I always heard civilians shudder when I explained that I would be assisting with a dissection.

“Gross,” they would say. “I could NEVER do something like that.”

When pressed, I never got anything more specific from them, which meant that they’d never seen one, because the body, well, the human body is not gross. It is resplendent. It is powerful. It is amazing. It is beautiful.

All of the organ systems functioning in synchronicity so that we are able to walk upright, speak, form words, paint beautiful pictures, draw pictures with our written words, love, that is not gross. And that is what human anatomy is.

Inside, we are even more beautiful than out.

Rarely, however, do the names of the parts of the body reflect their beauty.

Often, they’re named after the anatomist who found them because scientists are about as self-serving and obnoxious as bloggers. The Islets of Langerhans, for example may bring to mind a nice set of islands found off the coast of Ireland, but no, they’re actually endocrine-producing cells of the pancreas.

Even the very word pancreas sounds more like something you’d find dead on the side of the road than something that creates the body’s most important enzymes. But to say it aloud sounds dirty, something you spit out of your mouth, a splat, an inelegant word for a very elegant organ.

The day we learned of the heart, I came across the words chordae tendineae, and I stopped for a moment. Latin words make me happy, which is probably, in part, why I am so attracted to virology. Continuing on, I read what this curious, elegant term meant.

The chordae tendineae are tendinous cords of dense tissue that connect the two atrioventricular valves to their papillary muscles in the hearts ventricles.

The chordae tendineae are the heart strings.

That is probably the most graceful and magnificent term I have ever heard and the best representation of why I find human anatomy so intoxicatingly lovely.  We human beings actually have heart strings.

Whenever I am sad, I think of those tiny strings, which I have seen with my own eyes, felt with my fingers, those strings of fibrous tissue, so very much stronger than they look, and I am comforted by the heart strings that bind us all.

On my refrigerator hangs a report from Early Intervention with my daughter’s name on it. It is a discharge sheet that states that she is at or above level for everything. It was true then. It is not true any longer. I cannot bear to take it down, because to take it down would be to admit defeat.

I will not be defeated. My daughter will not be defeated.

When I called my case worker, she sounded so sad to hear from me, her voice mirroring my own. It didn’t help that the only sheet of paper I could find with the phone number on it was her discharge from the program with a jaunty, “We enjoyed working with your family!” on it.

The therapist will come several days after my 30th birthday to evaluate my daughter and to tell me what I already know: Amelia is not normal. Amelia needs help. I am a trained diagnostician and I am aware of both of these facts. I am also aware that I am doing the right things. But knowing this doesn’t make this any easier for me.

There is something between her brilliantly big brain and delicate rosebud mouth that isn’t connecting properly. It fills me with a well of sorrow I didn’t even know I had, because I want so badly to hear her words. All of her words. Stories of Saturn and the planetarium and pleas for cookies and candy and the injustice of it all when I deny her.

I want to know my daughter.

Instead, I kiss her head and rub her scar and apologize to her for what is certain to be a hard road ahead. My heart strings clench painfully and I cry bitter tears, wishing I could make it easy for her, knowing I can’t.

We’re gearing up for a battle over here and we’ll win.

Eventually. Some way, somehow, we’ll win.

My home life as a child was far from simple. I pretended my family was like those I saw on television because in the television, the mothers loved their daughters every SINGLE day without fail. Those children had meals cooked for them, had parents they could talk to, parents who took them to swimming lessons, parents who cared about them, parents who loved them no matter what.

They had what I wanted: parents who behaved like parents.

I had the illusion of a family, two parents, a much older brother, some cats and dogs, and then there was me. Caregiver. Cleaner-upper. Parent to myself. In reality, I was alone and I knew it.

I learned what so many of us children of alcoholics do, trust no one but yourself. It became a way of life. Carefully, I constructed a facade that even I began to believe. A life that I so desperately wanted; I could attain if I lied enough about it.

Eventually, I grew up.

Waiting for the day when I itched to have a drink, and then another, and then another, I was surprised when it never came. I had a child out of wedlock, a happy accident, I changed my life around to accommodate that of a single mother, then I got married. I had another child. Then another.

I knew that I bore some of the scars of my past–who doesn’t?–but it twenty years for me to realize that I’d grown up to do the precise thing that 8-year old Aunt Becky always swore she never would do: I put myself in precisely same position that I would have done anything to get out of.

I married an addict.

We always joked about it, my husband and I, his addiction to his work–Workahol, we called it, back when we still joked–but for the past five years I’ve watched as it went from working to live to living to work.

It was all that he ever wanted to do, work, that is, and that’s where he got his joy, his rush, his feelings of accomplishment, his ego, and we were just periphery. Background noise. Particularly loud and unbelievably adorable background noise, but background noise nonetheless.

As he worked more, he needed more and more to feel that rush, that thrill, and his hours grew until he barely saw us. When we’d dare interrupt him for something like, oh, maybe the HOUSE being on fire, we’d get a terse, snappy reply, and stung, we’d walk away hurt and reproachful.

I consoled myself that he was working so hard to support us, and when I’d bring it up, he’d swear that he was doing it all for us, but it wasn’t quite the truth. What we needed was a husband, a father, a friend, and someone who didn’t place something else above us every second of the day.

I’d never considered workaholism a real addiction, not like gambling or drug addiction, because his income was one of those things we needed to survive.

But there it was in clear black and white, on the website for Adult Children of Alcoholics:

We either became alcoholics ourselves, married them, or both. Failing that, we found other compulsive personalities, such as a workaholic, to fulfill our sick need for abandonment.

When I read that, I dry-heaved, and then I bawled my eyes out. It’s a bitter pill to swallow to realize that your past is never as far away as you thought it was.

I finally brought it up to The Daver, and this time, rather than trying to pass it off as something else; my own problem, money issues, whatever, he listened. He listened and he realized that this was a problem.

I explained that I had lived my entire life with addicts, always walking around on eggshells, and that things in our house had to change. I simply couldn’t–and wouldn’t–put my children through what I had been through. He agreed that this was simply enough.

Perhaps this is where the sidewalk ends.

And maybe a road will begin.

I don’t understand a single thing that The Daver does, and when he tries to explain, my eyes glaze over the same way that his do when I talk about my latest email from my agents. But, for all intents and purposes, what “working in finance” means to me is that he’s almost never home. A 70 hour work week is a relatively easy week for him.

Add to that an hour plus commute each way and you can easily call me a single mother during the week. Oh, don’t worry, I’m not up on the cross about it or anything; I’m sure some new mother needs the wood. To me, it’s just the way it is.

And while I did choose to have my three children, I didn’t expect that I would have to lose myself in the process to be successful. Certainly, I am Ben’s mother, Amelia’s mother, Alex’s mother, Dave’s wife, daughter of Ann and Joe. Sister of Aaron. But I’m more than the sum of who I am to other people. This includes my children.

Sure, I suppose, I could go back to work to reclaim the Becky I was, now lost among piles of diapers and educational toys, but that wouldn’t solve anything. I’m fortunate that I’m able to stay home with my children, I’m not going to deny that, but, like any other choice, there are consequences.

It seems to me that with small children–even making the choice to have them–comes a loss of self.

Because for every healthful morsel I can shove down my kids gullet comes a meal I’ll eat cold and gluey. For every doctors appointment that I schlep someone to and from, I never can quite make the time to get my own blood work done. I peck out words onto my keyboard in between poopy butts and loads of laundry, and I’m expected to apologize for taking this time for myself.

I could, after all, be spending it growing my own organic food and mowing the lawn with my teeth. As Dave and I frequently joke, it never ends, does it? And it doesn’t.

That’s okay with me, honestly, because childhood doesn’t last forever.

My kids will grow up, go to college and move out (presumably). They’ll lay on faceless therapists couches and spill out all of my secrets: I didn’t prepare a three course gluten-free trans-fat free organic meal for dinner. I selfishly wrote about them and their lives. I reminded them every day that they should never lose track of who they are and what they want and that made them feel…angry?

They’ll grow up and be gone and I’ll have plenty of time to myself then. I’m sure I’ll spend a bit of that time wishing I’d done something different: spent less time worrying about washing their hair and more time inhaling that new baby smell. Knowing it will end helps me savor it.

And I do.

But I’m not selfless enough to live my life for my children. Nor, do I think, would they, as adults, want me to.

So no, I’m not going to apologize if I have a drink with my husband after they go to bed. I’m not sorry that I carve out some time each day to write and to connect with other people. I can’t tell you that I’m going to stop looking for things to fulfill my need to be Becky, As Herself and not Just Mom. They’re not mutually exclusive, people.

Lest you picture me passed out on the couch with a bottle of vodka next to my head, as the name of my blog implies, while my poor–WON’T ANYONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?– children fend for themselves, let me assure you that I couldn’t tell you the last time that I actually had a drink. It wasn’t today, or yesterday, or last week. And when I *did* have a drink, I had just one.

The last time that I got soused was well over 3 years ago. I’m compulsive, maybe, but not when it comes to The Drink. I don’t have the luxury of a hangover any longer and I don’t care to wake up the Day After to pay for what I’d done the Night Before. It’s not my thing.

But responsibly letting your hair down with your friends, getting loud and obnoxious, or having kinky wild butt-sex with your husband? I can’t see the fault in that. Life–with or without children–can be tedious. It can be tedious, it can be boring, and it can feel long.

Certainly, that doesn’t mean that one should drink a fifth of Absolut, smoke a doob and get behind the wheel of a car. There’s nothing funny whatsoever about drunk driving or parenting while intoxicated, don’t mistake my meaning here. There’s no excuse for that sort of behavior, no matter how isolated, neglected, abused or miserable one may be.

There’s a happy medium to be found, I know that there is, between here and there. Between living for yourself and for someone else. And I like to pretend that it involves a cabana boy named Carlos and his well chiseled, oiled chest.

But maybe I’m wrong.

His name could very well be Paulo.

The customers you could tell, were even a little embarrassed for me. I looked like an idiot. But the district manager had gotten the inane idea in his head that for some reason having “Santa’s Helper” in the store for Christmas Eve would somehow bring flocks of customers in for lunch in droves. What he didn’t know could fill volumes. Sort of like the time he taken me aside, just as I’d gotten four new tables who were all waiting for me to get them drinks to whisper conspiratorially, “I think someone is stealing…cheese.”

But I needed the extra money because it was my son’s first Christmas, and as a single mother who was also in school full time, I took every shift that I could lay my grubby hands on. Debasing or not, it was money in my pocket. Shockingly, no one actually wanted to have their picture taken with “Santa’s Helper.” I’m not sure if it was the yellowed, fraying beard, or the fact that my pants fell down about every third step that I took, or that I was obviously female, but no one seemed interested. In fact, everyone seemed to avoid me, which was just as well. I used the time to get caught up on my homework. No rest for the wicked.

Finally, just before I was to go home to my son, some family agreed to have their picture taken with “Santa’s Helper.” Perhaps they hadn’t seen me. Maybe they didn’t like their kid very much. Or maybe everyone just had a fantastic sense of humor. Who knows.

All that I do know is that they thrust their tiny baby onto my threadbare lap. And all that the baby knew was that one minute, she was burbling on her mother’s shoulder and the next, she was shoved onto this stinky scary bearded lady in an saggy red Santa Suit. She did the only sensible thing to be done: she opened up her wee baby mouth and she bellowed. She screamed, she cried, and she wailed.

The picture was taken and a phobia of Santa was formed. This poor kid was going to grow up terrified of Santa. Jumping at holiday displays and wondering why the thought of Christmas always made her feel nervous and nauseous, always trying to get out of festive celebrations in favor of sitting in front of the television with her twelve cats and a pint of ice cream.

It would all be my fault.

Satan’s Little Helper.

Encephaloceles, the Harks’ learned, were a form of neural tube defects that occurred when the embryonic neural tube—the primitive spinal cord—failed to close during the fourth week of pregnancy. While they can occur along the spinal cord, causing disorders such as spina bifida and anencephaly, their daughter’s skull had been improperly formed and part of her brain had developed outside of her body. It hadn’t been detected during a routine prenatal ultrasound and because it had been covered with skin—a closed neural tube defect–the quad screen hadn’t given any warning of high levels Maternal Serum Alpha Fetoprotein (MSAFP). Amelia’s had developed in the posterior fontanelle of her skull, which was the area that was known to be associated with the least favorable outcomes. However, their daughter appeared to be neurologically intact. She was eating, sleeping, engaging and behaving like any normal newborn baby, which encouraged both the family and doctors.

Upon examination of the multiple images, the team of neurosurgeons concluded that the encephalocele needed to be removed as soon as possible so as to not cause any future problems as the skull grew. At three weeks of age, Amelia was checked into the satellite unit of a major children’s hospital, where she would undergo surgery to remove the portion of her brain that had developed outside of her body. While her surgeon, Dr. Andrew Chenelle, was in the operating room, he would perform a cranioplasty and repair her skull with an implant so that the tissue would not reherniate, causing future problems.

The surgery was a complete success and Amelia was released the following evening into the loving arms of her family

At nearly a year old, Amelia is being followed by teams of developmental therapists and doctors, who make sure that she has access to any therapies or procedures that she might need. The statistics for children who have encephaloceles are sobering: only 21% are born living and half of those live births survive. The survival rate for those with posterior encephaloceles—like Amelia’s—is only 55%. Of those that do survive, 75% have varying degrees of mental retardation.

Amelia Harks, even in the face of those statistics, is testing at or above normal across the board. She’s talking and walking well before either of her older brothers, her mother reports, and is a happy, well-adjusted child who loves music and making mischief. The only hint that something is a little different about this child is the scar on the back of her head, about 3 inches long and stark white. Her parents cannot believe her resiliency and her spirit. Her father, Dave, says, “Our Mimi, she’s here for a reason.”

And she is.

Opening gifts with them was always kind of horrifying, not because they weren’t totally happy with what they were getting but because they were. It was like looking into the Ghosts of Christmases to Come.

Someday, some year, Christmas would become all about the Practical, Sensible and Boring. Someday I too would reach thrilling new heights of glee when I unwrapped a brand new toilet brush set with matching toilet seat cover. I might even get tearful if my name were monogrammed right there, because how thoughtful and yet practical at the same time!

Or maybe it was just my boring parents. Maybe other people’s parents weren’t so dull and drab. Maybe they’d open new baubles from Tiffany & Co while sipping mimosas on their yachts. Sure, my parents SWORE that they were young and hip at one point in time, but I distinctly remember stories of “calculus class” and “beanies” neither of which screams “I am cool.”

Now I’m scared.

This year, after I couldn’t come up with anything frivolous that I absolutely NEEDED for Christmas, I was left with a startlingly small list of things that I wanted for Christmas. And then, for the first time in, well, ever, I PUT THAT LIST ON PAPER. In order to get anything that I might actually use for Christmas, I made a Christmas list. I realize that most adult people do this on a yearly basis, because they are smart, but I am not those people. Because writing a list means that I have to organize myself well enough to do this. Also, I am lazy.

I’ve learned, however, that if I do not direct people to items that I might want and use I will wind up with a whole host of things that I do not want and then I am stuck wondering what on earth to do with my brand-new case of expired powdered milk. While I always appreciate the gesture that accompanies the gifts I get, anything we don’t need is donated to charity right away.

I’m scared because this year, tired of finding homes for more things that we do not need, I have made a list of practical things that we’d like for Christmas. It’s disgusting how practical my list is. Pillow cases! I asked for PILLOW CASES! And a SPOT LIFTER! I mean, how much more boring—yet sensible—can one person get? If my former self could see me now, she’d be throwing up all over my mom jeans.

Gone are the days when I ask for a Coach purse! Farewell to diamond earrings and Movado watches! Adieu, my collection of Jimmy Choos! Gone forever are the days of my impractical youth!

What’s even worse is that I’m sort of excited about getting them because it’s one less annoying thing to spend my money on and one less framed whimsical light-up Santa Claus painting that I have to lug over to the Salvation Army.

I’m becoming my parents.

HOLD ME.

I was unsure of our motives, because, quite frankly, Dave and I stuck out like a pair of brightly colored, mismatched, rain-forest-chopping-down, as-far-from-eco-friendly-as-one-can-be-without-driving-Hummers thumbs. Now, it’s not as though we don’t recycle or love Mother Earth, because we do, and if you’ve been around for any length of time, you know that I garden like I used to drink diet Coke (read: obsessively).

But, according to the other parents, it just wasn’t enough. Because if we shopped at Trader Joe’s, they shopped at Whole Foods. If we shopped at Whole Foods, they organically grew their own fruits and vegetables. While I am not a competitive person by nature, the other parents seemed to feel absolute moral superiority towards us both and quite frankly, it got old after 4 years.

Adding fuel to the fire was the poor communication between the school and the parents. Like this charmer of an example. What Dave was told was that our son “ran into a fence and got a little banged up.”

What I got was this:

This picture does not do justice to how beaten my child looked. It took ALL MY WILLPOWER not to comment on it, because with Ben, if you comment on something like a paper cut suddenly he will expect sympathy cards and ice packs. And this? DESERVED SYMPATHY CARDS AND ICE PACKS.

So I admit that I was slightly annoyed by the downplaying of his injuries, mainly because I had to rely on acting skills *I* had never honed to not shriek when I saw him. I was also several weeks postpartum at the time, so the hormones may not have helped.

The nail in the proverbial coffin was the aw-shucks sort of after-thought type letter sent home right before school started. It was typed on half a sheet of paper and blandly said something to the effect of “From now on, you cannot pack any nuts or nut containing products in school lunches.” The school was so small, you see, we had to pack lunches for our children, no hot lunch option for us.

Maybe for other families, this was like the heavens opening up and shining down upon them, bento boxes neatly packed with nutritious choices like edamame and perfectly cut carrot coins, sandwiched between homemade whole grain crackers and cheese made from the milk of Buddhist cows.

There were, of course, lots of restrictions about what we could and could not pack, although none ever written down. No refined sugars. No juice boxes. No chips. No candy. No cookies. No soda. Nothing that needed to be microwaved or prepared. Reusable containers. No brown paper bags.

The one time that I dared to pack a granola bar with eensy chocolate chips, Ben was SINGLED OUT in front of the whole class and was told that “he cannot have candy in school. EVER.”

In theory, none of this should have been an issue.

In theory.

But my darling son, Benjamin, is autistic. With food issues.

For an entire year, I tried all kinds of combinations of foods, and about 95% of the time, he’d come home with a full lunch bag, his lunch untouched. Certainly, while he was not starving to death, this troubled me.

Food issues were nothing new, but this particular medium–lunch food with millions of restrictions–was, and I was at a loss. The only, and I do mean the ONLY thing I could safely get him to eat was a peanut butter sandwich.

So the day that the leaflet arrived informing us that we could no longer pack anything with nuts, or nut oils, in our son’s lunch, The Daver and I looked at each other and said, “oh FUCK.”

We called the school immediately to see what their vague handout meant and were met with the usual runaround that we always got from them. When we finally got the call-back a full week later, Dave got a condescending, “Oh, you know, anything with nut or nut oils in them,” when he asked. Wouldn’t make me really comfortable about it if it were my kid that was allergic.

So that was that, we plucked him out and plunked him into the public school system. Where they have nut-free tables and nut-free snacks, but even better than that? THEY HAVE LUNCH LADIES.

*cue angels singing on high*

And with lunch ladies (*hums the lunch lady song*) comes lunch. HOT lunch. Lunch with choices! Glorious, glorious choices! Every single day *I* am not responsible for providing food for my son! If he doesn’t eat? I am none the wiser.

I no longer have to sadly throw out the old, pathetic, stale and untouched sandwich each night. I don’t have to throw out uneaten shriveled carrots, flaccid penis-looking carrots, or sigh over picked at apples, wondering how my child will gain weight. Nor do I have t0 have rock, paper, scissors tournaments with The Daver to determine who is unlucky enough to have to try and make Ben a lunch he’ll never eat this time.

No.

It is with great pleasure, pomp and circumstance that I write out a check every month to the lunch ladies, signing my name with an extra dose of pizazz and flourish because I am just that mother-fucking happy to be letting someone else cook for my child. I would TIP the lunch lady if I could, I love her so much. I might even bear her children, if she asked me.

And if, for some reason, I had to pack my son a lunch, I could EASILY pack him, like Dave and I were always tempted to do while Ben was at the hippie school: a 5 pound bag of white sugar and a can of Mountain Dew. I don’t think ANYONE would say anything.

God BLESS the public school system.

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Essay originally ran on September 17, 2009, on Mommy Wants Vodka and can be found here.

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Photo credit to Kathy Campbell at A Life Condensed.

Occasionally, I’ll catch my pack-rat eight-year-old trying to stealthily make off with Cardiac Surgeon Monthly (I’m just sure he’s saving his pennies to buy me a portable defibrillator!), which is always an epic battle of the wills, but usually I go unchallenged. I would personally like to offer a sloppy kiss of thanks to whomever invented the gift card.

The only catalog that I have any interest in spending time with is my Pottery Barn Holiday Edition catalog. That one is to me what Victoria’s Secret catalogs are to teenage boys: eye candy. I grab a nice tall glass of vodka and I sit down on my puke-stained couch and I fantasize. From the clean coffee table surfaces, free of broken toys and overflowing laundry baskets to the expertly arranged eucalyptus garland, roping around the mantle, where the stockings hang, just so. My own mantle is so outdated it could easily be featured as the “before” shot on one of those home and garden programs where people come in and make fun of your crappy taste. Instead of eucalyptus garland, I have some gaudy gold garland that my two-year-old fell desperately in love with and it’s held up not with coordinated stocking holders but duct-tape and some nails I found in the basement.

Their Christmas tree is always expertly decorated from the lead-crystal covered snowflakes, the mountain of balls, all made of the world’s most shatterable glass, down to the pointy-metal reindeer, which, as I look closely, would make wonderful projectiles to be lobbed at one’s sibling. My tree is surrounded by a makeshift baby gate to keep out small animals and small children who might otherwise bring it crashing down onto the floor, which isn’t something I see in any of these pictures. In fact, I don’t see ANY kids in those pictures. I saw one cat once, but I think it was stuffed. The tree in my house is covered with plastic balls, all gaily colored and none really my taste, but all chosen by my children who have declared them beautiful.

Another year, I know I’ll come across those hideous plastic balls packed away, a vestige of times gone by, as I pull out the coveted Pottery Barn sterling silver snowflakes and the leaded crystal balls and I’ll cry. My children will have grown and my sofa will be puke-free, my coffee table clean, and my house, while maybe it will be prettier or cleaner or more chic, will feel less like a home.

So this year, I’m tossing that catalog out, along with Crystal Growers of Illinois and Fit and Fabulous Over Fifty. Bring on the ugly plastic balls. Bring on the piles of laundry and the mantle from 1976.

These are the good old days.

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This post ran on December 2, 2009 on Canadian Family Magazine’s Blog, The Family Jewels and can be found here.

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Photo is credited to Heather Spohr of The Spohr’s Are Multiplying.

I love it when I get to meet blog friends face to face, and I had a great coffee the other day with my friends who run the Drinking Diaries. They told me to check out Mommy Wants Vodka (note: her writing is a bit profane and explicit, just so you know), and I immediately wanted to ask “Aunt Becky,” a/k/a Becky Sherrick Harks, about her views about happiness.

Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Becky: Since I’m assuming that I can’t fantasize here and say something outlandish like, “a non-addictive form of Vicodin that’s magically transported into my medicine cabinet” or “non-fattening cheese fries” I will go with Option Number 2.

Writing. I love to write for my blog (Mommy Wants Vodka) and my audience who are an integral part of it. It’s funny. I never realized that I had any sort of interest in writing. It was like waking up one day and realizing that I could speak perfect Persian without ever having taken one of those language courses. And now I find that I can’t imagine my life without it. I’m trying to make a career out of it, not because I have to, but because I want to.

What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?

At 18, I was pretty sure that happiness was juuuuuust around the corner. Just waiting for me. The next big thing was going to make me happy. If I could only land the perfect job or the perfect boyfriend or the perfect grades or the perfect whatever. I was waiting for other things and other people to make me happy. It took me years to learn that true happiness comes from within.

I will never be in control of what happens to me or around me, but I am in control of what happens within me and how I react to situations. Now I know that I alone can make me happy.

Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve found very helpful?
My motto is something I read somewhere MANY years ago in the sort of new age-y type book that I really never read, but it’s this: “Somewhere, someone is flying.”

For some reason, that image of someone evokes a fanciful happy blue carefree blue sky and reminds me that in the immortal words of the God (Mick) Jagger, “You got to scrape that shit right off your shoes.”

Dwelling does little good, after all. And somewhere someone IS flying.

If you’re feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost?
I try to talk myself through it, kind of like the way they teach smokers to get through a craving, by focusing on something else completely. If I can distract myself from the sadness, or talk myself through it by reminding myself that I’m either being a) rational or b) irrational (depending, of course, on the situation) I end up feeling better.

Then, I focus the all of that energy on doing something productive with my hands. I tend to my massive rose garden or my orchids, I plant, I create something where there was nothing. Or I nurture something and revel in what I am growing. By filling the empty space with something, I feel whole again.

Is there anything that you see people around you doing or saying that adds a lot to their happiness, or detracts a lot from their happiness?
We’ve all been dealt some pretty crappy cards in life at one point or another. I am the product of two alcoholics, and my childhood was not exactly a Norman Rockwell painting, if you can imagine it. But we can all walk around with a big red VICTIM painted on our forehead, expecting people to tiptoe around our feelings and give us special dispensation for our VICTIM status, or we can dust ourselves off, accept that it sucked pretty hard and move on.

The people who have the VICTIM on their foreheads are the ones that I see that are in a cycle of unhappiness because they’re always blaming other people. It’s hard to get over, I know. I know.

We all have skeletons in our closets. We might as well pull them out and make ‘em dance.

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This interview was conducted by Gretchen Ruben, founder of The Happiness Project and was featured on November 24, 2009 on Slate.com, her blog The Happiness Project and on Psychology Today.

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Photo credited to Heather Spohr at The Spohrs Are Multiplying.

Against my better judgment, I’d agreed to spend our just-turned-four year old son’s birthday together. We’d planned a day at the science museum where German anatomist Gunther van Hagens Body World’s exhibit was on display, something I’d been dying to do. It was an uncharacteristically kind move on his part to suggest something that I might enjoy, and I was oddly touched and strangely saddened that it was too little too late. I was marrying someone else in a few weeks and things between Nat and I had been anything but smooth since our breakup several years before.

For Ben, though, I stupidly thought in the way all fearless twenty-four year olds do, that I could smooth things over and make them work just by being there and smiling along. From the moment we’d entered the museum that morning, Nat tried to put his arm around me every couple of minutes, and pull me close to him, crooning in my ear, “Don’t we look so happy together? See! People looking at us think we’re such a happy couple.” I wanted to throw up or punch him in the balls or both, but instead I’d removed his arm, gritted my teeth and said “no, we’re NOT together” and kept walking. Every step I took was like another nail in my coffin. Step. I shouldn’t have done this. Step. I should have stayed home. Step. Fuck, what now?

My son Ben, the love of my life, had the same sort of deep and abiding love for the planets and heavenly bodies that I had for human anatomy and physiology so we made sure to hit up the astronomy display first, so that he could see his beloved moons of Jupiter. He was autistic, and for the first time, I was happy that he didn’t have the ability to read emotions, because if he had, his emotional radar would have been off the charts. As we walked along, I nervously chattered away, entirely aware of the awkwardness of the situation. Weeks before, in preparing for Ben’s birthday party together, Nat had accosted me so loudly in a restaurant that I’d had to leave before the police were called to detain him. He was furious that I was getting married and vacillated wildly between begging for me to take back and calling me a whore for ruining his life.

After the astronomy exhibit, we waited in an incredibly long line to buy our tickets for the Body Worlds exhibit. For a brief moment as I held the glossy white tickets in my hand, my heart soared as I forgot about all of the awfulness of the day. I managed to forget the scene in the cafeteria that morning where Nat made me cry over donuts and coffee while Ben looked obliviously on and remembered how much I loved science and how amazing it was that I could share that with my son.

I’d spent countless hours in the gross anatomy lab dissecting cadavers and fetal pigs and rats and brains and anything I could get my stubbly hands on. To be able to actually see the circulatory system suspended in air was poetry. Once we stepped inside the exhibit, though, it all seemed so horribly wrong. Maybe it was the hot, stuffy August air. Maybe it was the way that I was being molested by my ex-boyfriend. I don’t know. Perhaps another day I might have seen the beauty in the muscular system suspended surreally in midair, but that day, I wanted to toss my cookies. The atmosphere seemed to be like a carnival-ish freak-show, and I felt ashamed at seeing all of these things, once living, now dead, in such obvious displays of grotesque caricatures of the living.

We finally made our way out of the exhibit and I caught my breath for a few seconds, my son began to weep, a sign that he, too, was clearly done with the museum. With great trepidation, I climbed into Nat’s car. He’d behaved so erratically since he’d picked us up that morning, but he was my ride and I was trying to avoid a big confrontation in front of Ben and the whole museum staff. I didn’t need the Chicago Police Department showing up on my son’s fourth birthday. Stupidly, I went for what I thought was the path of least resistance and climbed into his car. The simple act of checking my voicemail infuriated him and now we were barreling down the highway in his car, trapped. Out of his mouth flew a steady stream of insults and I said a prayer of thanks that my son was a heavy sleeper.

“You’re a whore,” he sneered, “I deserve better than you. That’s what everyone says. I’m so glad I’m not with you. Dave doesn’t know what he’s in for. He doesn’t know who you REALLY are.” He punched the steering wheel for effect and I stifled an inappropriate laugh that for someone who was so mercifully glad not to be in my company, he was awfully upset about not being my boyfriend. Now wasn’t the time to point out inconsistencies, so I just stared straight ahead.

We drove in silence for a few seconds until he suddenly jerked the wheel to the right without checking his blind spot, just missing the bumper of an ancient Cadillac, whose owner laid on the horn which sounded wheezily behind us.

“What do you want from me? Is it diamonds? I can buy you diamonds if that’s what you want. Becky, I’ll do anything you want.” He grabbed my hand, which was tightly clenched in my lap and held up my engagement ring. “I can buy you something better than this piece of shit.” He threw my hand down disgustedly. I thought it best not to point out how he loved to rub the inhumane diamond mining practices in the Sierra Leone whenever I mentioned that I liked diamonds. Again, I stared ahead, my mouth shut. I knew not to engage him if I really wanted to see the outside of this car again.

My silence infuriated him so he punched my arm, hard. It hurt badly enough to bring tears to my eyes, but I didn’t let on. The exit to my house was approaching rapidly and I was trying to visualize myself safe in my quiet living room. I focused on my breathing to quell the panic threatening to take over because I didn’t know what would happen if I lost it entirely. The odometer hovered near 100 miles per hour, and grimly he drove on.

I saw the signs for my exit and a cool wave of relief washed over me. This horrendous day was over and I could chalk this up to something I’d never be stupid enough to do again. My pulse slowed and I could almost smell the sheets of my bed, which I planned on crawling in to the moment I was able to. Inwardly, I smiled for the first time all day as I prepared myself for the right turn that didn’t come.

We sailed right past my exit as he gunned the accelerator. My eyes wide, I finally spoke, “Aren’t you taking me home?”

“No.” He said simply. “I’m not.”

He set his mouth into a straight line of determination and continued his path on the highway as Ben slumbered on in the backseat, oblivious. I stared at the cell phone in my lap and wondered what to do. Should I call the police? My fiance? Ghostbusters?

Heart pounding, sympathetic nervous system kicking into full gear, incredibly alert I mentally rehashed my options, trying to look for something–anything–that made sense, but as passenger in a speeding car driving by an emotionally charged volatile driver, everything I considered would only escalate the situation. Picturing a fiery car crash, I gripped the phone as a virtual talisman, my link to the outside world and took another deep, shaky breath.

“Why did you have to do this to him?” He gestured to the child in the backseat, deciding guilt would be the best tactic to defeat me now. “You’re ruining his life, you know. I could have taken care of you.” This proclamation seemed to upset him more and he gunned the engine, and the speedometer now read an alarming 120 miles per hour. Cars whizzed by us on either side as he continued his barrage of insults, clearly not paying attention to the busy road ahead. Minutes ticked into hours and I wondered who would notice that we were gone. I hadn’t told anyone how long we’d be, so no one would be raising any sort of alarm. In fact, the last call I had made was a hushed call to The Daver, my fiance, in the bathroom, where I’d begged him to pick up a cake for Ben’s birthday, hoping to salvage whatever was left of the day for our child. Kidnapped, I thought to myself as my heart pounded. What a fucking cliché. I should call Lifetime and see if they can make a fucking movie about this.

At his mercy I sat there as he sped up to 130 miles per hour, eyes barely on the road, I thought to myself, “So this is how it ends. I’m so, so sorry, Benner. I wish I’d done better by you. You did deserve more than this. I failed you.” Tears wet my cheeks as I thought about how sorry I was for my son who didn’t deserve his short life to end like this. I’d always protected everyone I’d ever known from this reality and in the end, it would be what killed us both. My core shattered into tiny pieces as I sent my love to the sleeping child for whom I had changed my life, I closed my eyes and I prepared for the end.

But just then, I felt the car veer sharply to the right and rather than the crashing sound of glass and crunching of metal, we slowed down and then stopped abruptly, my seatbelt straining painfully against my body hitting the front dashboard, although not terribly violently. I opened my eyes and saw that we were at a stop light. He’d exited the highway and was now turning around. We weren’t home yet, but it was a start.

I stole a furtive glance at Nat and I saw that his face had crumpled like a paper bag. Whatever resolve to hurt he’d felt seemed to have blown through and he looked shrunken and smaller. Reality had set in for him and he realized finally that whatever had gone on between us was now, in fact, over. No amount of screaming, threats or guilt was going to change my mind. My heart strained painfully against my chest as I watched the emotions on his face change as he finally seemed to accept the situation as it was. For a moment in there, I felt sorry for him. I’d been heartbroken before too, and I knew how it felt, but I also knew that no matter what, there was no excuse to put the lives of other people in danger like a spoiled child.

We wound back through local traffic toward my house, and the barrage of insults against me continued, but I finally tuned him out. Whatever power he’d had over me to make me believe that somehow I owed him any semblance of a relationship in order to maintain the illusion of normalcy had been broken, too. He could show up and ruin my wedding day. He could force my hand and make me call the police. It didn’t matter any more. I didn’t owe him anything.

As he pulled up in front of my condo, I quickly snapped my son out from his car seat, where he was sweating and crying from being trapped in the hot August sun for so long. As a final insult, Nat sneered, “I hope that Dave sees you for who you are some day.”

My arm barely out of the car door, he peeled out of my alley leaving us standing in an acrid cloud of smoke, my son weeping, while I grimly rubbed my arm and kissed the top of his head where I allowed a couple of tears to fall before I quickly wiped them away and bounced him softly.

Beaten, perhaps, but never broken. Never, ever broken.

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This post originally ran on Violence Unsilenced, on August 17, 2009 and can be found here.

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Image credited to Heather Spohr of The Spohrs Are Multiplying.