Friendship With Myself

How becoming less quiet about my fears led to good things. Plus: The Prompt Club!

Dec 05, 2024

gold and white floral ceiling — A gigantic example of the sort of thing I just cannot have above my head!!

When I last visited my niece and her husband in Chicago, they stood on either side of the guest bed and lovingly removed the mirror that hangs over it. The same is true when I stay at my friend’s cottage on the bluff overlooking the lake: the painting that hangs above the bed has to be jettisoned to leaning against the far wall. Hotel rooms, B&Bs, stays with friends or relatives: every room must be carefully sussed out and anything that might topple on my head whilst I’m asleep can’t remain.

The same rules apply to my waking hours: hanging light fixtures, ceiling fans, freestanding shelves rife with heavy objects, wall-mounted televisions, overhead compartments on planes, tree branches on windy days, patio umbrellas, waiters lifting heavy trays over my chair. I’m aware of what’s above my head the way a lion might be aware of a hunter.

I came by this fear honestly: After the rope snapped that was holding a huge tabletop suspended on a wall in a fancy furniture showroom on Madison Avenue and it fell on my head and one by one I lost all my senses, had a gigantic laughing attack as if this was the funniest thing that had ever happened to me, and slid into staggering head pain, I didn’t receive proper care because this was about a decade before the football players were all over the news and, as hard as it is to believe, basic info on head and brain injury wasn’t common knowledge back then, even many doctors weren’t properly informed. Including, apparently, the doctor I saw the next day who didn’t order an MRI, CT scan, or even an X-ray. But as impossible as it is to imagine now, I didn’t know that he should have ordered those things. And neither did my friends or family. And when increasingly debilitating symptoms developed over the years, as we now know is normal with head and brain injury, rather than soothe, nurture, and commend myself for how well I was coping, I faulted myself.

“If I were a better person,” I would think, “I would be able to heal from this.” And: “If I were a better person, I wouldn’t have succumbed to the blow in the first place.” Also: “If I put more pressure on myself, if I think poorly of myself, if I treat myself unkindly, I will force this to not be happening.”

But as anyone who has struggled with chronic illness knows, all that pressure and self-meanness did was put even more stress on my body and my symptoms hunkered down.

For a long time, out of shame, I quietly ensured nothing dangerous was over my head. NYC bustles with construction and construction tunnels erected on the sidewalks to protect pedestrians from potential falling debris. Afraid to walk under those, I quickly learned to surreptitiously guide friends across the street without missing a beat of the conversation. Likewise, I would pick the seat at the restaurant that didn’t have a pendulum light dangling above it or, if at the bar, a TV or rows of bottles wedged overhead. I read a room like a diligent Secret Service agent protecting their client. For the longest time, no one noticed what I was doing.

Until one day, I needed to change seats at a restaurant. Engaged in a gripping conversation, I’d not noticed the AC unit that was propped on a shelf above my head. Was I with my dad or a friend or a cousin? I don’t recall. But what I do remember is my pounding heart and my sweaty palms at the sight of that looming over me — and how, without thinking it through, I stated out loud for the first time, “I can’t have anything over my head.” And then that person immediately switching seats as if that made perfect sense to them. I wasn’t sure if it did. There was some doubt about my health in those days before the football players, something I’ll write about another time, but whatever they were actually thinking, they switched. And then a few months later at a beloved auntie’s funeral brunch, everyone took their seats first so I wound up directly under a magnificent and massive chandelier. Red hot adrenaline shot through my body; I asked a cousin to switch seats, explained why – and she did.

I still felt embarrassed; I still carried the misguided belief that I was somehow responsible for what had happened to me as well as the myriad symptoms that disrupted my daily life. But I was beginning to understand that it was pointless to pretend these symptoms and the accompanying fears weren’t happening. Not being truthful about my struggles was denying my reality. And denying my reality was keeping me isolated from people who might want to help me – and it was keeping me isolated from myself.

Over the years, when circumstances necessitated, I began to share my fear of having things over my head more consistently. Not only did people understand, they shared their fears, many that had likewise grown from health challenges. My shame slowly morphed into acceptance and then, the only way I can think to accurately describe it, friendship with myself. “Here is this basically kind and smart and interesting human who had about eighty pounds fall on her head and derail her life,” I thought. “She’s kind to animals, does her best to not add too much harm to the planet, is perhaps too obsessed with chocolate and Johnny Cash and all things English, but, still, how can I help her?”

As friendship with myself grew it strengthened my friendship with others. As anyone who’s lived through hell knows, which I presume is all of us, it can tear open your heart and suddenly the individual specifics of people’s lives, whilst important, are less important than the fact they too are struggling. They too are trying to find groundedness, security, and happiness. They too are hoping to feel less alone. And tending to one another’s fears is exquisitely and intensely bonding. It can also comfort our own.

Anyone in my life now, knows I still can’t have objects over my head. As with my niece and her husband moving the mirror, there’s not a lot of fuss about it, they move either me or the object. This simple, beautiful gesture allows me to experience myself in ways that I couldn’t when I was keeping it all inside. It’s also allows me to voice some of the other needs I likewise kept locked inside.

In just over a week, I’m headed to Baltimore to see the creator of a cutting-edge protocol that’s helping me considerably with the head injury challenges I still navigate daily (the head injury and brain injury symptoms are from the same accident but manifest differently). It’s a big investment for me financially, emotionally, and timewise. I’m nervous and hopeful and afraid-to-be-hopeful and so many other things.

And at first, because I was having to do all this alone, I was also utterly overwhelmed. Sometimes this sort of work can agitate my symptoms, and I was particularly nervous about it potentially doing so to the vertigo when I would need to drive myself to and from the appointments as well as to and from the airport.

And whilst the past few decades have involved caring for myself largely alone, and I’ve done an admirable job, something about traveling to a place I’d not been before and staying in a hotel and seeing a new healthcare practitioner the week before Christmas (his first opening — I had to book six months in advance) felt like a lot.

One of my favorite pictures of my cousin and me!

Rather than keeping quiet, I told one of my English cousins about my concerns and vulnerabilities. She lives in NYC and instantly offered to join me. Which, honestly, bowled me over. It’s transformed the trip from yet another overwhelming protocol I’m trying in the hopes of one day living a normal life into four days with someone whose company I treasure. The daily treatments last one and a half hours. The rest of the time we’ll be free to eat delicious food, wander about, maybe even get into some mischief, talk endlessly, laugh a lot, snuggle under blankets on the couch, watch silly movies, share truths about who we are. All of which, I imagine, will be nearly as healing as the work itself. And none of it would be happening if I hadn’t, all those years ago, said that I needed to switch my seat.

🎈I have a few new ideas I’ve been tossing around for Beyond. Here’s the first one. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

The Prompt Club: I thought it might be kind of wonderful to start a writing club where we play around with a prompt offered by one of the brilliant writers in Craft Advice. I’m thinking we’d meet once a month via Zoom.

My writing and teaching background doesn’t often come up in connection to my work with Beyond but it might be helpful in this new possible light.

I hold an MFA from Columbia and before starting Beyond published both fiction and nonfiction widely including The Sun Magazine, The Sun Magazine, O, the Oprah Magazine, and many more

I taught creative writing for several decades when I lived in NYC at Rutgers, The New School, as well as private workshops and one-on-one tutorials; when I moved to Michigan, up until two years ago, I taught at the lovely community college down the road. My students have landed significant book deals, published essays in all sorts of wonderful places, were accepted into fantastic MFA programs and blossomed into gifted, awe-inspiring writers.

I loved every minute of teaching. I miss it! I thought The Prompt Club might be a beautiful way to get to know one another more intimately, exchange ideas, build our chops, and have some fun.

Please let me know if you’d be interested in joining something like this. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts!

If you enjoyed this essay, you might also like this one about healing decades after my divorce: