There were purple borders, a list of names & bios in italics (names in bold) and a tiny photo along the top of what looked like… a bank (?) You know – red brick, white columns? Speaking of banks. My job was duller than tombs, but the boredom gave me energy to do that other big thing that happened in 2000 – I went back to ballet class.
And that brings me to my first lesson. I could easily be the worst feminist in the world, but I at least know this: if you tell your female therapist that your spouse is a good husband because he “let” you go back to ballet, she is supposed to say,
“ExCUSE me, What?! What do you mean, ‘he LET‘ you? You ask PERMISSION to do things like that? I KNOW you’re a Christian, but I’m also POSITIVE that is NOT what ‘honor and OBEY’ is intended to mean!”
Okay, she should definitely not be such a pushy drama queen. But she is MOST DEFINITELY NOT supposed to nod and smile and agree with you. She should definitely “delve deeper” into a remark like that. (Someday I shall pontificate with great snark on how therapy usually has to be either a “journey” or some kind of psychiatric archeological “dig.”)
So: Ballet! I’d avoided the dance studio since graduating high school because it felt like one of my limbs had been ripped off. At that time, no one stayed after high school. I couldn’t go to a single show when it was still so excruciatingly painful not having it in my life. But when my friend’s daughter asked me to go to her dance recital for about the third year in a row, I finally sucked it up for the little girl’s sake and I couldn’t believe how many older people were on stage. I was actually confused. It took the whole show to dawn on me that they must be in classes, and if they could take class, so could I! I didn’t know how I was going to put on a leotard but I did know that nobody else cared what I look like. My eating disorder was no match up against my love of ballet. And oh, how easy it was to feel at home at that barre! And then my lifelong teacher welcomed me with reference to our history. And then, suddenly, I not only felt at home, but also seen and known and understood and I didn’t know I missed all of those feelings until I had them. When we all turned around to do the reverse barre, and in the reflection of the dark windows I could watch all our limbs floating and bending in such perfect synchronicity, my eyes welled up with tears at the beauty of it all. And then with pain at how starkly this moment contrasted with the rest of my life. And then one of the tears overflowed down my cheek. And I don’t cry.
For some reason and in some way that I still don’t understand, this was the point I started daydreaming conversations with Ross, my former therapist who had passed away.
Ballet woke up a part of my soul. One day at the bank, while waiting for a coworker, I leafed through an insurance brochure and found two addresses for my pediatrician from the hospital program. (I looked exclusively to see if anyone from the team still “existed” – something that had become an ingrained habit by then.) With this restored piece of my soul I sent him duplicate letters at both locations for reassurance. Each contained a self-addressed, stamped envelope, to minimize as much as possible any invasion into his time. I also included email addresses and phone numbers to comply with whatever was most convenient for him. I wrote about my struggle getting past Ross’ death over 10 years earlier and asked if he could tell me anything about her, and also about what happened to the team. When my office phone rang, I was so overcome by his kindness and generosity, and by how the sound of his voice validated my memories, that I could not remain in my rigid environment. I excused myself, exited around the church next door where I directed youth choirs, crossed the street to my car, smoked a cigarette, stared a minute or two into the window of an empty building trying to understand why my reflection looked thin, and generally tried to compose myself. He gave me a phone number. I kept it in my wallet for years. I still wear the denim J. Crew pea coat I had on, new, that afternoon. Funny how twenty years steals buttons, huh?
I lived off ballet for a year and at the end of it, tried to bury how angry I was afraid my husband was after he saw the dance show. That fall I was at my work desk when a loan officer quickly popped their head over the half-door of our room and told us they thought there was something on TV we had to see. We stepped out of our room into the breakroom and joined a small group just in time to see the second plane hit. I was confused, at first, my skills at denying reality coming in particularly handy. But when the North tower fell, I know I certainly woke up. And from that moment we all shut up and stayed shut up, the whole (and what had turned into a) large crowded group of us, until my boss announced loudly, “Well, I’m going back to work.” None of the rest of us moved or spoke for the next few hours. She missed the Pentagon.
The next evening I gave up trying to control my bulimic behavior. That included exercising away my severely restricted calories – which I had utilized from the start – and self-induced vomiting, which I reintroduced into my life in 1999, after a long hiatus. But I decided why bother? A foreign religious zealout could aim a jet at any one of our heads at any moment, so WHAT? if one woman barfs too much on purpose? The impossibility of shoving aside the horrific starkness of reality loosened the outer layers of my denial. The summer before I forced myself to quit vomiting, cold-turkey, and existed the hot months basically on Hawaiian pizzas (after he left for work) and strawberry cheesecake flurries (one that I ate during the day and one I hid in the freezer for apres pizza.) I hated the bank for how money-oriented every single little thing was (duh!) and tried to learned a lesson from jumping into one job just to get away from another. I started stalking the classifieds with weekly dedication for a job to open at the public library simply because that was where I wanted to work.
It paid off. My (ex)husband didn’t like that it would be part-time. I didn’t like that he didn’t like it. But the more my sanity disintegrated the more I valued it.