Never Walked In High Heels

Most creative people will often say that they want to give up their profession for something more sensible. All armature dramatics aside, I often find myself debating on whether my career as an actress and writer will ever really be worthwhile. This is especially the case if you know you can do something with your life—anything in fact—you set your mind to. At my age, I am still young enough to go to law school or do a plethora of other things if I set my mind to them. I am often reminded that God tells us to wait and to trust him, which is a combination that contains two of the hardest things for me to do in my life. The combination is excruciating, and it seems that if I took things into my own control, everything would and should happen much faster.

Last week I found myself having such a day. With the assortment of facebook, twitter, and other necessities of the modern age, I am able to share in my friends milestones and see the lovely pictures that show up as a result—the weddings, the births, the job promotions—none of which have shown up in my life as of yet, and in many ways, I feel that my road stretches on and on before me without a single bend in it or any sign to act as a marker for how far I’ve come or how far I have yet to go. Still waiting for so much that I want to accomplish, often overshadows the massive amount that I already have.

When you first meet Jeremy you aren’t quite sure if he is an actual person or a character attempting to be a human being. He was a guest teacher in one of my acting classes last week—he creates the figure of a sort of man-clown, who dresses in a green hat and vest with a suit coat and a handkerchief. The sort of outfits that people used to wear all the time, but now when the entire ensemble is put together, looks vaguely comical. He goes about the country teaching that to create anything one must be willing to take risks. The risk of failure and then come to the realization that there is security in failing, especially when one hits rock bottom—for then there is then no where else to go, which can be any more diminutive and where the ground offers no padding but plenty of support. After a brief lecture, he took off his hat which in the style of David Larible, seemed to have a mind and style of a movie all its own. His hat came alive rolling across his shoulder, beckoning from the floor to pay attention to him, and finally in a brief moment of risk itself through it into us the class and challenged us to make it land on his single finger as he stood on a chair. I was not amused and for that matter neither was the rest of the class walking around the room which seems to be a favored activity among any and all acting teachers, was something that I found exhausting on that particular day. I didn’t want to train anymore perhaps if I did train to be an actor nothing would become of it. So, while the rest of the class attempted in vain to land the mysterious and seemingly rebellious hat on Jeremy’s finger I meandered around—not wanting to perform in the least. He rest of the class soon got fed up with the game and began tossing the hat back and forth to each other as much as attempting to take aim at the target.

Perhaps now is an appropriate time to say that I can’t throw anything. My aim is terrible and more often then not I am unable to let go of the object that I’m attempting to toss, so it falls to the floor. Even my dog knows this fact and when we attempt to play fetch together, he picks up the ball and throws it himself after my vain attempt to create some distance from the object has failed. Then after throwing it himself, he retrieves the ball and hands it over to me so that I may have another try. When I used to play competitive basketball, I was known as a “defensive player.” If ever I was in possession of the ball, one could be assured that something was completely wrong.

As the girls tossed the hat back and forth, I found not a familiar face in the entire class this being are very first time of meeting together. Whenever I am in the company of strangers I feel, compelled to justify my existence—to illustrate that I am every bit as capable in achieving my goals and keeping up with the best of them—but the need to justify oneself never leads to creativity. One of these strange and unknown students eventually tossed the hat to me and I quickly began to belittle myself. How nice I thought to myself, they wanted to attempt to include the crippled girl. I knew that attempting to land the hat on my teacher’s finger was completely out of the question, and so without thinking, I simply tossed it aside.

As I watched to see just how measly my throw had been, I saw the hat land squarely on the target.

By the time I got home that evening the shock of it still had not managed to wear off. It was an unbelievable and in many was inexplicable experience. Despite all this, it offered me encouragement. As cliché as this perhaps is to say, it is often when we take one small step backwards from our dreams to truly examine what we want and how far we are willing to go for it—one step away to attempt to gain some distance and perspective—it is then that we are able to perform are best. It is in taking this step in the seemingly wrong direction that we release ourselves from trying to justify ourselves and set free the creative forces, which are ultimately uncontrollable.

On that particular day, reaching my target in the little sense allowed me to reach for my dreams in the metaphorical sense. After all, the hat with my deficiency in aim and leverage could have landed anywhere in the room, and even though I was not thinking of it, it dropped off exactly where it needed to be.

By the time I put her on the plane, I had no idea how I was going to survive without my friend. A s.n.a.f.u at immigration put a friend who came to visit me on holiday back in the US for another six weeks. Thus all my plans for companionship, a friend to lend an extra hand, and not having to come home to an empty house, were thwarted.

At the same time, my long time assistant was moving out, leaving me very little time to find someone new to cook, clean, feed me my meals, and help with other minor but much needed tasks. Then, in a moment of divine irony, an email came through my inbox with the subject heading “What feeds you?” The gods were laughing.

The most difficult thing about my disability is that, even well into adulthood, I cannot make a meal or feed it to myself. All other aspects of life in a wheelchair I’ve just about been able to wrap my head around. I wear shoes which I never have to tie, I get my hair washed by a salon, I’m even quite good at flirting in pubs so I can get guys to help me walk down the stairs to visit the toilets. But all of this requires calories to burn, which in turn requires the intake of food, which is one area of my life that I have zero control over. Having to depend on others for food is like a country having to depend on OPEC for energy, sooner or later everyone else has you over a barrel.

I once heard a homeless woman being interviewed remark that the hardest thing about being in her position was not knowing where her next meal was coming from. Although I am far from being homeless, I know exactly how terrifying that feels. It is a kind of poverty which is not dictated by the wallet or by some stockpile of faith. At least three times a week there comes a point where I have no idea when or how I’m going to eat again and unless I’m willing to put some pieces together, I have no idea how that can possibly change. My last meal could quite possibly be exactly what it sounds like.

There’s about as many differing definitions for the word poverty as there are organizations set up to work towards its end. In my flat in London I’ve never dared to think of myself as being impoverished. But, after my curiosity being peaked and doing a little research, I realized that every single one of these definitions mentioned a lack of what is essential for survival. Does the fact that I have gone multiple days without food put me on the edge of the poverty line, even while I sit in a riverside flat trying to figure out the next alternative for food? Or perhaps this simply makes me a bad planner.

No parent wants his children to grow up not knowing where their next meal is coming from. For that matter no parent wants to see his child lack in anything. If the certainty of a next meal is the minimum standard for successful parenting, then my mother and father failed miserably. And yet the wealth of what they could give me allows me to survive in a world where nothing is guaranteed, even my next meal.

If poverty, as some organizations such as the UN defines it, is simply the lacking of a necessity in life, then we are all impoverished in one form or another. And in many cases it is the “wealthiest” amongst us who are actually the most impoverished. The myth of an independent and self sufficient life, reflected in even these definitions of poverty, not only perpetuates a misconception but also actively pulls us away from relationships of interdependence. If we are loved, we may not know where the next meal is coming from, but we do know those around us will not let us starve. Someone will notice, someone will help, provided we are willing to show our blatant vulnerability freely, and admit we are all lacking in something which is needed to survive this difficult task called living.

Looking back to the times I’ve been without food, without help, temporarily impoverished as it were, much of it has been due to my own stubbornness and unwillingness to admit to my own need. I am not saying that doing so would wipe out poverty or all hungry people would have their problems solved if they simply admitted they needed help. My disability does not go away simply because I have the assistance I need. The fact I am being fed does not negate the fact I cannot feed myself anymore than the fact a homeless man has a bed for the night negate the fact that he is, indeed, homeless. But we are lying to ourselves if we do not admit that each of us are in need of something which makes life livable.

I cannot feed myself and that’s awful. More days than I care to count I’ve spent vast stores of energy trying to figure out where my next meal is coming from. By some standards this would label me as being ‘impoverished.’ But it is what we lack as well as our excesses which make us interact and inspire life into each other when no other solution would allow us to maintain momentum. I am unable to eat on my own and the solution to this problem means I have a wealth of dinner dates and friends to meet for coffee who tell me that I feed them as much as they feed me. Usually I do a pretty good job lining up these appointments 3 times a day to ensure I do not go hungry. On the days that this fails, I am forced to admit my weakness rather than letting it be implicit. I am forced to call someone and say “I need help.” And I am forced to admit that with the number of people who love me enough to come to my aide, I am far from being impoverished.

Last summer I saw two of my friends get married. In many ways it seemed as though they were already wedded long before they walked down the aisle and said their vows to each other. The second they went on their first date here in London it seemed that they were perfect for each other.

The woman was a friend of mine previously to the couple coming together. One afternoon she came into my flat insisting that over Valentine’s Day weekend, she would make haggis as a sort of rebellion against the overly commercial, sappy, syrupy, sociological dedication towards Valentine’s day. What could be a better rebellion than stuffing a sheep’s intestine full of herbs and spices while listening to punk music then tucking in to enjoy the hard work? So she did what any single, self respecting woman would do to prepare for Valentine’s day, she went to Borough Market and bought a sheep’s gut from the butcher’s. While there she bumped into a young man queuing up for the same ingredients. His version of the perfect Valentine’s day weekend was exactly the same as hers. Three years later they were walking down the aisle.

We were in a world which teaches that people are not fully complete until they have found a mate. This is not only a teaching of all the major religions, but also that of the mass media. Nearly every song one hears on the radio is about love. Every television show goes round and round about romantic interests, breakups, and the inevitable make up sex; as well as the news stories are filled with weddings and gossip about divorces. Romance, we are told, is one thing that everyone always ought to be looking for.

The idea of being a complete person and alone is almost unheard of. Churches and synagogues are full of singles groups where you can meet like-minded individuals of the opposite sex. Even in the modern world where marriage is not necessarily encouraged, it is difficult to be seen as a whole person. Everyone, at the very least, lives together as a couple.

What’s so amazing about my friend’s story is in many ways cliché. Over and over you hear, “It’s when you aren’t looking that you find someone,” and then we try to convince ourselves when we find someone that we are attracted to that we weren’t looking for anyone in the first place. I highly doubt that either of my friends were looking for their future mates when standing in line at a butcher shop, holding a sheep’s intestine. In many ways, that’s what makes their story so special. The fact that both of them, as individuals, were able to stand up to the and insist that a day which everyone else swears up and down was meant for love was actually meant for stuffing a sheep’s stomach and listening to of punk rock. There are two people completely content and confident with how they see themselves as well as refusing to cave in to the expectations of those around them hunting for happiness in another person simply because they are still single.

What makes an individual complete or a full entity is how satisfied they are with themselves, not how they are seen in the eyes of other people. If someone is without a partner, he must believe that he is still complete, not lacking in anybody’s expectation simply because there is no wife to show for it. Anyone who swears otherwise can, well, stuff it as they would a sheep’s gut. 

What I Know Of Her Son

She is a woman who I have been wanting to meet for years. Ever since I first heard my friend describe his mother, I knew that she was amazing just by examining his outlook, and that she had a degenerative nerve disease. When he spoke of his mother, he keeps the latter fact quiet and simple telling me of what she’d done and what she used to tell him. “She’s fine…well she’s not fine she has a nerve disease. But it really doesn’t affect her that much.” And so, when I finally bumped into her visiting her son while walking down the road at a Sunday pace, I was surprised as she was further along in her condition that he had made it out to sound. As close as we were I wish he would have told me honestly what her status was like and what her troubles were. But maybe he is as blind to her disability as he is to mine.

I always wanted to meet his mother. It amazes me whenever I meet the parents of any of my friends. I begin to understand where they got their values and which matters were the greatest influences on their life. This particular woman raised my friend incredibly well. For my own sake, when I am out and dependent on him it is as close as I can possibly imagine to possibly being fully independent. In such cases I am particularly interested in meeting the mother of the family, mothers teach their children to stretch their boundaries and to think beyond what is normal in order to incorporate people of all types. The influence of such a woman can mean that for the rest of their life, their child does not feel awkward whenever meeting someone strange. Mothers open up the world of acceptability to their children, making the entire universe more inclusive. I have met two of this woman’s sons and I can safely say that she did a wonderful job in raising her children to be as accommodating and as understanding as human beings can possibly be.

As soon as we were introduced, her eyes lit up with a flicker of recognition. She was holding on to her walker and instantly called me by name. From this I gathered that she somehow knew my name and that it was familiar in their home. Watching her watch her son handle my bags and meet my needs for minor assistance, it suddenly dawned on me that this behavior that she was witnessing in the young man that she helped raise, nurse, feed and carry was new to her. She probably never saw anyone rely on him in such a dependent way as I do on a regular basis. The fact is, I depend on all of my friends, but particularly him, and I forget that this often looks strange to the outside world.

Then, almost instantly, I came to another realization, that because of her own disability, someday soon she will be dependent on him as well. For many individuals with a long term degenerative illness this impending dependency is the most fearful thing to overcome. The fact that someday you will be dependent on your children, and at that point in time it is how you raised them that will reflect on how they will take care of you. Again, it is the classical instance of an individual reaping what they sow. As parents teach their children to care for human life and value it in all its forms, the trickle down effect is that eventually they will be under the care of their children in one form or another. Those families who do not bother to teach their children such values and ethics will no doubt feel it when the older generation inevitably starts losing its own independence.

For me the most humbling realization was that suddenly I knew something about her children, particularly her sons, that she knew nothing of, that she would someday be reliant upon. In this small way, I know how her sons look out for people in need, protecting and advocating for them. Both in the slightest and most dramatic ways. They are both unafraid to feed someone when a spoon becomes too difficult to hold onto. They can tie shoes without breaking the conversation and are experts at making sure that someone not only survives, but that they are happy, healthy and know that they are valued. If such a day comes for her when she can no longer perform the tasks of daily living without a great deal of assistance, she will also find that her boys are exactly as she raised them and I am already thankful for those effects.

Somedays I wish I could tell her now that her children will take care of her when she is in need. I wish I could tell her that when her body rebels and she is no longer able to do what was once considered a natural reflex without a massive amount of frustration, she will have no need to worry. I wish I could tell her all the ways that I see my friend stepping up to the plate and preparing himself to take care of his parents when they grow older. I wish I could tell her all the stories of all the times he advocates for me, and that I am grateful to have such a fabulous friend.

And then I can’t help but wonder, if she and her husband raised their children to become such honorable and humane people, perhaps she knew what he is capable of all along.