The Beginnings of Understanding

My husband, Andy, was the first to finally articulate the phenomenon that I’d been experiencing all my life but couldn’t explain.

It was our first Christmas together, and he wasn’t my husband, yet.  And I didn’t know at the time that I carried within my body the beginnings of a new life, our first child.  We’d gone to Colorado to visit his family, a collection of individuals who would require an entirely different blog to adequately describe and appreciate.  To say the least there is a silent tension there, suspended invisibly between mad love and wild hatred.  Ancestors creatively constructed a murky genealogy and kept dark secrets,  leaving the current generations haunted, wondering who they truly are, and why, and allowing their lives, themselves to be dictated by the unanswerable questions of their heritage rather than moving on into self made futures.  This was my first encounter with them, and I was sick.

Andy tried to prepare me for the meeting. “They’re nuts,” he told me, “You really have no idea what crazy is until you meet them.”  The eternal optimist, I was certain that they weren’t any crazier than my own family, and looked forward to the trip despite the nagging waves of nausea that had begun to sweep over me.  I’d hand made gifts of stained glass for his mother, Sandy, and painted jewelry boxes for his sister, April.  Upon arriving we discovered that there were more guests.  “Dad’s never had all of his kids together for a holiday,” April explained.  “So Andrea and Jen are here too.  Dad should be arriving tomorrow for the surprise.”  Introductions and explanations followed.  Andrea was 16, a half sister, their father’s daughter from another marriage.  Jen was her older sister.  Andy embraced the girls he hadn’t seen since childhood, and as they shook my hands and welcomed me in, it started.

It’d happened before, been happening all my life but I was only just starting to understand it, and was no where close to controlling it.

Andy brought our bags in from the car while his mother sat me down at the kitchen table with a cup of hot cocoa.  “Let’s get acquainted,” she said.  I’d expected an interrogation.  I received a history lesson.  I sat into the wee hours of that night with the family, listening to wild tales from their past– from gun-slinging-tax-evading grandmothers to borderline crazy uncles hiding Easter Eggs in the rain gutters;  bathtub gin during prohibition to forbidden affairs with foreign diplomats.  Getting acquainted was a one way process, and as the night wore on and my road-weary eyes began blink heavily, their voices blended together, creating a cloud of noise which mingled with the cigarette smoke that hung over the table.  Laughter with a nervous edge rang in my ears as the stories went on and on, and I felt the familiar heaviness in my chest.  I laughed with them, sometimes so hard that it spilled over in the form of hysterical tears.  Drinking only hot chocolate I felt drunk, dizzy and disoriented.  I moved through moments of sheer happiness interjected by flashes of fear, regret, shame and longing.  April’s voice suddenly became a little shrilly to my ears, Sandy’s became harder, a little more defensive.  Andrea’s a little whining.  Somewhere between Grandma claiming the neighborhood kids as dependants and overturned spaghetti dinners I glanced at Andy, breathing heavily.  His eyes were the only ones I could look into.  I knew if I tried making eye contact with the others it would be too much.  One person at a time I could handle, but all of them together scared me.  Head reeling, I heard Andy announce that we’d had a long drive from New York, and he and I should retire till (later that) morning.  I remember him leading me to the guest room, and whispering assurances to me as I drifted off in the dark.

A phone call the next day informed us that Andy’s dad would be a day late.    The night had dropped at least fifty feet of snow onto the landscape, and I remember my amazement at the brilliance and warmth of the sun as we plowed ourselves out of the driveway (with April’s little red Honda!).  New York winters were just plain cold.  Despite the volume of snow, the difference was lovely.  We spent the afternoon Christmas shopping in Colorado Springs, about a 45 minute drive from Sandy’s modular house in East…Somewhere.  I was given the grand tour of the city, and regaled once more with nostalgic tales as we passed by places of familiar significance from the past.  The mood was light, and happy in the excitement of the holiday.

The next day came, and still no Dad.  I began to feel a sense of unsurprised, almost resentful dread that I couldn’t account for.  As Christmas Eve neared, the feeling grew stronger and I prepared for the explosion I knew was oncoming.

Christmas Eve marked the height of the holiday fiasco.  After a frustrating evening of closed restaurants and sick grandmothers in Denver, Andy and I crammed into the back seat of April’s little red Acura next to Andrea.  Her sister sat in front, fiddling with the radio dial to find a station playing music to suit the mood.  After April told her for the third time to just settle on something or turn it off she made her choice and sat back with a contented sneer.

Spanish Death Metal.

Or something just as bad.

Behind them, next to the speakers, I was certain that someone had unscrewed my cranium and poured molten lead over my brain and it was expanding, solidifying, pressing out at the fused seams of my skull.  I put my head on Andy’s lap, fighting back the tears, which only worsened the pain and introduced a rapid throbbing behind my brow.  I whispered a plea for silence, and Andy asked April to turn the radio down.

It was a simple request.  Innocent and thoughtful.  However it seemed to be the wrong question to ask because April just burst out in a fit of rage.  I can’t even remember her words, I just was overwhelmed with her anger and frustration.  She was angry that their father ruined her surprise, as he (somehow I knew) ruined everything good.  She was irritated with the typical teenage arrogance of her younger sister.  With the way her sister defended her.  With the competition between them.  With Andy for moving so far away.  With their mother for leaving after a cheap and very un-Christmas Eve like dinner.   I remember Jen yelling, Andrea crying and Andy’s hands over my ears.

And then he said it.

“Her head is killing her.  You don’t understand.  She’s like an emotional sponge.  She absorbs the feelings of everyone around her and feels them like her own. You are hurting her.”

In the reluctant yet still charged silence that followed the rest of the drive home, I thought about his words.  An emotional sponge.  Feeling the feelings of others like they were my own.

That was exactly what was happening!  How did he know?!  How was he able to pinpoint and articulate it so perfectly?  Memories from my entire life came flooding back, flashes of experiences:  people’s faces, their eyes, their obvious discomfort when I knew exactly what they were going through in their secret hells.  How could I not have consciously realized that my unaccountable mood swings, my knowing others, down to the very marrow of their bones, was just what Andy said, “emotional absorption”?

It was brilliant.  Perhaps that now that I could identify what was happening to me I could learn to control it, to somehow channel the feelings I received from others, contain them, separate from my own true feelings, maybe even to use it to help them.  Perhaps I was meant to help them, and that was the purpose behind it all.

And, slowly, though the pain still throbbed behind my eyes and my heart seemed on the verge of erupting from my chest, there was a new feeling…one of my own…rising up through the limbic chaos…relief.