Dissection

My ex-boyfriend recently laid out his latest thoughts in some texts to me.

“Another thing that’s been bothering me is that we were together a fairly long time and not one person has said we should work it out.  Everyone’s just like, ‘Well it didn’t work out—move on.’”

We had been broken up for months when the texts started arriving.

“I was committed to you, even when we were fighting,” he continued.

I felt my stomach twist with anxiety with the sound of each text alert.  I understood what these texts probably meant.  He was fixated on figuring out our failings and wanted me to help him dissect the problems that we couldn’t solve in our four years together.

I wasn’t just anxious—I was angry.  I was angry that I had to deal with this, even though we were no longer together.  I had bought a house and moved four months ago.  We had been broken up for two months leading up to the move, living at different ends of the same house, trying to avoid one another.  Not once during those six months had he made any efforts to talk, but now that I was really gone, he suddenly felt compelled to.

"I guess the biggest thing I'm struggling with is that I didn't want us to break up."

"I need somebody to care about me."

Even in my anger, I understood his compulsion.  Like him, I was lonely and scared that I would remain alone.  I too was bored and unhappy with what daily life dictated.  But I found myself frustrated with him for being the weaker of us, and reaching out.  He was looking towards me and our relationship as both the cause and the remedy to his suffering.

I wanted to call him out on it—not physically call him—but underline and deliver the truth about what he was doing.  He was refusing to look at himself and his patterns of movement as the reason for his dissatisfaction.  He was refusing to do anything differently but expecting a different outcome. In his previous life as an addict he had sought a lazy solution to satisfaction.  I wanted to draw a for him from this past self to this sober him, still expecting fulfillment to fall into his lap.

I know how this makes me look—like an egomaniac who has it all figured out.  Nevertheless, I wanted so badly to create this diagram to silence him.  I wanted to illustrate these things for him, but I didn’t.  I knew that any engagement on my part would only fuel this escapism into our past.

“I truly feel that we should have done better,” he wrote.

“I felt like I invested a lot of time with you and I didn’t feel like you gave a shit about me.  Is that true?”

“Was I just not that likable of a person?”

Most of the time he wasn’t—but I didn’t tell him that.

The next day his text read, “Do you want to go swimming with me down at the river?”

“I’m at work,” I said. “Maybe another time.”

Rude Awakening

When I got into my car this morning, it was as if depression also climbed in and sat on my lap.  It seemed to materialize from the collection of realities that appear every Monday when I must head back to work to two jobs that I feel unfilled by.  My schedule leaves me with only Sundays off, so each Monday morning I am particularly resentful.  I want so badly to stay in the comfort and safety of my house, cuddled up on my couch.

When I arrived at work and headed towards the building, I saw my coworker Gina exiting her car.  Immediately, I could tell that something was wrong.  Gina was always cheery and personable, never seeming to be weighed down by Mondays.  She loved our work and did her job well.  Today she seemed to be hiding behind sunglasses. 

“What’s wrong?” I asked as I approached.  “Are you alright?” 

“Rough morning----rough weekend,” she huffed.

“Oh no!  What happened?” I gently prodded.

“Aidan…” she trailed off.

Aidan is her 13-year-old son who is on the Autism Spectrum. 

“I wouldn’t be surprised if I have to pick him up today,” she went on, anticipating a call from his specialized school. 

She had left work several times in the past because Aidan had to be picked up from school for throwing furniture and breaking windows.  The school only calls parents as a last resort, typically employing special restraints and isolation to de-escalate children who become unstable.  I had found this alarming when Gina had been called in the past.  It seemed unsafe for the school, unable to contain an aggressive child, to send that child off with a solitary parent.

 At 13, Aidan is close to 6 feet tall and weighs 250 pounds.  His size is imposing in itself, without the additional threat of psychosis fueling his rage.  Multiple aides would have to work to restrain him when he “went off the rails.”  How could Gina possibly accomplish what they could not?

I sat with Gina in her office for a while, as she unloaded her bag and her thoughts.  She told me that she had woken to Aidan standing over her bed.

“Sometimes I just want to kill you, Mom,” he said.

This was not the first time Aidan had made such a threat.  It wasn’t even the first time that weekend.

“On Saturday he told me that he was going to kill me and his brother and then himself.”

She looked at her hands as she explained that she had sent Aidan’s brother to his father’s house, just in case.  She said that she had done this because she wanted to be able to focus all her attention on Aidan.  I suspected that, though she did not voice it, her decision was also to protect her other son from the potential horror that Aidan was capable of.

I thought about the times that I had been fearful as I slept alone in my home.  Recently, I had installed a slide lock on my antique bedroom door.  I was afraid a stranger would break in and attack me.  Though this threat was not impossible, it was highly unlikely.  My fear was mainly precipitated by binge-watching Law & Order and listening to countless hours of true crime podcasts. 

As Gina lay sleeping each night, the threat of violence was real.  On any given night she might face a horrifying encounter, not at the hands of a stranger, but her own child. 

I felt my stomach clench with anxiety and briefly imagined coming to work one day and hearing that Gina was dead, murdered by her child.  At that moment it was as if some part of me actually began to prepare for that day.  I wondered how many times Gina had imagined this as well.

“This morning when he made his cereal, he poured the entire carton of milk over the bowl, threw it at me, and said ‘Clean it up, bitch,’” she sighed.

I pictured my children and tried to imagine them treating me that way.  My daughter, just a year younger than Aidan, often still slept beside me.  I struggled to picture her waking me in the night with threats of murder.

These thoughts traveled down my spine in a chill and I felt overwhelmed by pity for Gina and shame in myself.  Gina’s reality made my complaints about life feel bratty and self-indulgent.

That night, I held my daughter close…unafraid and thankful.

Will work for food

The battle to claim my professional identity has to be the most intensely fought of my wars with the universe. It feels like it's my equivalent of the 100 Years War, and to this day I remain entrenched in the battle fields. I graduated with my Master's Degree in 2004, when I was 24, exceedingly proud that I had powered through and would be the recipient of a dignified career and financial stability at such an early age. I quickly found a job as an adjunct Communications Instructor and imagined a tenured professorship was in the not so distant future, if I could just survive this first year of teaching four college classes at a salary of less than $20,000 a year. I could not survive. That first semester I found myself drowning in 320 poorly written and/or plagiarized essays. I was grading papers from morning until bedtime. I only paused in the grading to stand in front of my classes pretending to be a teacher, only to discover that my foot seemed to have taken up permanent residence in my mouth. I lacked confidence in myself and this feeling spread quickly to my students, a virus transmitted in my inability to express myself or maintain classroom control. I was a Communications Instructor who couldn't communicate. I didn't come back after that first year and began a journey of trudging blindly from one odd job to another for the next ten years.

When I began looking for jobs outside of teaching I really didn't give too much credence to what I would be doing. The objective was to find a job that required little of me so that I could devote my thoughts and energy towards my writing and personal interests. In fact, if the job was menial enough, I figured that I could get some writing done while I was on the clock, theoretically getting paid for my writing. Brilliant, right? So began one boring administrative assistant job after another, administration seeming to be the only field outside of teaching that welcomed someone with an English degree.

These jobs at engineering firms and real estate offices were brain-numbingly boring, so I guess I accomplished what I had set out to do and I did get writing done during that time. However, the writing, like the administrative work, was mediocre. With the exception of the six years I was a monthly contributor to International Tattoo Art magazine, I wrote articles for daily newspapers and local entertainment weeklies. This meant that I was not finding enough fulfillment in my extracurricular life to make up for my disappointing professional life. I also found myself increasingly resentful of the meager wage that I was earning. I had a Master's Degree dammit! Why was I earning $10 an hour, or less?

My increasing depression over my career led to increasing problems at home. I was resentful of my then-husband who was successful at a job that he adored. He had not even completed college and was earning over $100 an hour AND loving what he was doing. It didn't seem fair and I grew increasingly bitter. The blame for this bitterness was placed everywhere except on my own shoulders. Employers weren't utilizing me to my full potential. The job market in Florida was terrible. I had too many responsibilities at home with my children to really devote myself to the betterment of my career. I neglected to acknowledge that I was an alcoholic who was exhibiting a pattern of never following through with anything. Wielding this reasoning like a giant bullshit sword, I decided to cut a path for us out of Florida, claiming that we needed to move back to Virginia where there would be more opportunity for ME.

In Virginia I took another approach to my pursuit of profession. I believed that reinvention was in order. If I had been unsuccessful in materializing the person that I thought I was, then I must need to become a different person. I started taking jobs that might transform me into a girl unlike the one I was and unlike any other girl for that matter. Most of these jobs were labor intensive because I had begun to believe that I must not be so special intellectually after all. Perhaps I could set myself apart physically. I took a job in a wood shop, hoping to learn a new set of skills that I could excel at.

To a certain extent I met the physical challenges, and achieved what I had hoped. I was a girl in a male-dominated work space and was athletically fit enough to not be a total hindrance. Yet, these guys had the advantage of many years of experience in their trade and with tools, and I was impatient with myself as I tried to keep up and not appear foolish. I also began working with a junk hauling company. Here was another opportunity to exhibit my physical stamina and strength. But that was about all that it was. On occasion it would provide me with interesting stories to add to my reservoir of experience, like clearing out a home where two women had been murdered, but really it was filthy and exhausting work. That was one of a series of filthy exhausting jobs that were to follow including running wires through crawl spaces, replacing windows, waiting tables, and painting. There were a handful of not so terrible jobs as well, like a semester of teaching art to disadvantaged youth, transcribing letters and writing for a very wise man, and several months of trying to learn how to use a lathe to make body jewelry.

I have spent the last several years working as a part-time courier and providing "helper services" as side work. I call it "helper services" to make myself feel better, but really it is just house cleaning and yard work. I have met some wonderful people in my clients and am a better person from having met and helped them. In fact, I've begun to believe that it was necessary for me to meet them. The majority of my clients are therapists by trade and in the time since I was introduced to them I made the choice to become a therapist myself. I begin coursework for a Master's degree in just over a month. Would I have ever chosen to pursue this career path had I not spent this time scraping by cleaning houses? I have no idea but it's intriguing to consider. Is this the career that I will finally fit into comfortably? I have no idea but I'm committed to following through with it. Would I have found this resolve to commit had I not struggled so painfully for the last ten years? I have no idea but I'm thankful to have it now.

I have heard from several people of reasonable intelligence, people that I respect, that you shouldn't look to your job to define yourself. It's a sentiment that I have used constantly as I have tried to lift myself from the ground where I sit humbled. I do believe it in theory. Countless spiritual guides and self-help books tout the universal truth that there is nothing outside of yourself that should be an instrument in your definition...not your job, or your friends, or your lover, or your children. However, there seems to be a sizable step between accepting a theory and putting it into practice. When you are at a job, or in a relationship, or being a parent for 99% of everyday, it is difficult to not believe that these things are the bulk of your substance. How do you find the time to search for the real you or the energy to make that real you shine from beneath all of these other layers of life?

I don't know the answer and am becoming less confident that there is an answer at all. What I do know is that being bitter or depressed about anything is futile. These emotions warp that small bit of real me that is left into something ugly and alienating. All that I can do is continue to explore the things in this world that appeal to me, never abandoning curiosity and hope. After ten years of self-induced suffering, I can now grasp that even if the things that I pursue, like another Master's degree, don't satisfy everything that my ego desires from them, I will learn something...most likely something about myself and that knowledge will carry me to someplace new. That place might be the right place and I might get there at the right time...because that is always what happens, whether or not I recognize it to be so.

That being said...do you know anyone who is hiring?

Daddy Issues

My father died when he was 37. I was told that he lay down on his couch one afternoon for a nap and never got up. I heard that it was a stroke that silently killed him. The story of how my father died is a fragmented legend, a story that is vague and mysterious. This is seemingly appropriate since my father has always been a ghost. I never met him and didn't even know his name until I was 30 years old. When I first spoke my father's name out loud he had been dead for over 17 years.

I had wondered about my father's identity since first learning that I was adopted. I grew up fantasizing that I would one day meet my biological parents and that all of my riddles regarding self would be solved. In them - my parents - I would see myself and understand not only who I was but  also who I would one day become. But this is not how things work. We never are given a gift of perfect understanding of self and we can never look to anyone else, particularly our parents to understand who we really are. Now, five years after being given what I long sought after... my biological identity, I still have no clear picture who I am. 

Before I was introduced to the memory of John Bernard Cameron, my birth father, I knew another man as my father. He raised me and did all of the things that a father should do. This adoptive father was (and is) an exceedingly quiet man who is almost as much of a mystery as my birth father. I know he likes sailing and engineering, and had a Porsche when he was in college, but I'm not sure that I know much more about who he really is. It was almost as if he made a choice to closet all of himself away when he slid on the shoes of parenthood. To this day we struggle to find comfortable conversation and common interests, resolving ourselves to communicate only in times when it would not appropriate to be silent. We greet one another on Father's Day and Christmas and he will come into town on the occasional weekend to see my children and be helpful in the endless list of things that overwhelm me...car problems, assembling furniture, computer malfunctions. These are the things that he is comfortable with and that he has used to construct his identity as a father. I long ago learned not to expect anything different.

I think I must have instead placed all my hopes of what a father was on my birth father, once I knew that he existed. I had only a small collection of facts listed on my adoption papers that I used to assemble an image of him. These facts would also become things that I would use to define myself. His self-described interest in sports became an explanation for my athleticism. His Irish-Scotch ethnicity became an explanation for my alcoholism. I looked to the little I knew of him to understand myself, instead of to the father right in front of me. Perhaps my adoptive father had an unfair disadvantage in living with the ghost of my birth father. His every maneuver was evaluated in the context of how my birth father might have executed the same maneuver.

When I finally found my birth mother I finally found some truth about who my birth father really was. She wasn't able to tell me much. Thirty years had passed since they had seen one another and the time that they had spent together was brief. She was, however, able to tell me his name and that he had been a kind and fun-loving man. They had met in Plattsburgh, New York, her hometown and the town in which he had been attending college. The summer after I first spoke to my birth mother, I visited her in Plattsburgh and she drove me around town. Smirking, she gestured to a large old house adjacent to the campus and explained that it was the frat house that I was conceived in. Down the road just a ways, I pointed down an alley to an all but obscured doorway and told her that it was the bar I had picked out to visit the night before. She looked shocked and laughed. That was the very bar in which she had met my birth father.

 In the months after I found out my birth father's name, I can't tell you how many times I entered it into Google searches and genealogy databases. I contacted the university, directing my initial inquiries to the alumni relations. I received the following response:

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On Dec 3, 2010, at 12:02 PM, "Joanne N******" wrote:

Dear Ms Stephan,

Thank you for your contact with the SUNY Plattsburgh Office of Alumni Relations. I understand that you have requested that your contact information be forwarded to John Cameron, perhaps an alumnus of the class of 1979. For the safety and security of its alumni, the college's policy prohibits me from sharing confidential information with you. Generally, though, I could forward your contact information to the alumnus but I have encountered a road block in that process.

My colleague researched the name on the college's database to find an alumnus by the name of John Cameron, class of 1980, and that football and Upward Bound were activities in which he was involved. That is perhaps the same person you seek but I can't guarantee that with absolute certainty.

It is with regret that I must also inform you that the college's database indicates that John Cameron '80 was deceased in 1993. Please know that if this is indeed your birth father, and I would recommend you research that further if possible, I extend my compassion to you that your hope to reach him may not come to fruition.

I am sorry that I could not really help you, Ms. Stephan. Best wishes to you.

Sincerely,

Joanne N******

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After receiving this news, I was devastated. There would never be the reunion that I fantasized about. He would never offer me his love or protection. He would never even know what I looked like. I, on the other hand, refused to go on not knowing what he looked like. I believed that I should at least know what he looked like. It was the least that I could have of him. So, I contacted the university library and told them my story. I asked if there was anyway that they could check old yearbooks and find out if there was a picture of him contained within one of them. The library directed me to a specific branch called Special Collections, that would be better equipped to handle my inquiry. After some research, a very helpful librarian within that department informed me that there were no yearbook photos of my father, but they had tracked down a photo of the 1978 SUNY Plattsburgh football team, on which he was a player. Somewhere in that grainy sea of faces was the face of my father.

******************************************************

From: Debra K***** 

To: astephanwrites@yahoo.com

Sent: Fri, December 17, 2010 3:06:25 PM

Subject: Re: Looking for John B. Cameron

Well, the photo we have of him is in his football uniform--you can't really see what he looks like.  Still looking...

Debra

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After some more research, the librarians determined that he might be player number 88. They zoomed in on that player and sent me a scan of the image. He was handsome and smiling and I studied his face in search of myself.

I excitedly sent the close-up of 88 to my birth mother for confirmation. Her response was both humorous and heartbreaking. She said that she was sorry, but 88 was not my father but that she wouldn't have minded to terribly if he was. I dishearteningly sent the librarian, Debra yet another email, sharing the news that we had not yet found our man. I felt guilty for continuing to trouble her with the search, but she was patient and eager to play a role in the solving of this mystery. 

******************************************************

From: Debra K*****

To: Amanda Stephan <astephanwrites@yahoo.com>

Sent: Thu, February 24, 2011 1:56:16 PM

Subject: Re: Looking for John B. Cameron

Hello Amanda.  Our super-duper, overachieving photograph person has just scanned another photograph of a football player who might be John Cameron.  We do know that at some point Mr. Cameron wore that number, but we haven't yet found any photographs that match the numbers/names without full uniform and helmets on.  So here's another possibility for you to check.

This photograph is from August 1978, which would have been the fall 1979 team.

I hope this is him!

Debra

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It was him! I was finally able to look at the face that I had spent so many years struggling to illustrate in my mind. The irony is that it really didn't matter what he actually looked like. There was just a feeling of peace in really seeing him, instead of imagining him. The gift of his photograph compelled me to continue unearthing him so many years after his death. Using the obituary that I had found in the Delmar Spotlight, a small newspaper in upstate New York, I continued sending emails to anyone that might have known my father. The map of avenues I ventured down included emails to Bethlehem Central High School, where my father was a football coach and the University of South Carolina where he played football in the early Seventies. Neither email resulted in any new information and in both cases there were no photographs to be had. I also contacted the Metro Mallers, a semi-professional football team that he had been a player on. My email was circulated among their contacts and the man who had coached my father sent me an email.

******************************************************

From:

"James B*****"

To:

astephanwrites@yahoo.com

Hi Amanda,

My name is Jim B***** and I was the owner & Head Coach of the Albany Metro-Mallers during the entire decade of the 80's.  John Cameron played defensive end for me.  He was a great guy and was well liked by the staff & all of his teammates.  John was always upbeat & full of fun.  He was also a competitor in the Scottish games. I believe he threw a ( I can't remember the Scottish name) - It was a large piece of sausage!  A kabor or something like that!  I heard years after his retirement from the Mallers, that he passed away in his sleep during a nap, from a heart attack.  I will try to see if there are any pictures of John, somewhere in storage.  Feel free to contact me.  my telephone number is(386) XXX-XXXX.

Yours truly,

 Jim B*****

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I wish I could say that I called Mr. B***** but I didn't. I was nervous about what I would say to him, almost as if he somehow represented my father. I did manage to get up the courage for one very important phone conversation with someone who knew my father. After numerous Google searches I tracked down the email address of my father's widow. She graciously replied to my email and even agreed to speak with me by phone. I remember the phone call being awkward, the kind of awkward that I foresee every phone call to be. It's this unnatural fear of phone conversations that leaves me helpless with phone anxiety on most occasions, sending calls to voicemail and returning messages impossibly long after they were left. I'm sure it must have been strange for her to speak of her long deceased husband, particularly to speak of him with the child he had with another woman. I felt disappointed with how little she told me about him during that conversation. She spent most of the call politely listening and telling me small bits of information about the children she had with John. It was as if she was protecting the sanctity of the memory of their family from an intruder. She was not mean, just distant and as time went on my half-brothers proved to be even more distant. At the close of the conversation she said she would send me some pictures and she did what she promised. Strangely, she sent only pictures of herself and her children with my father. She did not send one picture of him. I studied the pictures of them that my father's widow sent, hoping to find some 

similarity and waited for the ever elusive photo of my father. It never came and his widow stopped replying to me. 

******************************************************

From: "kxxxxxxxxx@hotmail.com" >

To: astephanwrites@yahoo.com

Sent: Fri, June 10, 2011 10:00:06 PM

Subject: Form submission from [Words Matter] - [Contact me...] - [Advanced Form 1]

Subject:

John Cameron's sister Kathy

Message:

Hi Amanda I can't tell you how many times I have thought of you over the years. I'd love to talk to you. John told me the whole story and was heartbroken to have you adopted but your mother had all the say on that. You are lovely and your children and husband are lovely too. I am John's older sister by three years. I loved John so much, we were very close. I miss him all the time. He died of a stroke and I have run marathons and continue to raise money for the stroke association. I think it is a great circle of love for you to reach out to your father's family. I live in Mystic, Ct. I'd love to meet you and give you a hug from your dad through me. He loved you and I am sure his spirit has always been with you. He had a great spirit and a great laugh he was an amazing athlete. Anyway call me or email me back. My home number is 860-XXX-XXXX or cell 860-XXX-XXXX 

Lots of love your Aunt Kathy

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Not long after I had abandoned all hope of communicating with anyone in my father's family, I received an unexpected email. It was from my father's sister. She had somehow found the website that I maintained as a portfolio of my writing and had sent me a message. It meant so much to hear that my father thought of me, and that he might have liked to have me in his life. I was also thrilled that she had reached out to me. It was as if my dream of him appearing to rescue me had finally been realized, with his sister standing in as his replacement. I imagined visiting her in Connecticut and becoming like a daughter to her. Unfortunately, after this initial email, she too seemed to disappear. I never received any more contact from her, and she never sent the picture that I requested.

The mystery of my father doesn't feel like it has been solved, but it does feel like it has shrunk in size. It takes up a smaller space inside of me. I treasure the one picture of him that I was able to track down and can't help wonder why every other attempt at getting a picture of him resulted in nil. Why wasn't he in the college yearbook, or the yearbook for the high school he coached football at? Why would his widow send me pictures of herself and his kids instead of of him? Why would his sister send me her love and his but refuse to send a picture? I've started to believe that he, like my adoptive father, is meant to remain a mystery, maybe because mysteries make the monotony and struggle in everyday life more magical. This sense of magic is important and makes me believe that there is more to life than what we move through each day. I feel this magic when I consider the parallels between my life and what I know of my father's life as well. For many years my father had been working as a salesman and was apparently quite successful at it. Shortly before he died, when he was 35, he had an epiphany of sorts. He wasn't happy as a salesman and wanted to do something different with his life. He decided to go back to school and get his Master's Degree so that he could become a teacher. He wanted to work with autistic children. Like him, I have been compelled by dissatisfaction in the course my life has taken. At age 35 I applied and was accepted to a Master's Program. In the fall I begin classes to become a social worker. I only hope that I have a little more time than he did to understand who I am meant to be.