Prosopagnosia (Face blindness)

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A Final Act of Catharsis

Disclaimer: The following is inspired by information that I recently learned about my ex-best friend Melanie and wrote about here. It involves me showing up unsolicited at her house. It is a story. It is a fantasy. It is fiction. Please don't read into it as anything more than a work of catharsis, my own way of getting closure. I know that showing up unannounced at the house of someone you haven't spoken to in eleven years-- even if they owe you an explanation for hurting you and even if they had once been your best friend-- is creepy. This is not something I would do in real life. 

The names of the people in this post have been changed to protect their privacy.

I turn the corner and walk up to the tan brick house, my hands jammed into my pockets, my fists clenched to ebb the shaking.

The building is one of those small northeast Philadelphia houses where the first floor sits above the garage and the basement opens up to the backyard. The large maple tree from my past recollections still dominates the street corner, partially covering the front door and steps. I am brought back to memories extending through my adolescence to my early twenties.

I think about my first time there, in sixth grade.  Melanie and I had gone to a nearby carnival, and then came back to spend the night. The summers just before I would leave for seven weeks at camp, we ventured off to see the latest Disney movie together, followed by a swim in the above-ground backyard pool. There was an end-of-summer party where I met one of Melanie’s friends, Jenna. We hit it off immediately, and remained close for a few years before losing contact. I smile, thinking about coming here for Melanie’s high school graduation party and how excited she felt to be accepted to a local university, where she would commute every day to pursue a degree in animation. And even after I moved to Brooklyn to pursue my own animation degree, we still got together a few times a year for Disney movies and sleepovers.

I sigh.

I’ve parked the car a block away, despite there being ample room on Melanie’s street. At least I didn’t have to track her down to find out where she lived— I had heard that she didn’t even move out when she married Mark, let alone when they had kids. Had I needed to, well, I would have felt what I was doing was akin to stalking, and I am not certain that this doesn’t qualify.

It is a beautiful July day, not too hot, but just right for swimming. Is the pool still in the backyard? Some giggling and splashing comes from nearby. Yes, the pool must be there still. Melanie, Mark, their two children—and possibly Melanie’s parents, Mildred and Ben—are likely swimming in the pool. Maybe they’re even having a backyard barbeque with some of the neighborhood families. And perhaps tomorrow, Melanie, Mark, and the kids will spend a day at the Jersey Shore. Melanie and Mark will be holding hands as they stroll along the beach while their children collect seashells. And the following night, maybe a Pixar movie in Pennypack Park. Melanie will rest her head against Mark while the kids alternate between watching the movie and chasing fireflies.

And for a second, I bitterly wonder, do they have a white picket fence and a dog named Spot?

I pause at the foot of the stairs leading up to the front door. After ten years, I just might finally get a straight answer. I'm out of my mind for doing this, but I need to know. I remember when Melanie and Mark first met in late 2001 or early 2002, when Melanie was twenty-two years old. Mark was her first boyfriend. The idea of her dating was about as fathomable, well, me dating. But she found the right guy. I met him a few times and he was pretty cool. I was happy for her. A couple years later, the two of them were engaged. In 2006 or 2007, Melanie informed me that she’d set a date for the wedding: August 16, 2008.

But in mid-2008, I called my parents, upset that the date of the wedding was fast-approaching and I still hadn’t received an invitation. In fact, Melanie had stopped answering my calls, emails and hadn’t even accepted my friend request on MySpace. My parents, especially my mother, seemed perplexed that I believed I’d be at Melanie's wedding, let alone still friends with her. 

“I can’t believe she did this to me!” I exclaimed. “I hate her! She’s a bitch!”

"No, she’s not. This is what happens when people get married," Mom said with an air of authority. "Melanie is in a stage of her life where you're not invited."

"But we've talked about the wedding a number of times. She made it clear that she wanted me there." I said.

"Well, she obviously changed her mind."  Mom's tone indicated she couldn't believe she had to explain something so obvious. "And you need to learn to take hints. She's trying to tell you something."

"What?" I muttered, though I knew what Mom meant.

"She's not interested," Mom muttered back. I could practically hear her facepalming on the other end of the line.

Then, Mom said that relationships change, and you don't always have the same friends you had growing up.

But I knew the difference between a building collapsing due to lack of maintenance and a building collapsing because somebody had flown a plane into it. This was an example of the latter, and it was deeply personal. And I knew that what Mom had said was wrong, at least for a lot of people in the liberal, northeastern United States. A few of my peers had married friends, some with kids.

But I was different— always different. I was that weird girl with Asperger’s Syndrome who people constantly labeled as “immature”. I had come to think of many people I’d come in contact with over the years as being “Forbidden” to me: It was if I was literally not allowed to have friends who fit certain categories: older, married, or someone who otherwise had had “adult” experiences. It seemed that I had to all but formally request the privilege of even being in their presence. There was Carlos, a guy a year younger than me, who I’d met through Ann, a friend and co-worker at a summer camp. The three of us had spent a week together: a few days at my parents’ house in Pennsylvania; a few days in Washington, D.C.; and a few days in New York City. We got along great. And yet he had kept in touch with my parents instead of me.

“Carlos is an intellectual. He has traveled the world and speaks five languages,” Dad had said. “He has more in common with us.”

I supposed, then, that despite the fact that Melanie had never moved out of her parents’ house— not even when she went to college— she was an adult, just because she was getting married. I was still— and probably always would be—a child. She was living in a grown-up world that I was not an appropriate fit for, one that I might disrupt in the literal and figurative sense, starting with the wedding and continuing with the yet-to-be-conceived children.

            Like Carlos, Melanie had become Forbidden.

I stand on the front step of Melanie’s house thinking about how I learned through the grapevine that Melanie’s son is autistic. I hope he never has to go through the same traumatic social rejection that I did. I hope he never has to think of certain people as Forbidden.

What am I even going to say to Melanie? I've rehearsed this scenario in my mind countless times, but all that’s surfaced are raw accusations instead of adult-sounding questions: "Melanie, why the hell did you cut me off? Was I not good enough for you? How did you think I was going to react? Just shrug and say, ‘Oh fiddlesticks!’?” I know I can’t handle it like that. But in reality, I don’t know what I will say until the situation presents itself.

At the top of the stairs, the exterior door is open and only a screen door separates me from getting the answers I’ve needed. It is finally going to happen. Maybe the torturous, recurring dreams I’ve had over the past decade about running into Melanie only to have her freak out and bolt in the other direction will stop.

I listen to laughing out back. I hear a splash and calls of "Marco!" and "Polo!".

I raise my hand and slowly press my finger to the doorbell. Will they even hear it ring from the backyard?

“Come in,” calls a man— Ben, Melanie’s father. “I’m in the kitchen.”

I freeze. I didn’t expect this. Before I can say anything, Ben calls, “You’re here to fix the leak, right? Come in.”

I open the door and step over the threshold. I climb the small flight of stairs to the living room.

The room still looks more or less as I remember it, with a couch, a coffee table, a La-Z-Boy chair, television, and DVD player. But, now there is something else— children's toys. And from the looks of it, Melanie’s kids had been in the middle of an intense game before getting distracted by something else— a family afternoon in the pool, maybe? A toy canoe from Moana sits on the floor next to the coffee table. A Maui figure stands authoritatively on one end of the boat while a Moana figure stands on the other. She holds a paddle in both hands and her pet rooster stands beside her. Tamatoa, the giant crab, is near the boat, his claws raised menacingly.

I have some of the same toys.

“The leak is in the kitchen,” Ben calls, bringing me back from my thoughts. “Come in here.”

I turn and step into the kitchen.

“The sink is over—” Ben starts to say.

“Oh,” says Ben when I enter the room. “I thought you were the plumber.”

Ben sits in a kitchen chair, a cane in one hand. Right, because he’s fourteen years older than Melanie’s mother. He must be in his eighties now.

“Um, no,” I say, my hands once again having found their way into my pockets.

I see a hint of recognition in Ben’s eyes, and yet he’s not quite able to place me.

“I’m… I’m an old friend of Melanie’s. I’ve come to say hello.” I pause. “My name is Julie.”

Ben’s eyes widen. “Oh, yes,” he says, “I remember. It’s been a while. Well, I think Melanie’s downstairs taking a nap.”

Ben stands up. He looks a bit uncomfortable. Somehow, I know it's more than just the fact that his daughter's ex-best friend is in his house, but I don't know exactly why. "Um, let’s see if she's awake."

I look at my watch. It's going on 3:30. Why would Melanie be asleep?

Oh, right. She's a mother of two young children. Of course she's going to need a nap sometimes.

I nod and follow Ben down to the basement. It isn't nearly as I remember it. When Melanie and I had sleepovers, this was where we came to spend late nights watching movies and playing video games. There had also been a bar for when her parents entertained other adults. I used to play with this toy slot machine that sat atop it. The bar is gone, and in its place are a couple chests of drawers. Now there is a king-sized bed where the couch used to be. 

And Melanie is in it, wrapped tightly under the covers, her head facing the door to the backyard. I realize she must be sick, but I sense it isn’t some bug she caught from one of her kids.

My eyes are drawn to the nightstand, where a few half-empty prescription bottles sit.

"Melanie," Ben says softly. "Someone's here to say hello."

Melanie doesn't stir. I look at Ben.

"Um... this isn't one of her good days," he whispers, wringing his hands. "She… she has fibromyalgia..."

I freeze and stare in disbelief. I think about Jenna, the friend I'd met through Melanie at one of Melanie’s parties. We'd lost touch over the years until early 2015 when I reconnected with her— now them, as they've since come out as genderqueer—over Facebook. Jenna also has fibromyalgia. I cannot believe this bizarre coincidence.

I turn to the sound of the door to the backyard sliding open.

"Be-en," whispers a familiar soft, singsong voice. "Was that the plumber?"

I turn to face Mildred, Melanie's mother, her eyes wide open. "Julie, what are you doing here?" she asks.

"I— I just wanted to talk to Melanie," I stammer.

"Well, you can see that Melanie is asleep right now.”

“Huh?” Melanie mutters, her eyes still closed, her head now turned slightly toward me. “Who’s there?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Mildred says. “Go back to sleep. You need your rest.”

Melanie puts her head back to the position it was in just a minute ago, her eyes shut. But this time, they aren’t closed in the gentle, natural way of sleep.

They’re screwed shut.

Mildred stares at Ben.

"I just thought..." Ben whispers. "I mean, not many of her friends have come by in the past year."

Mildred shakes her head in disbelief and then nods toward me. “And she hasn’t been over here in God knows how long.”

And you think that was my idea? I want to retort.

But I say nothing. If Melanie is in a lot of pain, it would probably be cruel to bother her with the question, no matter how much I’ve been dying to ask it. Then again, she had no trouble being cruel to me ten years ago. But I doubt she is awake enough to even register my question, so asking would be pointless. Wait, maybe I could…

I turn to Mildred. “I just wanted to know why…” I begin slowly, but my words dissipate before I can get them out. It’s eerily like one of the recurring dreams I have in which I finally encounter Melanie, get ready to ask the question, to simply ask why, but when I move my lips, nothing comes out. Mildred turns to look at me. I try again. “I mean, all this time… I just need to know…”

But I am distracted by Melanie’s sleeping form, still amazed and disturbed by the coincidence that two of my closest friends from my teenage years now have fibromyalgia. I look at Melanie and think about the experiences with fibromyalgia that Jenna has told me about. They have told me that they have some days in which they can't even get out of bed, and other days in which they do get out of bed but are in constant pain. Then occasionally there are days when the pain isn’t so bad, and Jenna can go out with their friends. And for Jenna, sometimes medical marijuana is the difference between an intolerable and a tolerable day, as they’ve never found any prescription medication to be particularly helpful. Is Melanie having one of those can’t-get-out-of-bed days? How often does she have them?

            And I try again, the words leaving my mouth more quickly than I’d anticipated. “Why…why wasn’tIinvitedtothewedding?WhydidMelaniecutmeoff?”

            Mildred’s eyes widen. Did she even understand my question?

“Julie, you need to leave,” Mildred says. “Right now.”

At first, I don’t move, but then I head to the stairs. I stop and turn around when I hear the sound of the door to the backyard opening and closing again. A little brown-haired boy and a little blonde-haired girl, each in a bathing suit, run inside in fits of giggles. I look outside and see Melanie's husband, also in a bathing suit, his back turned to the house, looking off into the distance.

The boy, who looks about seven, rushes past me, runs upstairs, laughing and flapping his hands.

"Mommy, come play!" the little girl, who looks about five, shouts as she tugs Melanie's arm.

"Not now," Melanie mutters, her eyes still closed.

"Mommy, please!" the little girl says. "It'll be fun."

Melanie's mother kneels and grabs the girl by the shoulders. "Mommy isn't feeling well now. Okay? Go outside and play with Daddy." She pauses. "Goodness, you have mud on your face again. What did I say about keeping yourself clean?" 

I am still standing at the bottom of the stairs. This is a little girl! I want to shout. She's, what, five? It's summer and she's playing outside. Of course she's going to get muddy once in a while!          

But then I think back to when Melanie told me about the time when she was a teenager and was at a family gathering, playing basketball with some boys. Her mother, who had been sitting on a bench with some other middle-aged ladies, had called out, "Melanie, come sit with the women."

Mildred turns to face me. “Julie, you need to go.”

I nod, barely even looking at her. 

I begin to climb the stairs, and the little boy comes back downstairs, whooshing right past me, still flapping his hands as I press against the wall of the staircase. "I'm a bird! I'm a bird!" he shouts. "I can fly!”

I turn around to see Mildred take the boy’s hands in hers. "Mommy is asleep right now," she says. "And what have we said about 'quiet hands'?"

The boy stares at the floor.

I wish I could tell Mildred that there’s a growing consensus among professionals that in most situations you should not force an autistic child to stop stimming. Then again, if I—or anybody—told her, would it make a difference? I think about the time when Melanie and Mildred wanted to try a weight-loss plan which restricts carbohydrate intake for the first two weeks. This was not a diet created by a random person looking to get rich and famous, but a doctor, specifically a cardiologist. Mildred apparently knew better than this doctor: she told Melanie that restricting carbohydrates wasn’t enough, that they needed to also restrict fat during those two weeks. What was she supposed to eat, then? Grass? I remember asking Melanie if she and her mother had even read the book that explained how to do the diet. Melanie said that yes, she had. But her mother said that they were going to do it her way.

I can guess Mildred probably doesn’t allow medical marijuana in her house.

I continue up the stairs. I remember the very last time I saw Melanie, in the summer of 2005, when we met at Six Flags Hurricane Harbor in New Jersey. Melanie  intended to come back to New York City with me to spend the night, but her mother said no, that she already planned a girls' day out for the next day. And she also wanted her back home at eight that night.

Melanie was twenty-five years old.

As I head to the top of the stairs, I think about the grown-up, pristine, white-washed, even idyllic, adult life that I’d imagined Melanie having—despite living with her parents—all because she was married and had children. I realize I was not the only one who had imagined Melanie living this life. Her mother had imagined it, too—or more specifically, had planned for it. I remember how long before Melanie had gotten married, when she was working at Macy’s for $8.00/hour, Mildred was nagging her relentlessly about how she wanted to be a grandmother. Melanie had said that she wanted to have children. But now I wonder if she really did. Was she even aware that not having kids was also an option? Would she have explored both options had her mother not pressured her?

I realize something.

Melanie isn’t just a perpetrator in this story. She’s also a victim, specifically a victim of her mother, in this and in a lot of other things in her life. And on top of it, she has fibromyalgia.

I turn around one last time. I can't leave without saying something. I go back down the stairs with the intention of letting Mildred have it with both barrels, age-appropriateness be damned. I’m going to tell her, You've destroyed your daughter. You kept her under your skirt, forced her to repress her true self, and prevented her from achieving independence. For what? So she could be an extension of you? She had so much potential and you just squashed it. And now you’re doing it to your grandchildren.

I reach the bottom of the stairs, where Mildred glares at me. "Julie, you need to leave now."

I point a right index finger at Mildred and open my mouth, but all that comes out is a brusque, "I hope you're satisfied."      

"Julie, get out before I call the police," Mildred says, this time her voice raised.

I see Melanie’s eyes open very slightly. But then they close again.

"Hon, isn't that a little harsh?" Ben asks as I climb the stairs.

I can hear Mildred lecturing Ben, but she’s dropped her voice to a very low whisper and I can't make out what she's saying. I almost laugh as I open the front door. Funny Mildred should talk about calling the police. Ben is a retired cop. But that's the last thing the casual observer would suspect...

I shake my head as I open the door and step outside. I pull out my iPhone to send Jenna a text on Facebook messenger.

"You're not going to believe this. I just found out that Melanie has fibromyalgia."

Jenna asks me how I know. So I tell them about what I did.

Then Jenna says, "Honestly, I'm not interested in hearing about someone who cut me off without explanation."

I stop at the bottom of the outside steps. "What??" I text back.

"I thought I told you a while ago," Jenna says.

"No. What happened?" I reply.

As it turns out, around 2002 or 2003, Melanie simply stopped taking Jenna's calls, stopped answering their emails . . . and Melanie and Jenna had once been close, too. But I also remember asking Melanie around that time, "Do you still talk to Jenna?" and she'd said something, I forget exactly what, that made it sound like they’d merely lost contact.

I shake my head and I walk to the car. What I saw inside that house today tells me everything I need to know. I never got to ask Melanie why she ended our friendship, but I don't need to. Whether she thinks she just "lost contact" with me—and Jenna— or whether it had ultimately been her decision to end everything, I'll never know. But it's clear that she didn't do it in a vacuum. 

I get in the car and start the engine.  I pass Melanie’s street on the way out of the housing development. I briefly glance at her house, but then return my eyes to the road.

Footnote: Yes, I'm aware of the irony of using a fantasy to discredit another fantasy. But parts of this story are based on memories as well as a few things I've heard about Melanie through the grapevine, so it's not a fantasy in a vacuum. 

I Am Moana!

Jeez, it's been another long time since I've posted one of these. Once again, I'm sorry! Updates: My job is going well. I also had my surgery to coil and stent my aneurysm last September, and I'm going for a follow-up angiogram in about a month to make sure everything is healing properly.

As you can see, the title of the blog posts alludes to the name of a song in the Disney movie Moana and, of course, the movie Moana itself. The other day, I had a really interesting-- and frustrating-- thread about this movie. It started when I posted this:

One of my favorite things about "Moana" is that it's a buddies movie with a guy and a girl. Yes, believe it or not, a guy and a girl over the age of 12 can hang out and even be alone on a boat for several weeks without falling in love (despite the jokes that [friend's name here] and I make about it). All too many movies that have a woman as a main character either portray her as someone who is an "accessory" to the man or, if she's the absolute main character, she has to fall in love with a man because, vagina. It's almost always obligatory when a woman is an absolute main character. Maui and Moana become best friends. They hug, they high five (yeah yeah, that wasn't around thousands of years ago, but it's Disney; what do you want?), they act silly in a way that's non-flirtatious.And I don't know anything about ancient Polynesian cultures, but I have heard that aboriginal cultures in general were often more egalitarian than the Christian-dominated cultures that followed in the centuries to come. So why not?

One guy, I'll just call him "G", wrote this in response:

G: So, actually you say that desire and bodily needs are rooted in christianity?I highly doubt that...
Me: No that is absolutely not what I said.
G: You've praised a movie for the lack of lust in it and then wrote, abo [sic] cultures like Moana's were more egalitarian than Christian culture. That is what you said.But let's flip the story, why is it a bad thing that men and women have basic needs and those needs are being addressed? The Heroine also eats and goes to the toilet sometimes.
Well, for the love part, I tend to agree with you, she doesn't have to fall in love to fulfill her needs, but I guess I'd prefer this romantic way rather than just showing her random copulating with strangers.Well, for the love part, I tend to agree with you, she doesn't have to fall in love to fulfill her needs, but I guess I'd prefer this romantic way rather than just showing her random copulating with strangers.
Me: No you are missing the point. Movies with men as main characters have them sometimes falling in love, sometimes not. If the main character is a woman, she has to fall in love. In other words, it’s woman [sic] being defined in relation to men.

The egalitarian stuff I was talking about was in reference to that they went on an adventure together that a woman wouldn’t typically go on, at least not in Christian dominated cultures over the past several centuries
The egalitarian stuff I was talking about was in reference to that they went on an adventure together that a woman wouldn’t typically go on, at least not in Christian dominated cultures over the past several centuries

What is frustrating is how often I have had this type of conversation with people and how often they misunderstand it. It's been going on since childhood. I thought my opening post was clear, but as you can see I had to clarify it. And the very idea that a movie not involving a man needing to get laid or a woman needing a man to love her (sadly, the formula for many romance movies is just that) is a good thing seems to be alien to so many people. I might as well be saying, "Wow, finally, a movie where somebody doesn't breath oxygen!" 

There are a lot of things that I appreciate about Moana, and the fact that they didn't chuck in a love story is one of them, for the reasons I stated above. I am sure the only reasons that the writers didn't put in a love story are: 

a) because it was irrelevant to the plot and 

b) because in today's world of Internet predators the idea of a 16-year-old falling in love with an ageless man (who is presented as if he is in his mid-twenties, perhaps) would just be inappropriate (although maybe there was a little bit of a feminist consciousness when the story was written). 

But let's look at it for a moment as if this were a real scenario. Why isn't Moana falling in love with Maui? I mean, they have been alone together on that boat for weeks! Surely some primal instinct would take over, right? Why didn't she fall in love? I don't know. Maybe she's gay. Maybe she's asexual. Maybe her sexuality hasn't awoken yet.

Or maybe Moana IS heterosexual and, gasp, there was just no sexual tension between her and Maui, and why is really not important.Yes, believe it or not, this is possible. I'm heterosexual but I have a lot of friends who are guys and the sexual tension between us is zero. We might high-five or hug (depending on the person and my relationship with them) but that's as far as it will go or ever will go, even if in the snowball's chance in hell that we end up stranded on a boat together for several weeks. This may be because I'm demisexual (Google it) but I think there are a lot of heterosexual opposite-sex friends who don't encounter sexual tension when they spend time together. I remember being frustrated as a kid when my mom would say that in every interaction between heterosexual people of the opposite sex, there is always going to be some level of sexual tension. No. That's not true. For some people, yes, it absolutely is true. Some guys see an attractive woman and their mind doesn't even register it. Others immediately think, "Oh she's attractive." Others still within a nanosecond of seeing an attractive woman think, "I want to fuck her." And this is just the cisgender man side. Cisgender women? Same deal. What about gay cisgender men and gay cisgender women? Probably even more complicated when we are talking about transgender and gender non-binary people.

I guess what frustrates me the most is when I praise Moana and other movies for having guys and girls being close, non-sexual friends, other people are hearing me say that sex is bad. Or they think I have a personal sexual problem. But what I really am praising is the visibility of other types of relationships, that sex isn't the be-all-and-end-all of human interaction. I'm praising the visibility of someone who might be gay. Or asexual. Or not sure yet. Or just praising the idea that heterosexual people can spend time alone without wanting to do each other. Is it really that complicated? 

While I do think the whole idea of women being defined in relation to men is still a pervasive problem in film, I also think it is happening less and less. Moana is one film that is finally breaking that mold. Moreover, I think in terms of film characters she is a good role model for young girls. She is strong and determined and independent. And as for Maui? Yeah, he teaches Moana wayfinding, but he also learns a few things from Moana. How often do you see men learning from women in movies?

The Long Silence, Part 3: Pushed Further into the Closet

Towards the end of my teenage years, I really began to feel that my home was not an emotionally safe place for me. In actions reminiscent of "love the sinner, hate the sin"(although religion had nothing to do with it), my parents, despite thinking they were helping me, drove me into a closet. This was especially true in terms of my mother. Like a religious person who thinks the "sin" of homosexuality is merely a superficial behavior-- divorced from core personality and identity-- that needs to be corrected, my parents seemed to think that a lot of what were core aspects about my personality and identity were superficial behaviors. Not only that, they thought they were marks of immaturity and signs of being unable to understand the real world.

A Tomboy in the Closet

I've mentioned in several other blogposts that I've always used the word "tomboy" to identify myself and my slightly lopsided gender identity, rather than in a tongue-in-cheek way that people usually do ("Oh, she likes to do woodwork. She's such a tomboy!"). But it seemed that my parents-- again, Mom especially-- were inordinately focused on this aspect about me. The way I wore my hair-- for almost 4 years, almost always in a ponytail because it was thick and made me look like a "bombshell", which was not me at all-- was a constant topic of conversation. Phrases I repeatedly heard were "Why can't you wear it down?", "You're the only girl who doesn't like looking pretty!", and the sarcastic "Fine! Cut your hair like a boy!" And what hurt was that I secretly did want to cut my hair in a tomboyish way, but I wasn't allowed, so pulling my hair back was the next best thing. How in the world could I talk to my parents about how I felt if Mom said such dismissive things about my insistence on not wearing my "bombshell" hair down?

Then there was the one time when Dad asked me to wear my hair down for him as a Father's Day present. That was just humiliating. Of course I didn't do it.

Pushed into the closet.

And then there was the clothing issue. I hated wearing shirts that were even slightly girly. I wore polo shirts, flannels, sweatshirts, T-shirts, and military fatigues. But my parents constantly commented on this, telling me that I was too old to dress like that. It made no sense to me that being androgynous was a sign of immaturity to them. When I tried to tell them that in some ways I felt more like a boy than a girl, they just told me I didn't understand how the real world works. They didn't hear a statement about who I was, but rather a statement coming from naivety and immaturity.

I repeatedly had nightmares about being forced to dress in what I call "boob-neckline" (low-cut) shirts. When I had to dress up for family occasions, I felt extremely uncomfortable. I looked in the mirror and didn't see myself. I saw someone wearing an elaborate disguise. It was even worse when my parents put me on display for each other and commented about how I was dressed. It usually went like this:

Mom: Doesn't she look great in that?
Dad: Yeah, she looks like a girl."

If my brother were there, forget it. He'd throw gas on the fire and add, "For once" to one or both of those statements.

Instead of the comments having their intended effect and encouraging me to dress the way they wanted me to, all I heard was, "The way you dress is wrong. I don't approve of your being a tomboy. This is what we want to see, and you'd better learn to like it."

Pushed further into the closet.

In fact, there was one time when I was eating at a restaurant with my family and we ran into one of my mother's high school students. The girl had long blonde hair, was wearing makeup, earrings, a boob-neckline shirt, and short shorts, revealing perfectly shaven legs. I remember at that moment thinking, "This is the kind of daughter Mom wants, and I can't give her that because it's not who I am."

When my brother graduated from high school, my mother submitted "To thine own self be true" as a comment for his yearbook graduation photo. I remember thinking, "Yeah, she can say that to him because the way he is naturally fits in with her expectations."

Pushed even further into the closet.

Asperger's Sexuality

I've mentioned in numerous blog posts that I rarely get crushes, but when they do they are very overwhelming and intense. Mercifully, my last one was seven years ago, and I've never been in a relationship (although I kissed one guy, and that was in summer 1999, age 18!). I got my first crush very late, just a few months before my fifteenth birthday. Prior to that, I would have embraced the word "asexual" had I heard of it. The problem was that I hadn't heard of it, and neither had Mom.

Figuring out my sexuality was another issue my mother seemed inordinately focused on. At the most random moments, Mom would ask me, often in a panicked voice that she unsuccessfully tried to disguise, "Do you have a crush? Have you ever had a crush? Do you like being around boys? Do you get a 'special feeling' around boys? Do you get crushes on girls?" Years later Mom told me that I was "insulted" when she asked me these questions, but really, I was just uncomfortable: she asked these questions frequently, at the most random moments, and in the most awkward ways. When I gave her an honest answer-- first "no" when I didn't have crushes, and then "yes" when I finally started getting them-- she just pressed further. It seemed that she was less interested in getting an honest answer than my telling her what she wanted to hear. If I were gay she would have been fine with it, but it also seemed she wouldn't rest until I told her what would have been lies. To get her to stop grilling me, I would have had to lie and say things like, "Yes, when I walk into a room full of boys (or girls), I'm overwhelmed at how cute all of them are." I wasn't like most girls. I didn't "get that special feeling" when I was around boys as a whole, but rather if there was one particular person whom I liked "in that way", which was rare.

I finally did open to Dad about my issue with obsessive crushes, right after I came back from my CIT summer at Camp Negev and had had my third obsessive crush. I remember very clearly telling him, "Don't tell Mom about this, because then she'll see it as yet another problem that I have that we have to focus on." Sadly, keeping that secret was my only option. And it probably spared me a lot of pain until the day eleven years later (more about that in Part 4), when Mom was finally ready to learn and accept the truth. How do I know? Around the same time I made the serious mistake of telling Mom that one of my friends was into Wicca. She freaked out. Years later, she told me that she doesn't remember this but had probably thought to herself, "Great, this is yet another problem that my daughter has."

In this regard, I was pushed further into the closet, at least in terms of Mom.

So who did affirm me? That is discussed in the next post.