A Question Of Selfishness

I'm going to write about something that isn't going to be very popular but has haunted me from the moment the migraines started almost a decade ago. I had fifteen good years of fertility in front of me, so I had been able to push it aside most of the time.  If you do your math, you'll see that there's really nowhere for me to push it to anymore. Even after all this time, it's a question I still don't know how to answer. There is no judgement in it, as I really don't know where I stand.  It's just a question that goes round and round my head as more and more baby bumps seem to cross my path and cover the magazines at the checkout counter.
Is it selfish to be sick and have a child, knowing full well you could pass your illness to them?
Eye color, hair color and a risk of breast cancer.
A crooked smile, funny laugh and depression.
Height, weight and an autoimmune disease.
Part of me thinks that life is hard enough, who wants to risk adding further hardship to the person they will love the most in this world in order to silence the desire that every atom of their being is screaming out for?
The other part of me can't think over the screaming.  It's deafening and somehow more painful than anything I've experienced before.  As I think I mentioned, in over a decade of physical pain, I've sadly lost connection with my body and with it any intuitiveness I once possessed. But this desire is so intense, even in my most disconnectedness, I can feel it as acutely as any physical pain I've ever had.  So I try to rationalize it out, causing a whole new line of questioning.
Every child is at risk of some hereditary misfortune, so is an increase of 10% of that risk worth crushing my dreams?  This one is easy to answer with the cynical reply of you could breathe the wrong air on the wrong day and your risk could increase that much. But then the next questions come and what seems impossible happens; I lose my cynicism. I ask where I should make the cutoff, at 25%, 50% 75%?  And who should I trust since those percentages vary depending on who I talk to and what I read?  Should I believe that I can somehow decrease the risk by doing certain things such as eating a very strict diet that only Gwyneth Paltrow could follow?  Is that strict diet, exercise and meditation regime just an attempt to control the uncontrollable?
Which leads my spinning mind to the realization that "increased risk" is just one way of trying to claim some mastery over that which can not really be mastered.  After all, doesn't everyone's chances just come down to 50/50? Either you pass your illness on, or you don't.
So for a moment I think I've found an answer.  Then my mind spins some more and I realize that it's not as simple as trusting fate.  For instance, if someone warned you that if you cross that bridge there is a 75% chance something horrible will happen, you wouldn't cross it, would you?
Of course you wouldn't. And neither would I. So that just leads me to my final question:  What do you do if you need to get to the other side?

Does Pain Equal Art?

A few years ago I read Chuck Palahniuk’s Diary and it stayed with me.  One of the main catalysts in the story is that great work is generated from an artist in pain.  As if the pain itself creates the art.  There seems to be a ring of truth to it, after all how many painters went mad?  How many writers were/are alcoholics? How many musicians were/are drug addicts? How many actors have we watched come undone by their bad relationships and plastic surgery addictions only to turn out Oscar-worthy performances?

But I never thought it applied to me. The more pain I was in, the less I could think straight, least wise write coherently.  Pain did not help me tap in to some deeper, darker side of myself; it made me want to run away from myself.  Which I suppose is how some artists break free of constraints.  For me though, writing was my way of breaking free of all my constraints, it was my way of saying what I can’t speak.  Pain only silenced that voice. 

So I’ve been fighting with myself, almost daily for the last few months, that I shouldn’t write until I feel better.  I need to put my health first, take the time to get better, as much as I can, and then focus on writing. But it’s a gamble, isn’t it? My whole life could pass me by before I feel well enough or, heaven forbid, something else could happen to my situation that could make finding the time and energy even more difficult to obtain.

I didn’t know what to do.  How could I find the balance of health and art, where both are a priority along with my marriage, my family, my friends and the bare minimum I have to devote to keeping my day job that pays the doctor’s bills?  Everything has to be in balance, and in case you don’t remember from my previous post, balance is not something that I am good at.

I honestly thought I didn’t have a choice anymore, that eventually I would feel so bad I wouldn’t be able to write anyway, so that I should give it up now and at least give myself a chance to get better.  Then I got some bad news last week, nothing horrific but not a sign of improvement, and my conviction to put the laptop aside was stronger than ever.  The problem was, when facing the pain and disappointment all I wanted to do was not hide in bed and rest, but to write – albeit, in bed.  I needed to be something other than the pain.  I needed to remind myself that I was more than a body needing to be taking care of.  I was a writer with a story to tell, or actually several stories to tell, the main one being that while the pain may slow me down, it won’t stop me. 

As You Do On The First Of January

I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through.

That’s a quote from Laurie Halse Anderson’s Wintergirls, a young adult novel whose main character is struggling with anorexia.  It was a Christmas present.  So was the other book I’m reading, Portia de Rossi’s Unbearable Lightness, the actress’ account of her struggle with her image.  It seems almost kismet that I should start reading these books today, the day when it seems every woman in the world is stepping on the scale and promising themselves that they will be 5, 15, or 50 pounds thinner by summer. 

The gym has been crowded since eight this morning (not that I went, I just walked by), leftover cookies and cakes are thumping down the trash shoot every twenty minutes and it seems everyone has added some type of fruit to their shopping cart – along with Weight Watchers frozen meals.

We have just passed through the time of year when food took center stage.  It started with Thanksgiving dinner and continued with Christmas lunches at work, going out to eat with friends, gifts of cookies, candy and cakes until the big drink-a-thon New Year’s Eve and the greasy hangover cure breakfast that followed.  At no other time of year do breakfast, lunch and dinner become events unto themselves. 

So with all the food around, food that I cannot eat, I had to fight back.  I started cooking and then baking and, as expected, eating. 

Now, food and I have had a volatile relationship as of late.  Every since I found out I needed to cut out gluten, eating has just been, well, consuming.  But since my diagnosis I’ve put being thin on the back burner and focused on not being sick to my stomach.  Since cookies and cakes were no longer on offer and I couldn’t face making anything myself (or spending a fortune to eat a poor sugar-filled substitute) I had no problem fitting into my jeans.  Don’t get me wrong, I was nowhere near svelte.  By NYC or LA standards I’m pretty sure I was fat.  But by Philly standards I was on the thinner side of the scale. However after the last two months of cooking and baking and eating, let’s just say I should have gone into the gym this morning and not just walked by.

So I started this morning, as you do on the first of January, to come up with a strict plan.  It was two pages long and would have consumed all of that precious time between getting home from work to going to bed at night.  And as I looked at it, at all that time I could be spending writing, with friends and with my husband, I felt mad.  That’s when I realized, I’m not going to spend all my time on how I look, I’m going to spend it on how I feel.  If I feel a bit bloated or pudgy, I’ll cut back on the salty snacks.  I’ll exercise not to fit into a smaller size but to feel stronger, because I am not the space between my thighs; I’m the strong muscles within them that are going to kick this year’s ass.