Memory, Week 7

Note: This one takes an uncomfortable turn, but it's because the writing brought me back to a few questions I keep returning to in life, to a sort of rhetorical dilemma. Something, I guess, I just needed to unload.

Tough Enough

When I was ten, an emergency room doctor admitted my father to the hospital with kidney stones. I decided to play nurse. If he yelped with pain, I pushed the button for someone to bring medication. When it took too long, I went looking for staff with access to a pain pill or a shot. My grandfather tried to stop me, succeeded actually, by telling me that some people exaggerate pain, that some handle it better than others. I accepted that. He's one of those people, I thought. He just needs to toughen up. I hate to admit that I thought that. But at age 10, I knew all about that concept. My father told me to toughen up all the time. The pills and shots still came of course.

I heard much later, years later I guess, that a man passing kidney stones is the equivalent of a woman giving birth, at least in terms of pain. Who decided that, I wonder? A man with kidney stones estimating the pain of childbirth? Or a mother passing kidney stones? When I was 21, I went to the ER with severe back pain, nausea, and a fever of 103. Four kidney stones were trying to pass at once, and there were ten others waiting to strike at some unknown future date. My father was there to demand Demoral on my behalf, and I who hated needles, begged for the fastest relief, shot or no shot. To help with the analogy, and speaking as a mother of three, I prefer childbirth to kidney stone delivery.

The wholly physical pain of stones in the urinary track forces the host to break routine. Housework goes on hold, employers get notified, driving waits for another day. The line between well and unwell clearly marked, the unspoken “man down” a given. Nobody expects business as usual when you're flat on your back, doped up on pain killer, the x-rays your proof, a tangible sign of your physical excuse.

Emotional pain works differently. When I was a junior in high school, one of my classmates was admitted to the hospital for a week of rest, a victim, I heard, of stress, a victim on the verge of a breakdown. How, I wondered, does one recognize the “verge of a breakdown?” Later, a friend of mine who taught kindergarten students for ten years was diagnosed with a stress disorder related to her job and given an early retirement with pay. She was only 35 years old at the time. I'm not discounting the emotional and mental pain of these friends. I know that pain well and I relate to the need, the desire, to be removed from the stressors, the sources of pain that won't show up in radiology. And, for me, that's the crux. I sometimes wonder if I've passed my mental breaking point or if I really can take more. There's no hard evidence, no clearly marked line I can say I've crossed. Am I sucking it up or am I really not broken yet? Of my closest women friends, I only know one who hasn't been prescribed a mood enhancer for either short- or long-term treatment of anxiety or stress, the idea that if we face our demons with a better attitude, none of the stressors need be dealt with. The medication equivalent to a mantra I picked up somewhere: "You are the master of your emotions."

I once visited a friend who'd just given birth, and looking at her in her white hospital gown I thought not of the baby she was now responsible for, not of the nine months leading up to the birth, not of the delivery itself, but only of that image of her resting in her hospital bed, her food prepared for her, her job on hold, her duties delegated. And I was jealous. That's an odd thing to admit. But that's what I felt. I wanted a few days of bedrest, a break from kitchen chores, time off from my job, time off from chauffeur duty, time to stop pretending that everything was okay, that I felt like keeping up my routine, that I didn't have hidden hurts or repressed desires, that I was up to sucking it up.

On a good day, I crashed into a solid glass door at the Kapalua Maui Resort, thinking for a good 15 minutes that my nose was broken. When it stopped hurting, I knew an x-ray was unnecessary. I know, too, that on that day, heading out to ride horses and tour a pineapple plantation, my emotional health was in tact. At the plantation, my assigned horse, Harrison Ford, took off from the path at a trot and I squealed, one of only two things our tour guide told us not to do. She and Fabio caught up to us, calming Harrison down and reminding me to gently rein him in, to stay calm, should he stray again. Later, I saw a baby pineapple, learning that it takes a full year for the fruit to mature. Back at the hotel, I paused at the glass door, a little disoriented by its sheer invisibility.

Stress, heartache, debt, suffering loved ones, hopelessness, the blues. They're all invisible, too. Maybe you'll cry and that's visible. Maybe someone says, “You've got an anger problem” or “you're overemotional.” Maybe you never say a word, only squeeze yourself into a ball in the dark, wondering if tomorrow you will really stand up again, brush your teeth, wash your hair, make the coffee, drive to your part-time job, apply again for a real job. Or will you wake, find yourself unable to rise, and get the diagnosis that mandates your withdrawal? If standing when the moment comes, will your knees buckle, your body landing helplessly on the concrete like others you have known? Or, if no diagnosis comes, will you say anyway, finally, I'm not tough enough?