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Dear Murielle,
I actually have no idea what your name is, but I want to be able to call you more than the-blind-lady-from-the-subway-at-23rd-street. And I think you are quite beautiful and possibly Haitian.
Thank you, Murielle, for screaming louder than the train that was lurching through the station. Thank you for bringing me back to the boot-scuffed platform and the cling of winter coat sweat. Thank you for putting into words what I've been running from and clawing at for the past month.
I just want to know where I'm going!!!
It was a simple question you were yelling. And no one was answering you. I saw you before you started shrieking. Sized up your white cane and shut eyes and labeled you blind. I might have even taken in your soft curls pulled tight around your round face. But I definitely did not expect to connect with you.
Murielle, I've been doing a lot of screaming lately. More than I'd like to admit. At my loving family. At the sink full of dishes. At the evening for darkening the sky too soon and at the morning for being too short. Most of all I've been doing the long, leaking yells. The kind that creep in my skin and make me pinched and angry, narrowing my mind to only my suffering.
I am not suffering. I have a new baby and a rambunctious toddler, a long relationship with OCD, depression, and probably a gazillion hormones pulling me in their wake. Maybe there's some technical name for this, but all I know is I don't want to be this confused and miserable, Murielle. I don't want to overlook my newborn in my lap, or snort past the fresh cut pine trees on the corner. I don't want to be shouting so loudly in my head that I can't hear or see or feel anything else.
Sorry, this is about you. Thank you, Murielle, for calming down when the nice man in a ski jacket asked you where you wanted to go. Thank you for explaining to us that you were going to 2813 Fulton Street and you didn't want to miss an important event. Thank you for asking for help and then accepting it from the strangers on that platform. Thank you for sitting next to me on the train and checking in with me to see if we were there yet. I'm sorry I couldn't take you all the way to 2813 Fulton Street. I do hope you got there safely and easily and I don't mean to use you just as a parable. But you have been so influential in my life.
First of all, as offensive as this sounds, you had somehow applied make-up impeccably, including shiny copper-tinted lipstick. I'll smear on some mascara when it's a special occasion, but for the most part I think I look at self-grooming as too much time on my hands. But it's not. It's self-knowledge. Whether I have my eyes open or closed, the act of bringing my hands to my face, or smoothing on lotion, should be a daily practice. Honoring the physical body I have. I hope you know how attractive you are, Murielle.
Your words were definitely what moved me most. I could chime in with the rest of the train about what stops we were going to make on the C line, but besides that, I couldn't answer your repeated Are we there yet?'s. And the further we traveled together, it seemed the more anxious you got about whether you'd get to 2813 Fulton by the right time. Who would help you when you got out and would there be stairs or an elevator or Braille on the street signs? I had no assurances for you. I could give you vague directions and then wish you the best. I was already late to get home so my husband could go to work. I never think about how someone blind gets from point A to point B. I rarely think of anyone else's travels besides my own. Again, if I could look around more and see who else is on the train, or walking next to me, maybe I could lift myself out of my own shadow.
And this is definitely where I owe you the greatest thanks, Murielle. For breaking through my mind chatter to ask me this important and unanswerable question. I have no idea where I'm going, and I'm more and more anxious at each stop along the way. Every time I have an unplanned moment, let alone a whole afternoon, I am petrified. And I know I've been yelling especially at my family that I have no time to myself, but the truth is that I'm scared if I did have this time I'd be utterly lost and useless. The only reason I was on the 23rd street platform at that very moment to hear your words is because I had gotten so inconsolable and loud in the past six weeks since giving birth that my therapist insisted I bring my son in and talk to her. (Another soothsayer I need to thank...repeatedly.)
This is not the blog entry I planned or wanted to write, but Murielle, you are the one who exacted this from me. I will be swallowing my first Zoloft pill tonight. Yes, I am breastfeeding and I feel scared of how that could affect my child. But I'm more afraid of how I felt when my two-year-old was testing me the other day and I was trying to reason with her and with my infant son and most of all trying to tame the anger and fear and confusion in my head. I failed miserably. I took away my daughter's bottle and shouted until we both cried. I told my husband he needed to come home from work because I was scared I was going to hurt myself. I wept into my son's new eyes and hurled a dish (when everyone was out of its path).
I don't want to be that mom, or that person. I don't want to hold that kind of fury in my skin or be unable to breathe. I don't know that Zoloft has secret powers, but I do know it has helped loosen me before, whether I couldn't stop counting calories or I had to sing a certain song, repeat a special prayer, do a specified number of sun salutations each day. All my way of avoiding that question,
Where am I going?
So, Murielle, the short answer is, I have no idea. For right now, to the end of this sentence. For tonight, hopefully home under the twinkling Christmas lights of our street and inside for a quiet bath time followed by Thai take-out. Then I will pour a glass of water and swallow my pill. I will curl my body in bed between my husband and my son's bassinet. This is my promise to them too. That I am not going to let fear or rage or post-partum-OCD whatever label I put on it to shake me like a snow globe full of live wires. I am dedicated to treating this dis-ease. To voicing my fears and walking through them. Observing the world around me instead of living in a cave of self-pity.
And the next time I go to 23rd street, I will look for you, Murielle. And thank you in person.
