I’m sitting in a large conference room at the Four Seasons breathing in the smell of expensive coffee. There are a lot of suits in the room. White faces. Mostly male.
I feel a thin sheath of alienation slide over my body. As usual. I wonder for a moment what the room would look like if I were wearing true color glasses. Magic spectacles that would make people’s appearance match their true character and secret life. Who would be the wife beater, a looming, oversized ogre? Who would be the binge eater, a 500 pound woman sitting in the corner, furtively stuffing twinkies and hohos into her mouth? Who would be the alcoholic sitting on the ground against the wall clutching his paper bag, slack jawed and toothless? What twisted fetishes and shameful secrets would be revealed?
Every woman in the room is wearing expensive clothes and is well put together. So am I. I imagine myself through the true color lenses. I imagine that my polished, professional, persona would be fractured: my features off, like a Picasso portrait. Or I would be held together with duct tape and baling wire, missing a piece of my ear, an eye, some teeth. Every misstep, wrong turn, bad decision, shameful secret, detour, would show up as crack, a fissure, a break. You would be able to see it on the outside instead of just in my eyes. My past.
I am afraid of heights. I am afraid of standing on ledges, bridges, roofs. I am afraid that gravity will stop working just long enough for me to float several feet up in the air and out over the abyss. Then I will plunge to my death because it is working after all. It only stopped because I looked away, stopped concentrating
Professional success feels the same to me. I am afraid that I will look away and it will stop working, stop holding me fast to the ground.
I know so many women who talk of their inner bag lady. How they feel like imposters. Do the male boardrooms and glass ceilings do that to us? Is it because it was only yesterday that we burned our bras?
Maybe men feel this way, too?
Or is it something else. Is it that a dope fiend looks back at me from the mirror? An alcoholic? A fuck-up? I can't shake them, they are part of me forever.
Trauma victims are always waiting for the next traumatic event, sitting with their backs against the wall, watching the door. Hyper-vigilance.
I am acutely aware of my lack of backup in the world. A single parent with no siblings. Parents who would prefer I never needed them at all. I am one slip away from ruin. No room for accidents. No room for mental illness.
I can’t look away.
