I wasn’t afraid to log on. I’ve been here before, done this already, but on this Day 1, unlike the others, I logged on knowing that there is a problem. This time I actually fear myself. This time, I feel the trembling nerves dancing in my psyche rather than just in my body. My life then had become unmanageable. I wasn’t living it at all, just breathing from one day into the next. Everything had stopped, I hardly left home for two years, watching hours of TV, binge eating non-stop, gorging pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Pillsbury cinnamon rolls.
My life now is being managed although what is within me still becomes unmanageable. I’m only at home because I am working, writing remotely away from others who if they could see me at an office everyday would notice my broken patterns. I feign the management of my life, but when I turn in an assignment, my checks come in. Real money that I can buy real things even though the exchange of goods–the exchange of myself–was false.
The meeting starts with a “Hey Donna.” The song in the sound of her voice is like the “ding-dong” of a doorbell, but a slide down rather than two distinct notes. I love it. I’m only supposed to have my first name displayed, but Zoom is betraying me, automatically showing my last name because when I set it that way, I didn’t realize it was an ironclad contractual agreement. I have to change it. They already know it, but I have to change it. Maybe they will forget.
The kind-hearted, nurturing white woman introduces her husband and then herself, “I have to admit, I hate my name. My name is Karen.” She pauses with light-hearted laughter. “I hate my name.”
I understand the gesture, but I’m a little bit frustrated because it starts the meeting with a focus on the identity I have no control over having, rather than the identity I logged on to work on changing–an identity marked with a pain so internal that the external things can’t comprehend it. I didn’t want to think about both tonight. I never want to think about either, or both at the same time, but I’ll work on them individually, carefully, quietly, mostly secretly.
But she is acknowledging something so fretful to admit out loud. That she is white, I am black, and white people–white women–have done despicable things to me and to us. I have more love and appreciation for what she is trying to do than frustration for how it is provoking the thoughts I put away for a little while to focus on the inner things.
I knew I didn’t want to say anything beyond what there was to be said. We take turns reading material that is read at the beginning of each meeting. I almost get all the way to the end when my voice cracks and my eyes drown in saltwater. I can’t see the words anymore on the screen.
It said, but I felt like I was saying, “We pretended we were fine, full of bravado and excuses, but somewhere deep inside we knew…we knew we were sliding down a slippery slope toward greater and greater sorrow.”
The words found me out and made me resent how I have used words myself to find out everything. These are words that I would have written myself and certainly already have in another form in my journal. I push through the last three sentences and make a vow with myself to not speak again.
When it’s over so quickly because I did not share and there was only one other person, Jason, who chose to, my voice wavers out a last question.
“So this is every week? It’s happening next Wednesday?”
After an affirmative response, I log off the meeting and burst, erupt, explode into tears as my body crumples over my desk.
Look: Evolve 