I’ve Never Felt So Seen
In response to that thing @shermanalexie said.
Recently up here on the ‘Stacks, renowned author and one of my all-time favorite writers,
, wrote the following note, and it has been haunting me all week:“Years ago, walking in New York City, I looked ahead and saw and heard a disturbed man spewing curses and insults at passersby. I thought to cross the street to avoid him but I also wanted to be mocked. As I walked past him, he said, "You walk like everything hurts." O, damn, O, damn, l've never felt so seen.”
A few people responded by describing bodily pains of their own, but I guessed that Alexie, a Native American writer, wasn’t talkin’ only about achy joints. My fingers flew to the keyboard, wanting to type in all caps, “YES! Me too! Me too! I soooo relate!” But in an effort to choose concision over scary enthusiasm, I simply replied, “Gut punch.”
He liked my reply, so I suspect he’s in on the Secret. What secret?
To use e.e. Cummings’ words:
here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
The Secret to which I refer has nothing to do with the 2011 bestseller about the law of attraction. Blech.
No, instead I’m talking about a secret club.
A club to which no one wants to belong.
Call it the walking wounded. Call it the folks who have already died many times in their life. Call it grief group. Whatever this club is, it remains secretive because those on the outside cannot entirely comprehend it.
Yes, of course, everyone has felt pain in their lives. As the Buddha says, all life is suffering. (He doesn’t mean woe is me or any kind of physical/existent torment necessarily. All life is suffering because 100 times a day we wish things were different—Why can’t that slow driver move to the right lane? What do you mean the McDonald’s shake machine is broken again?! Will my 8 month old EVER sleep through the night? …but I digress)
However, the force of icy ill winds have so utterly whiplashed some people that afterwards little is left of them besides what W.B. Yeats calls a “foul rag and bone shop of the heart.” They become like the walking dead among us, these people who have been gut punched by grief.
“I wonder if I’ve ever felt that much grief?” If you have to ask, the answer is no.
Those gob-smacked by grief are no better or worse than anyone else, and it is foolish to try to compare one person’s pain to another. We all process anguish—death, loss, regret, shame—differently, so no one wins First Prize in the grief category. It’s not a contest. That’s not what it’s about.
Instead, this grief club that no one wants to be a member of silently enrolls new members all too often. The club has no ceremonies, no mascots, no T-shirts. Part of grief is the sheer isolation of it, so it takes a long time until we recognize that we’ve been conscripted into this group. If you’re at all like me, the immediate effect of grief is instantaneous narcolepsy which renders you not only isolated but unconscious. If you’re a member of a new club, you have no drowsy clue. I was on sabbatical when I got divorced years ago, and I think I slept through the entire four months. During that time a friend asked how I was doing and I proudly proclaimed, “Hey! I stayed awake all day!” She looked at me with confusion and consternation. I recall thinking to myself, “May you never understand why staying awake all day is an accomplishment.”
You may wonder, how do you recognize your fellow club members? All it takes is a look in the eyes. We see each other and suddenly, wordlessly, we know. As an example, a friend of mine lost her father last year, and ever since, her mother and his bride of 50+ years has lost herself. Mom’s ability to function is severely compromised and she is often asleep or confused. The brain is shutting down in order to be able to deal with tiny bits of grief that eke out as the mind can allow. When I asked her how she was doing, she said it was hard, but suddenly our eyes locked and we gained an instant recognition. And we talked. A lot. If I can help her in any way by listening and holding space for her brokenness, then I reckon I’ve done a good thing. Those of us who have climbed, if only temporarily, out of the cave owe it to those left behind to extend a hand and perhaps a rope, to help them slowly emerge.
To say, “I see you.”
So, returning to what Sherman Alexie wrote, what a bizarre thrill it must be to have someone say, “You walk like everything hurts” because sometimes everything does, and 99% of the population is so committed to the “How are you? I’m fine” game that they never recognize others’ pain as they pass.
I’m jealous of Sherman Alexie. I want a screaming madman to shout similar words to me, words like Adrienne Rich uses in her poem “XII (Dedications)”:
I know you are reading this poem in a room where too much has happened for you to bear, where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed... but you cannot leave yet.... I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your hand because life is short and you, too, are thirsty.... I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else to read there where you have landed, stripped as you are.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but in my case, especially during those lonely, arid years on the worm farm, I wished that someone, anyone, would have said to me, “I see you are in pain.”
Just to be seen. Isn’t that what we all want?
I truly believe that my love of writing stems from this wish to be seen (or heard). If I can just find the right words; if I can make a thing materialize in a way that it cannot be ignored…. The desire to be seen does not have to correspond to seeing pain. Quite often, in fact, we want others to see our joy or to be able to witness our moments of simple happiness.
As E.M. Forster writes at the close of his novel, Howard’s End, “Only connect.”
It’s a delicate dance during these dark times. One doesn’t want to bleed on the page, but nor can one continue to smile and say, “I’m fine” like the well-oiled robot he or she no longer is. The robotic battery pack has flown out wildly like a passenger tossed to the asphalt from a car accident, and all of Robot’s motors and microcontrollers smoke with damage.
Members of this special club have no regular meetings, and when we do meet, we might not necessarily discuss anything painful at all. But oh the comfort of each other’s soft eyes gleaming in recognition, the blessed relief to say O damn, O damn, I’ve never felt so seen.
Before I wrote this piece, Alexie’s words were swirling around in my head. I wasn’t sure how to verbalize my response, so I found myself making a collage. If words won’t work, maybe images would…
I could stop writing my memoir, Worm Farm, right now and just show folks this collage whenever they ask about my childhood. Her back is turned to the past. She is trying to walk away, but the foul rag and bone shop of the entire scenario co-exists together on the same page. That’s ok. It gives me something to write about sometimes.
Stay tuned for my next post which I promise will be filled with mirth and verve. Those things are equally important, if not more so.
OMG. We had the same childhood. I was raised by angry alcoholics and there were four of us kids so I quickly perfected invisibility to an art form. I always made straight A’s so grades would never make me get in trouble. In fourth grade, my handwriting was so pale and tiny that the teacher told my mom she was worried about me lol. I completely relate to what you just wrote and all I can say is that I am glad that we are now, and our glorious middle age, living out loud—at least on Substack!
To have a witness...being seen by those who love us is rare. Random club members in public, like the youth who offered to push my wheelchair through the cumbersome hospital doors, and then vanished. Mysteriously seen.
I also love the words of Sherman Alexie.