Last year I had the opportunity to participate in a few writing projects. The question posed for this particular piece was, What was the most important day of your life?
This city devoured me. It chewed me up, swallowed, and thankfully, now was spitting me out. It was inevitable, I suppose, that during the process of being eaten alive, I had morphed into something still unfamiliar to me. Unconsciously I braced myself against the backseat of the cab as it approached the tight turn without slowing. A familiar quote by William Shakespeare floated through my mind as I looked out the smudged window to my right and tried to memorize the skyline that had been the setting for my transformation. “Our doubts are traitors that make us lose the good we might oft win by fearing to attempt.” I had lived three years’ worth of days in Manhattan and now that my time was done, my mind sorted through them attempting to identify which was the most significant. Which one initially held the most doubt, and yet won the most good, as I had overcome my fear to attempt? Which one had the most impact on shaping the version of me who was leaving this place?
I recalled the day I first arrived in the city, the day that caused more uneasiness than I had ever felt before. The heat and moisture hung in the air and erased all evidence that I had started the day with a shower as I periodically peeled my damp clothes away from my body. We had arrived with two suitcases, our remaining belongings following behind us, and had no place to call home. The decision to take advantage of this offer was a last minute one, one we were second-guessing at that moment. My dad had often encouraged me to get out of my comfort zone, or “my box,” as he called it. I had a distinct feeling that this experience was going to push me way out of my four familiar walls, like it or not. There were over one million people crammed onto this small island and never before had I felt so heart-wrenchingly lonely. Consciously the brutal traitors of doubt and fear were paralyzing, yet some part of me deep inside was not going to let them win.
My mind drifted to the day my acceptance letter came, finally providing purpose for me in this enormously small city. We came to this place in order for D to attend law school; my fate then undetermined. After too many discouraging attempts at finding employment I turned my efforts to graduate school applications, hoping that someone in this city would take me, would allow me to thrive and live and be something in addition to a law student’s wife. Columbia’s School of Social Work saw potential in me and was giving me a chance. Anticipation and satisfaction reigned as my floundering self had finally found the direction it longed for.
My thoughts moved to the day that I crossed the invisible border from my now-comfortable surroundings of 118th and Amsterdam into the wonder that is Harlem. It was the day where my thin Caucasian middle-class body entered the public middle school with military influences; a school void of anyone even remotely similar to me. This was to be my first internship, the place to hone my newly-acquired social work skills. Inadequacy crept through me as Beatrice walked in as my first student of the day. I realized as she introduced herself that I had completely lost my box. Beatrice was an angry 15-year-old self-proclaimed bi-sexual African American female from an extremely impoverished home who was currently failing all of her classes. This day, like so many to follow, challenged me to forget my doubts and fears, and attempt to focus on the good I might win by jumping into another world. This was a world I was thoroughly unfamiliar with, one that would assist in transforming me into the person I was struggling to become.
As my cab distanced itself from the city, I remembered the day I received the phone call. D was away and I was alone in our apartment. I was trying to stay busy and keep my eyes from straying too often to the phone. All the times I had imagined this call had still not prepared me for the news. It had worked. The decision to be proactive, to stop waiting, to stop hoping, to do something, had worked. Our desire to have a family had not diminished with time. Having medical professionals tell us to be patient was no longer acceptable. Embracing the ambiguous and unsettling term, “infertility,” we had jumped in financially and emotionally to physically demanding infertility treatments. My body and soul were overwhelmed with relief and joy. A process that had stretched us in every way possible had ended that day with the news that our lives were about to change again, to turn us from two to three.
As the city began to fade behind me, my mind wandered to the day that should have been filled with quiet pride as I moved across the platform, fetus in tow, to accept my diploma. My graduate work was complete; I was "official," so to speak. I had put in my hours reading methodology, writing papers, studying the diverse groups of society that resided in Manhattan and I had survived. Having gained both knowledge and experience, I was now deemed ready to go save the world. But was I? Was I really ready to go do this work unsupervised? Did I possess all of the tools necessary? The noise of the streets and the bubbling confidence of the city then worked its way through me. I felt calm edge out fear as I knew that I would be taking part of New York with me.
My mind jumped to a few months later when a most significant day began at 3:00 a.m. with contractions, indicating that the little guy inside of me was finally ready to join the world. After hours of anxious anticipation and close monitoring, I observed worry on the doctor’s face as she mentioned complications and rushed me to surgery. Over the curtain that separated my head from my exposed abdomen I saw him - the tiny little man who would first know me as mother. I took a deep breath and attempted to sort through the overwhelming emotions rushing through my system; relief, gratitude, inadequacy, fear and finally, the exhaustion which consumed me.
The culmination of all these days was upon me as the city skyline disappeared. The magnitude of the last three years weighed heavily on my soul. Of all the days I had experienced, this was the most important one. Isn’t today always the most important one? Today is when I choose whether to let the memories of these days slip from me or to choose to make them a part of who I am. Today is when I refuse to leave this experience without carrying with me the lessons it intended to teach me. Today I realize that the loneliness, discouragement, inadequacies, heartache, fear and doubt provided the opportunity to shape me. They taught me empathy and patience, confidence and peace, faith and joy.
Shakespeare was right. Today I leave a winner because in spite of the doubts, I did not lose the good. I did not fear so much as to not attempt. By feeling the full impact of these raw emotions, they became ingrained in me. I choose to use them. I choose to leave with the confidence that while the inadequacies of past moments have been conquered, there will be many similar moments to come and when they do, I can embrace them. I can overcome the doubts and have the courage to attempt. I have done it before. I choose today to continue to live, to let my former days course through me and offer insight to the ones to come. Amongst all of the emotions I have felt these last three years, the one that burns the strongest now is the feeling of gratitude for what I am taking with me.
William Shakespeare , Measure for Measure , I.iv. 77-9. (2008) http://shakespeare.mit.edu/measure/measure.1.4.html,
