Turning Thirty-Eight
A few days after my thirty-eighth birthday, I began reading Zora Neale Hurston's, Their Eyes Were Watching God. I picked it up at an airport bookstore. It was the time of year when I did a lot of traveling for work, but on this occasion I was traveling back from having spent a romantic weekend with a man I had been dating, and with whom I was in love.
In the novel, the heroine, Janie Crawford, develops from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, and through three self-defining relationships. She lives in the world of men, and her reality is shaped and influenced by the men in her life, and yet Janie manages to define a path that is all her own, often rejecting the constraints, traditions, and social mores that her environment attempts to impose on her. She never stops responding to an intuitive drive for personal growth, discovery, and fulfillment.
Towards the end of the novel, Janie is approaching forty when she meets her third husband, her beloved Tea-Cake. The man for whom she “felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place.” It doesn’t matter that he is fifteen years her junior, that he is poor, and that he sometimes beats her. However much we’ve hurt in love and life, we don’t close ourselves off completely. We are always capable of surrendering our heart. We do so understanding the risks and the sacrifices. It is a self-less offering we make in the name of love.
A friend of mine says, thirty-eight is a particularly juicy age, the peak of a woman’s physical and sexual vitality. By thirty-eight I felt complete. My body had over the years acquired plenty of character, and exuded both the vigor and voluptuousness of someone who has been a lover and a mother. I felt powerful and satisfied as I looked back on what I had accomplished so far. Life had offered me opportunities and challenges. With each came a degree of self-revelation, and often suffering. I knew that my journey was not nearly over, but by then I also possessed a sense of trust. Trust that my spirit would persevere. I was ready to love again after my divorce. Ready to open my heart.
I can't help but think that something guided me to pull this book off the shelf. Reading the inside flap again, I knew why I had chosen the book and that it would have a profound effect on me; "…a woman who refuses to live in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish romantic dreams, it is the story of fiercely independent Janie Crawford, and her evolving selfhood through three marriages and a life marked by poverty, trials, and purpose." Who was this Janie Crawford Hurston created? What did she know about sorrow and fear, trials and purpose?
One of the things I enjoy most about traveling is the opportunity to read for pleasure. The airport book store was small, but I was impressed with the selection. It had many of my favorite and other notable authors. I obsessed about which novel to choose. This one caught my eye because it was beautiful. Cherry blossoms weredrawn on a rich burgundy background in a matte finish. The font was understated, and the cover had texture to it, giving it a weathered look and feel. The pages were a creamy color that is easy on the eyes, and the kind with frayed edges that look like they've been torn. On the plane I took out my book, and examined it. There is something intimate about reading a book; the feel of its weight and how it bends in my hands, opening it up, running my fingers down the pages and turning them one at a time, being able to dog ear a page, or underline, or write cryptic notes and messages in it when a line or a passage speaks to me.
I continued to examine my book. At the store I was intrigued by some of the accolades on the cover. I was eager to get started, but felt distracted by an aching in my chest. I was preoccupied, thinking about having to leave my lover, knowing I wouldn't see him again for weeks, maybe longer.
We had spent three days together, sharing every moment; the morning cup of coffee, lounging in bed, preparing meals, washing dishes, watching each other dress and groom. We walked around town. He played the piano. One evening he read to me out of a book of short stories, while I sat in a tub of frothy bubbles shaving my legs.
Lying in each other's arms exhausted between exertions, we felt compelled to share stories of our past. Those stories so tucked away that you almost forget they are there, because you want to forget the pain, the guilt, or the shame with which they're associated.
In spite of all this intimacy, as soon as I stepped into the cab on my way to the airport, I felt something was wrong. At first I attributed it to the normal emotional turmoil I felt every time we said good-bye, but it turned out to be more than that.
Distance. I was familiar with, and had endured, the physical distance between us because it was the sacrifice we chose to make to be in our relationship. However, for the rest of that day and the next, I felt a growing sense that something had changed. I felt the space and the cold between us. My fears were confirmed, first with his silence, and then in a phone call a few days later. He announced that he couldn't move forward with the relationship; it was too difficult. For the next several days I was preoccupied with this. I mulled over what had happened. Right away I turned the lens inward. Was I not attractive or interesting enough? Was it that I have two young sons? Even after allowing myself to feel the range of emotions: rage, sadness, resentment, loss, I still suffered profoundly. This one had been special. We shared a secret. A secret that set us apart, and was associated with shame, guilt, and sadness. It had been the reason we ignored the long distance and chose to meet, and consider nurturing a relationship. In each other’s presence all of those feelings associated with our shared secret lifted. We felt free, and the future became full of possibilities. When we were together, I felt there was no limit to how happy and fulfilled I could be.
Over the years I've developed great coping mechanisms to deal with disappointments. On this occasion I sought out my safety net; all of those people who are there unconditionally to catch me. My mother included me in her prayers, and pampered me. I sought male friends with whom to vent my woes, and who reassured me that I was a beautiful, desirable woman. My girlfriends treated me to lunch and commiserated with similar stories of unrequited love. I licked my wound.
Sensing that I was not myself, my children found ways of reminding me that I was the center of their world. They needed me to play with them, to cook their meals, to wash their clothes, to laugh at their jokes, and listen to their stories. When I put my six-year-old to bed at night, I snuggled with him, burying my face in his neck, inhaling that sweet baby scent little children still have, especially after a bath, and remembering that for every painful experience I had lived, I had also experienced moments of great joy.
Weeks later I found myself on the way to the airport again. I was peaceful enough at that point to be able to focus on things other than my hurt feelings. I remembered the book. It was still at the bottom of my shoulder bag, and as soon as I checked-in and settled at the terminal gate, I began to read it.
I understood her. The young Janie was naïve, idealistic, sensual and spirited. A young woman receptive to her environment and to experiences, she was beginning to understand her connection and relevance to her surroundings. She questioned her identity and her sense of self. Like the young Janie, I once dreamt of eternal springtime. Naïve and trusting, I became sexually involved with a man during my first year of college, and was infected with HIV. I was nineteen and it was 1991. That was the end of my life as I knew it, and the beginning of a new life that would be shaped by the effects of a chronic condition.
We don't realize how resilient we are until we're faced with hardship and misfortune. I often wonder how I made it through those first years without self-annihilating. I remember periods of anger, anguish, despair…and terrible fear. I had that disease people didn't like talking about. In ignorance, it was associated with what many would judgmentally describe as abhorrent behavior and immoral people: prostitutes, drug addicts, homosexuals. An appropriate chastisement for the depraved. Having received a proper Catholic upbringing I imagined this was punishment for my sins; I had indulged in sexual relations.
The virus tormented me: “You’re a bad person. Why else would God have forsaken you? You’re dying. You won’t live to see tomorrow, let alone next year. The future? What future? Dreams and goals belong to other people. No one will ever love you now. You will never know what it’s like to be married or carry a child in your womb. You’re a disgrace to your family. A failure. ” And on, and on.
The story of my journey living with HIV is a long one. Too long to render in just a few pages, deserving of more attention, and anyhow, not over yet. For the purpose of this essay, what’s important to convey is that I managed to stifle the sadness and frustration I felt about what I imagined would be a foreshortened life. I was successful in repressing my feelings to a great extent, and managed to thrive despite my circumstances. To the world I presented as a confident woman: competent, self-assured and jovial, but in truth, in those days, I did not feel whole; I felt broken, damaged, unworthy.
I understood why Janie married her first husband, old Mr. Killicks, how she could love Tea-Cake, and what it's like to feel damaged; like you have no right to want, expect, or choose. I got involved with men for the wrong reasons. Sometimes out of fear of loneliness, other times out of gratitude. I excused their bad behavior, overlooked every character flaw, and stayed in unhealthy relationships much longer than I should have. Like the man who broke my heart just before my thirty-eighth birthday.
We shared a stigmatizing, chronic illness. Knowing that he struggled with similar feelings gave me comfort. We could discuss the results of our most recent lab tests. When we were together, I didn’t feel that pang of sadness and shame every time I took my medication before bed. Instead, he’d remind me to take it by bringing me a glass of water. We didn’t worry about infecting each other. We kept each other healthy, and gave each other hope. We could be in a relationship that was as close to normal as possible. I felt that I could overlook any incompatibility, any flaw, to love a man with whom I could experience complete sexual freedom. A relationship free of guilt and fear.
A year and half later he called to tell me he was married. He had moved back to the suburbs into a big house with his new wife, and was living the kind of life he once described to me as “the cookie cutter life of upper-middle class suburban America”. The kind of life he said he detested because it lacked spontaneity and eclecticism . The kind of life to which he would never go back.
Domestic life soon set in with the daily pressures of dealing with the children (his part-time, and hers full-time), planning meals and other logistical issues. Within six months of their cohabitation he called and articulated the problem to me: She didn’t make his pulse race, she didn’t capture his imagination, and there was no soulfulness to their lovemaking. He recognized that in marrying her he had condemned himself to a life devoid of passion.
He suggested I be his lover, or better yet, his mistress. Every man’s dream, not one, but two women to fulfill his needs. After the initial shock, I was enraged by his audacity and disrespect. He then proceeded to reason that I was the woman he really loved, and that the pleasure we would derive from our brief but passionate encounters would surely outweigh any negative aspects of this arrangement. I had enough self-respect and conviction to let him know I was not going to be anyone’s fucking mistress; I would not live surreptitiously in his shadow, enjoy life from the side lines of his reality show, or relegate our relationship to hotel rooms.
For many months after his proposition, I suffered the pain of his initial rejection all over, and it was compounded by the indignity of what he was asking me to do. But worse still, I was ashamed. I was ashamed because I was contemplating it. Then one day I did the unthinkable. We were both traveling for work, and I found the opportunity to meet him again in the city where we first met. I wanted to believe that perhaps his love for me was more real, more meaningful, than whatever he might be feeling for her. More than once he had expressed that he was doing what he had to do for the sake of his children and his career, but he was sacrificing his happiness. Did that not make our love more noble?
In the cab on the way to his hotel room I texted him; I said I would need a drink upon arrival. The usual; a vodka martini, straight up. He was even more charming and handsome than I remembered. I wanted to breathe him in and keep him inside forever. We didn’t talk much. There was no need. We knew what we were looking for, that seemingly endless series of mellifluous caresses, blending of body parts, heady whispers, complete submission, oblivion. In the darkness our bodies recalled the familiar movements ending in the curling up, his body wrapped around mine, arms and legs intertwined, fingers laced. As my consciousness returned, my fingers rubbed against his wedding band.
It’s not that I wasn’t aware of reality. I wasn’t expecting him to change anything about his situation, but deep inside I hoped he would. Of course, he wouldn’t. Why would he change anything when he could have everything? The next day I left feeling empty and humiliated, but with a clear head. I learned the answer to the question that had been gnawing at me from inside during those weeks leading up to this encounter. I would not be his mistress. I could not be. And I learned more. Up until that point, I attributed my previous relationship failures to my diagnosis, and was sure that this time I had found the One. What could be a more powerful binding agent than sharing a chronic, life threatening condition? Lots of things: Values, lifestyle, attitudes, goals.
I may feel disadvantaged and more vulnerable because of my diagnosis sometimes, but I experience relationships the way most people do: I see a person’s strengths, I idealize and fall in love, sometimes I’m disappointed, I suffer, I forgive, I struggle, I take stock of the relationship. Sometimes I walk away. Sometimes I’m left behind. The HIV has little to do with it. We are complex and nuanced. Relationships are complicated. Period.
I walked out of the hotel alone, into the cold February morning. Snowflakes melted onto the windshield as I stepped into the cab. I saw the bleak, winter scene of that familiar city race past me through the backseat widow for the last time as I approached the airport.
Hurston wrote about the young Janie: "The rose of the world was breathing out smell. It followed her through all her waking moments and caressed her in her sleep. It connected itself with other vaguely felt matters that had struck her outside observation and buried themselves in her flesh. Now they emerged and quested about her consciousness…Where were the singing bees for her?" Janie never stopped looking for the answer. Her tenacious spirit fed her subconscious commitment to self discovery and growth. It's true that throughout the novel Janie experiences life through her relationships, through the men with whom she becomes involved, but in the end, she’s alone. Alone, but not lonely, and not broken.Through pain, misfortune, even tragedy, she chooses to live, and keeps whole by remaining true to herself, and persevering on the path of self-discovery.
@MJpositive, you're right. I made a generalization. I was hurt and bitter when I wrote this, and feeling a little melodramatic. I could go back and change it, but the story captures how I was feeling at the time. I appreciate you bringing up the point though. Thanks for reading.
Beautiful. It also gives me much to think about. Welcome to the Tribe. I have met some wonderful people here and I feel I have just met one more. Take care!