A year or so ago, a therapy session drove into the complicated land of “At Least.” This place is often referred to when a person has a history of trauma, pain, loss, and other difficult circumstances.
"At least you survived, at least you didn't..." [insert options considered self- or other abusive]. It came to me that “at least” are the crumbs on a cake plate after a crowd comes through a buffet line and accepting crumbs was the act of a bottom feeder longingly running a finger across the plate to snatch a taste of what had been missed.
My response to the therapist, who had said, “At least you have your health,” reflected that opinion.
“Fuck you.”
If one has had access to previous posts, it cannot be shocking to read my language isn’t necessarily polite in therapy any more than it is halfway through a pitcher of margaritas with friends. To be reverential in therapy would mean a cleaned-up, performance-art version of me delicately unpacking life suitcases. Crumbs on a cake plate might be lost altogether.
It took a few hours to begin to regret my language and the implication of what had been said to the therapist. I respect the deeply committed space good therapists create for clients, despite my casual and often wicked (lol) usage of words. After subsequent days of reflection, I realized that years of layered trauma potholes leading to sinkholes and lava rock-sized Hummers littering my rearview meant denigrating the efforts of sixty-two-year-old physical parts to sustain my health was cringey and disrespectful. Add in an overarching human perspective, and it was privileged and grossly ignorant. At our next session, I apologized to the therapist. It wasn’t until this past week that I apologized to myself.
In September, a person I’ve known for over a decade transitioned to the next place. A serious health diagnosis had come several months prior. During this period, I witnessed how their version of ancient pot holes, sink holes, and Hummers jumped the shark and littered the path ahead of them. I remember thinking, “Even at this most poignant and essential time, historic trauma consumes the available oxygen, leaving little left to grieve or live.”
It is bloody infuriating that trauma splats without caution or care, most often leaving an imprint that echoes forcefully forward. The person dealing with critical medical processes had done extensive work to live beyond the traumas they experienced. They intentionally focused on not passing on the baton of harm, spending decades of living time healing from the past. Witnessing them navigate the awareness of their life fading, alongside what may have resisted healing, felt like an extra-bitter anvil strapped to their ankles.
After they transitioned, the loss of my friend walked with me through the brief fall months. I thought of them as the winds of winter stripped away fall in a single, frigid week. I thought about pot holes, sink holes, and Hummers as my own wonky test result threw me into similar medical concerns and the real possibility that my health no longer loitered in the land of “At Least.”
The technician heroically attempted not to worry me a few days before Christmas, maneuvering the ultrasound screen away from prying eyes. One of my very best and very worst attributes is that I have the discerning nature of Sherlock Holmes. I can read screens upside-down and sideways with my neck twisted, like that kid in The Exorcist. I’ve also spent much of my adult life immersed in medical reports. Understanding when dark blobs should be considered worrisome is relatively easy for me. In the technician’s eyes, I saw care, concern, and the dreaded “uh-oh.”
Afterward, the staff stuffed me into an appointment with the doctor that didn’t exist before I came in for the ultrasound, and I went to my car to Google the few details I’d been given. Patients are often warned not to Google, and that’s good advice. What I learned through this situation, is not to stay with the few lines displayed in blurbs on the search engine. Reading limited details pushed me into a nearly hysterical frenzy. Applying what I learned in courses requiring research, I took a breath, dove deep into medical journals, and astonishingly found myself standing—a little wobbly mind you—on the threshold, instead of out in the unknowable future.
I am known for losing my shit by living in the future. This is due to the Sherlock Holmes bit and another gift for analyzing known facts and sussing out likely outcomes. There’s a reason my family won’t watch movies with surprise endings with me. After a few interactions, no one who has met me would think I could stand on the threshold of the future without being seat belted in and guarded by a platoon of body builders. Pile on the Christmas bonuses of paid time off for doctors realistically delaying a conclusion and family members holding expectations of merry-making during a wait for answers... yeah, right.
Thus, bodysurfing the threshold of the unknowable future for most minutes of each day has been a surprising gift. Uncertain how the ability arose other than wisdom collected from recent podcasts, awareness of the suffering my friend experienced, and a shriek for help to whatever magic exists and the DNA linked to the strength of my ancestors, I can only thank the ethers. The ethers gifted me space to recognize the effort it took for my physical, mental, and emotional selves to keep me healthy and breathing as I dragged pot holes, sink holes, and many, many Hummers for sixty-two-years. With that understanding, I am learning to hold the state of my health at any given moment with reverence.
When I climb into bed at night, the future itches at me to play “what if.” As a prayer, I’ve taken to asking my ancestors, and the spirit of the recently passed friend and my dog Pi, to help my mind stay in the known world of Now.
In a few days, I’ll know more than is knowable in this moment. It’s reasonable to assume my physical, mental, and emotional selves will need to draw up the force we were born with to go through what comes next—as was done for sixty-two years without my recognition.
This time, me-we will hold grace for the sacredness of each breath while repairing pot holes and sink holes, and perhaps leaving Hummers discarded in our threshold’s wake.
“It might sound strange, but I was sitting there, looking up at the sky, and I thought, ‘You are but a mote of dust. And your troubles and travails are just a mote of a mote of dust.’ And it helped me. I have allowed myself to think about things I had been scared to think about and feel. And it allowed me to be there — to be present. Whatever my life is, whatever my loss is, it’s small in the face of all that existence… The meteor shower changed something. I was looking the other way through a telescope before: I was just looking at what was not there. Now I look at what is there.”
*Excerpt from Meghan O’Rourke’s book The Long Goodbye