Day 48

I was grading papers yesterday when I decided to take a break. I turned on Oprah and saw her speaking with Iyanla Vanzant. It as this amazingly candid and raw discussion, like peaking through the curtains at a private moment between the two of them. They were rehashing events from a time eleven years ago when Iyanla was being mentored by Oprah. Ultimately, the relationship ended with Oprah feeling betrayed and Iyanla feeling rejected. I could relate to them both.

I was especially intrigued by one line uttered by Oprah in the course of the conversation. She said that she learned a long time ago that if someone doesn't want her, she is not going to allow herself to want them. Wow, where do I sign up for that course? I have been trying to learn that lesson for most of the last 46 years.

I have this image in my mind, a borrowed memory conveyed to me by my mom. I am a little girl, a baby really, no more than two or three years old. My arms are upstretched, toward my father who towers above me. I am pleading for him to hold me. He doesn't. He is too busy watching the rollar derby on the television, drinking his beer, eating a Spam sandwich he made for himself alone.

I went through the next 40 years with my arms upstretched, pleading: please see me, please hear me, please love me. My arms were upstretched to teachers as I waited for their approval in the form of gold stars and big fat red A's. My arms were upstretched to the boys who would whisper I love you in exchange for a piece of flesh. My arms were upstretched to the blood sisters for whom I would do anything as long as they promised to never leave. My arms were upstretched at job interviews and employee evaluations where the boss held my self-worth hostage for a ransom of absolute compliance.

That is why I find it so astonishing now to hear a woman utter these words: If someone doesn't want me, I am not going to allow myself to want them. I want to speak these words myself, with conviction and heart. I am on my way, but I am not there yet. I still find my arms rising up as if by rote at the first sign of indifference or rejection. I am trying to learn to feel the fear and move through it without reacting in this way that has become so familiar.

The writing is where my heart is right now. I don't want to sacrifice it to this need to belong, to be accepted, to be loved and yet I see that danger. The writing can become just another way of holding my arms up, another plea for affection and understanding. Somehow I think that it can and should be more than that. I long to write not from a place of desperation, but from a place of grace.