Knowing

What is the worst thing that would happen if they knew exactly who you are?  - Judy Brown  

                For others to know you, you must first know yourself. This musing has become increasingly louder in my head since reaching what is touted to be the “middle years” of my life. I have turned it over in dreams and faced it with squinty eyes as I tread over damp sand on morning walks. I have listened to it in the dark bedroom after placing my book down and turning off the light. I have caught the scent of it in the rosemary bushes in our front yard, in the weaving of white clouds on blue summer skies. It’s an age-old question. Who am I? And if I know, have I shared that with anyone else? Did they know me already? Did they know me before I did? Did they want to leave me/embrace me/mock me/reassure me?  

                In my fifty-three years, I have been many different things to different people. I have been a daughter, a sister, a mother, a lover, a wife, a daughter in law, a granddaughter, a cousin, a friend, a soul mate, a pet owner, an employee, a manager. I took on more specific roles as well. I was a caretaker of other people’s children. I fed them mashed bananas while they sat in their highchair and wiped their mouths with a warm rag. I pinned up their cloth diapers, drawing plastic covers over their pudgy legs. I was a housekeeper; I lifted tchotchkes from bookshelves and coffee tables and dusted them with a cloth. I arranged magazines and placed teacups in drying racks. I worked the cash register at an Italian deli, counting out bills and coins, writing down the customer’s order and sliding it across the high counter to the kitchen. I pulled the heavy arm of a brass commercial espresso machine flown in from Italy, and frothed milk for cappuccinos.  

                I was born a daughter and a sister. I learned that my parents knew things that I did not, and that my sister and brother were different from me. I knew that my mother could type keys on her IBM selectric™ as fast as the wind and spit out a sheet of paper covered in words. I knew that my father could change a flat tire on our family car, and liked dogs, even though we didn’t have one after my brother was born. I knew that my sister could do anything she tried athletically, and my brother could make music with his hands. I watched all of them and learned how I was different. There were not enough books in the world for me to read, and I always had thoughts in my head that I wanted to write down. I loved to eat bread, and I always wanted my hair done in braids and bows. So many things made me laugh and I laughed long and often with my girlfriends, our bodies tangled up in our sleeping bags on the floor. In the summer, I wanted nothing more than to lie on my back in the grass and stare at the sky.  

                I do not know when I crossed over from just being to knowing. To paraphrase Brené Brown, it is a choice between vulnerability and being numb. If we are vulnerable, we are being. We do not question our thoughts or reactions – how walking over a high bridge makes us think of jumping, how men with tattoos make us alert, how we smile at the sight of strawberry patches and tulips in a vase, how we want to crunch on salty food when we feel lonely. How the steam from hot tea instantly calms us and has us curling up in a chair in an oversized sweater and wool socks. Being vulnerable is accepting we are okay, but still being receptive to what might come our way. Being vulnerable is allowing someone to touch your face, the bottoms of your feet, the crown of your hair. Being vulnerable is allowing your imperfections to be a part of your story, just a data point of the entirety of you; someone who is seen, known, and loved.  

But I am now numb. The numbness has dried my insides like an apple core left out in the sun. And I believe that I am numb because all that I do now know about myself, and all that I believe I know about others. It is the burden of middle age. This knowing. What is the worst thing? The worst thing is believing you are something that perhaps is not all of it, not right, or not even real. A painting by a famous artist proven to be fake. A purported cure for Alzheimer's which only allows you to remember episodes in your life that lacked meaning or import. It is seeing yourself reflected in other people’s eyes and not liking what you see. It is the imagined place where you live in your own head, where you have failed as the daughter, mother, or wife. It is the going through motions which prop yourself up, as if you are a puppet where you pull your own strings. This person is who you pretend to be, but you are looking at her from the outside because you can’t feel what she feels. You are certain she isn’t feeling at all.  Here you are play acting: the berry pie you baked and placed on the dinner table at the end of your family meal, the candles illuminating your family-ness. The laundry you washed and folded, the beds you made for travelers just arrived after a long journey, their spent forms lying down to clean sheets. The calls you make to correct mistakes made by others, the emails you compose to ensure your child’s safety or well-being, the doctor’s notes you interpret for your aging parent, the garden you planted that bore pounds of tomatoes you don’t know what to do with. All these things to stop thinking about the void inside. The stillness of knowing.

                And all the while you feel yourself longing for something more, for someone to look at you and divine the truth of your nature, the wildness of your dreams, the core of your existence. You want to stop knowing, you want to unfreeze, you want to weep and rage but you can’t. You are caught in the frozen tundra of middle age, of eschewing vulnerability.