got from Doyle Johns when I was about twenty.  It was that olive drab color but I painted it black. It has followed me across the country and through several lifestyles.  It holds my past.  Packing it I found a poem written on a piece of cardboard by my hippie “Old Man” named Lester.     

Lester was like a character in a 1950’s movie, a hoodlum type.  He used to hang out at a place called the Shake Shop. In the fifties it had been an ice cream parlor with checkered table clothes and a jukebox full of Buddy Holly songs.  In the sixties it became a used bookstore and coffeehouse that had folksingers on the weekend.  Phil, the owner, never let go of anything, so now he had the shakes, the coffee, the used books, the juke box but he also had papers and pipes and posters and waterbeds too.  In the back room was a pool table.  My sister Kitty looked like a teenybopper – but she was a shark when it came to shooting pool.  It kept us in cigarettes.  We spent a lot of time in the Shake Shop in 1970. 

That’s where I met Lester.  Lester was a skinny Irish kid who had one lazy eye and one deaf ear but he never missed a trick. He had a way of getting inside your head and knowing what you needed to hear.  When I met him, he was working at something called Avenue 4 love.  It was a suicide prevention hotline sponsored by the local Catholic Church.  It was so long ago that the first part of the phone number was AV for Avenue and Avenue 4 love was a real phone number.  He counseled people on the phone.  He was great on the phone, even better in person.  He may be the best salesman I ever met.  He sold people on living.  He could give hope to someone who had just lost everything.  He could also play on your fears.  Whenever I tried to leave, he’d remind me that “no one can love you like I do.”  And maybe he was right.  No one ever got under my skin like Lester did.  I escaped Lester, but I’ll never really be free of him. 

I always say that Lester taught me music.  He hears more out of his one good ear than most of us will ever hear with two good ones.  And he taught me how to listen.  I only heard lyrics and melody.  I was AM music.  Lester was FM radio, underground, dark blues bars, rock and roll concerts and rockabilly truck stop.  He made me listen with both ears and all my brain parts.  He made me hear the bass and the piano, the flute and horns and drums.  He taught me to listen with my soul and music has been my refuge ever since.  But Lester taught me something much more important. 

He taught me to see the naked emperor.  He was the first person I ever met who would see someone being cruel or stupid and tell them.  Ours is a culture that looks away from what is ugly and by doing so we encourage it.  Lester never looked away and he wouldn’t let me. He used to say, “It’s a mother fucker to be right all the time.”  Ignorance is bliss. I was the proverbial flower child at nineteen; blissfully ignorant.  It was easy to love everyone when you’re living in an illusion. He made me take off the blinders and really look at people.  He made me see all the ugliness and brutality.  He burst all my bubbles, all my illusions.  I thought it would kill me.    

But he didn’t leave me empty handed.  Late into the night we would have grand arguments.  He would demand that I argue my case, defend my opinions.  One night we argued for hours about who was the better Beatle, John or Paul.  I argued fiercely for Paul and he argued for John.  At the end of the argument, I said, “To be honest, I prefer John’s lyrics.”  He laughed and said that he preferred Paul’s melody.  Our friends would listen to these great debates with awe.  I was more than Lester’s old lady; I was a friend, a companion, an equal.  In a place and time when women were still very passive and submissive, I was not.  With Lester, I heard myself for the first time.  I heard my own voice.  I learned to listen to my own sense of right and wrong, to trust my Instincts and not to be ashamed to call someone out.  Even him. 

I hadn’t heard from Lester in years when we started being email friends about ten years ago.  At first it was wonderful.  He could still finish my sentences and still made me laugh like no one else.  I missed that – like the Lovin’ Spoonful song, (Darlin’ Be Home Soon) “for the great relief of having you to talk to.”  I will always love talking to Lester.  But the last time we spoke, I left him speechless. 

He said something insulting and I told him about it.  I told him he hurt my feelings and I wanted him to apologize.  He couldn’t just say, “Oh I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.”  No Lester had to convince me that I was wrong and that if in fact my feelings were hurt than I was to blame for it.  Lester had never apologized for anything.  He would just rationalize the thing to death until, out of sheer exhaustion, you agreed with him.  Now I was older and I had more stamina and damn it – he hurt my feelings.

He lectured me about it for days sending me recaps of the conversation.  At one point he did it all in caps as though yelling at me could help.  It was the same old rationalization he’d used for years.  Finally I said, “So nothing you do can hurt me. I decide what hurts me.  Like maybe there was just some hurt out there and I just walked right into it.  You’re not to blame. Right?”  He agreed and then I said, “Well that makes me sad, because if you can’t make me unhappy then you can’t make me happy either.”  He was quiet a very long time.  We didn’t talk much after that.  If he couldn’t control me then I was of no use to him. 

Now, over a year later I was packing for the move to the new apartment.  I opened the old black trunk and inside I found a poem he had written all those years ago. I began remembering the sweetest things. I remembered rainy nights in Berkeley, how he always played “Color My World” on the jukebox for me and how he sent me a box of filled with underwear for my birthday once.  I wanted him to tell him I was moving and give him my new address and phone number.  So I got on the computer and looked for him. I emailed several different addresses and finally I face booked him.  And when he didn’t respond, I sent him a note. 

Life is good for me now.  I actually fell like I’m in the right place at the right time.  My health had vastly improved; I live in a nice apartment in a great part of the best city in the world.  I have a group of wonderful friends and I have been officially recognized as a "Poet" by a prestigious organization for women writers. I am happy. 

Then I felt the need to feed the in-valid and tried to contact Lester. 

I got this in reply:
"You have alienated everyone, who has ever attempted to get close to you.

 Your family, your friends, your lovers......everyone. Men & women alike.
 Everyone you know, has been out to get you, do you harm, cause you pain. 

 You have no responsibility in the failure of every relationship you've ever

 had in the 40 years I've known you.  Everyone who has ever reached out to

 you has had to withdraw for their own emotional & psychological well being."

The in-valid awoke.  I sat in front of the computer screen unable to move for nearly 30 minutes. I wracked my brain wondering what I had done to anger him so. I frantically tired to think of a way to atone for my sins. 

Then I felt the old panic start to rise.  I wanted to run out and find a warm body, anybody to prove I was not alone. Someone who would tell me pretty lies and make the pain go away.  Then I wanted to reach out and hurt back.  I was no nineteen year old girl now.  I knew how to make the words that hurt deep. I could use short little words that would bite.  Or longer words, carefully crafted to dig in like chiggers and slowly suck the life blood.  Words like grenades that detonate later.  I could hurt with words, of course I could.  Lester taught me. 

I tossed off a few paragraphs of meanness and felt the in-valid become energized. He was feeding off my pain, hoping that I would dive into a round of self-loathing and destruction.  I stopped when I realized I was repeating a pattern so familiar that it had worn ruts in my psyche.  All the healing and recovery had not erased the in-valid.  It had just made me aware of it. 

I called the doctor, then I called my therapist and finally I called my son.  No one was home so I left messages and waited for the calls of reassurance.  The only thing worse than having one person tell you that your life has no value is having four people tell you. Even it they only use silence to say it. 

But that’s not as bad as it sounds.  The one thing my mother’s condemnation taught me early - was that more than anyone else I had to value my own life. I had to decide early on that even if I was not going to invent fossil free fuel or fat free French fries – I mattered to God.  He had a plan for me.  I was valuable.

It was then I realized that Lester was a classic abuser.  He used all the tricks, especially crazy making.  He was real good at crazy making.  The young girl he met had no tools to defend herself.  And he was a lot like Ginger’s (Sharon Stone) old boyfriend in the movie Casino. When Lester found me I was orphaned by a family who saw me as damaged goods.  Lester treated me like a beautiful soul.  I gobbled up the praise like heroin and quickly grew addicted to his approval. 

Lester and I had an open relationship.  That was supposed to mean that we were both free to have relationships with other people.  In reality it never works out that way.  I was free to watch as Lester left with a lover or I was free to give up my bed for his new friends.  But I was never really free to have relationships of my own.  I would have been punished.  Later I understood that He chooses women – girls really – who are damaged.  Then he uses their pain to enslave them.

Suddenly, the buzzer sounded.  It was Ruth. We went shopping for a new recliner.  Ruth and I spent the next day putting together my desk and the rest of my office.  We did some grocery shopping at the Japanese market.  Took Joshua for Fast Food Chinese take out…

And I forgot to be angry.

Then one day David and Rosanne came by to bless the apartment with boxwood and holy water and prayers Rosanne wrote for me.  It was soothing.  David reminded me that he hadn’t seen me since the day before the move.  I was looking considerably better.

I have great friends.  Some of them I have know for fifty years or more.  Some less than five weeks.  I never managed to make peace with my family and I will have to find a way to live with that.  I could not make my family love me. 

Late one night I stood in the living room and was amazed at how wonderful everything looked. The process of moving from a three bedroom house to a two bedroom apartment involves a lot of choices about what to keep and what to let go.  The little house had lots of nooks and crannies to collect orphaned things. Anger tucked away, resentment left in a closet or fear in dark corners.   I had one room entirely for things I didn’t mean to keep but couldn’t throw away.  Some of those things moved with me anyway.  Now after a few weeks of sorting things out, I realize that I’ve kept the best. My books and pictures, cushions and curtains all seemed to find the perfect place. Things I’ve owned for nearly fifty years, things that have crossed the country with me a dozen times, sit next to my brand new treasure.  It seems my collection of odd bits of personal belongings have found their rightful place.  I am home.    

What surprises me is that in spite of everything, I have carried that black trunk filled with ancient pain with me all these years.  I have dragged it along behind me like a dead cat on a string.  Just like always, as soon as I felt comfortable here, I opened it up and let the hurt out again.  Only this time, this time, I sorted through the trunk.  It was painful but I sorted the treasure from the trash.  There can be no doubt that I could not have survived my own life without the lessons Lester taught me.  And I certainly can’t imagine my life without the music.  It has given me a place of refuge in some troubled times.  Of course, he could have been kinder but that’s not Lester’s style. So I’ll hang on to those sweet memories – Berkeley rain and deep talks.  I keep the poem on the cardboard box.  But the rest of it – the ugly, tortured hours – I’ll let them go. 

No more feeding the in-valid. Time now to nourish the soul. 

I grabbed a cup of tea and twirled around in my new recliner to look at the skyline. There is a steeple lighting up the sky and through the living room blinds the city looks like an impressionist painting.  I can smell the sea and down below I hear the hushed words of lovers walking.  Heavy sigh. 

 

(Later I realized that I had offended his wife. It was hard not to.  She was like my little sister who use to torment me and then when I would swat her to get her to leave me alone, she’d tattle and I’d get punished.  Mrs. Lester is like that.  Besides who thinks I should get along with Mrs. Lester anyway?  It’s unnatural).