Fear is the ghost of pain.

Mike recently sent me a link to an essay by Mary Ruefle appearing in the June 2012 issue of Poetry called "On Fear." In this essay Ruefle explores the nature of fear, first by giving a personal anecdote, then an observed anecdote, then establishing a definition for fear, then putting her own thoughts in conversation with many sources --everything from the CIA's Exploitation Training Manual to a pilot, an ER doctor, and a poem by Wallace Stevens. After she probes Keats's "negative capability" and sort of refutes its goodness, its necessity, she comes up with this idea of a sort of "positive capability" that fear gives us, to impel us forward in our creative work. In her closing paragraph, she confesses, "I am much less afraid than I ever was in my youth. . . . At the same time, I feel more afraid than ever. And the two, i can assure you, are not opposed but inextricably linked." 

Yes, I completely rushed through summing up this essay for you, because I'm impatient and it inspired me. Her idea of navigating fear as a young person vs. fear as an adult brings to mind this song I once loved called "Kid Fears." The Indigo Girls wrote it with Michael Stipe doing a guest vocal. There's one particular lyric: "Secret staircase, running high, / You had a hiding place. / Secret staircase, running low, / But they all know now you're inside." The entire song is pretty abstract, but this lyric strikes me. It reminds me of the game you play when you're small and hide your head under a blanket... the idea being, "if I can't see you I must be invisible." When you are young, you have a secret path to invisibility from the predators. As an adult "they all know now you're inside..." You are stripped of the gift of innocence. You know the predators can see you. Perhaps they've seen you all along.

As a child, my secret path to invisibility was my imagination. I couldn't quite play like the other kids, although I tried. I preferred to spend my time alone though, in a world of my own creation. Some of my fears were "kid fears," monsters in the closet, under the bed, but others were actual fears. These other fears still resonate in me. Some of them still possess me. Being hit. Being touched. Being deserted or lost. Falling. Falling.

Falling was the big one; still is. I hurt myself a lot as a child, though thankfully only once broke bones. And I still hurt myself. Although heart disease runs in my family, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna go from a bizarre home accident or the complications of same.

I can see: things that are a) not moving or b) moving slowly and c) where I expect them to be in space. 

My kid-body wanted to go at 95 mph and my brain and eyes could not keep up. I was raised, not explicitly but more implicitly, not to cry about my bloodied bits. I was raised to be normal and falling so much was definitely not normal. As I grew older, I remember "shaking it off" many times so that other kids would not pay me any mind, and also being shocked and a little embarrassed for one of my friends, for example, when she slipped on a patch of slick grass in the yard and hit her head. I felt awkward because she was screaming as if someone was stabbing her, and we were nearly teenagers. By that point, I had learned to shut it. 

I'm not saying this was healthy. In fact, all those emotions had to go somewhere, and I think they went into my body. What does that mean? Well, I have fibromyalgia. It has to do with neurotransmitters for pain that won't shut off, even when pain is not present. Or they turn the pain up to 11 when really it's only a 4. As if one can really be objective about a quantity of pain... but you get the idea. 

One of the lines in Ruefle's essay that stuck out to me was toward the beginning. It's basically her quoting Tony Hoagland quoting Auden, but the gist is, "fear is the ghost of pain." I fear the basement stairs because I have fallen down them before. I fear the appearance of that particular belt because I have been hit with it before. 

I have always felt this way about falling. One could almost say, "I fear walking because walking is basically lifting your feet and catching yourself before you fall, and I'm not so good at that." Of course I don't fear walking! But ... I have chronically stiff and knotted muscles. It has been observed by ahem, professionals and also (annoyance!) by my mother that I am "very tense when I travel." Travel, meaning ambulate. Only in the past year or two working with A have I begun to recognize and consciously attempt to reduce the tension. Using the white cane again has helped mitigate the tension somewhat. It feels the ground for me and also provides another point of balance because it's a third contact with the pavement. 

It has helped mitigate the tension, but it doesn't undo thirty something years of tension. Fear is the ghost of pain.

I have this new job I'm starting. I've been chasing it for a long time and I'm so glad I got it. It's not very glamorous but it will involve teaching creative writing again. The only thing is... as the start date approaches, one communication snafu or another has prevented me from receiving vital information such as the room or even the floor(s) where I'll be. The building I will be working in is ... kind of revered by those in the city. You might even say it's a site of tourism. The architecture is grand and gothic. It has many entrances and winding stairwells. All of which, to me, look the same. 

My friend K says that communication issues like this happen more frequently than I think. She said me the other day, "Did I ever tell you about my very first day of teaching? I went to [the school] and asked for a schedule. Well, they didn't have one. I asked which classroom was mine. They didn't have that for me either." 

Buildings that are triumphs of grand or modern or atmospheric architecture are usually not triumphs for me. I remember my first day of teaching at a particular university. One of the eateries was designed to look like a pub. Big booths, dark wood. I fell down a short (as in three steps) flight of stairs and hit my head on the floor. And humiliated myself of course, in front of the lunchtime crowd.

Time is ticking away, and I really want my room assignment(s). 

 I can get lost in a bathroom if it's big enough. A BATHROOM. It's embarrassing. I have t to do routes many times before I get them down to where I am comfortable. I don't move casually from room to room, floor to floor, building to building, but I work very hard to make it seem like I do to other people. 

The ghost of pain. Getting lost in a bathroom. Maybe it's a restaurant bathroom with dim lighting because it was trying to be all fancy and cavernous and atmospheric. Or having to pee so badly but knowing I will not be able to locate the rest room before it's time for my next class. 

If I get the opportunity to do a dry run on Friday, of my new workspace, I will literally be writing down or voice-memoing exactly where I went in, exactly what left / right / straight paths I take, which stairwells, etc. Because when I go back on Monday it will be almost as if I hadn't visited on Friday.  Honestly, I would have liked a month of preparation time instead of a day.

My fear has caused me to really consider just dropping out of the new job before I have it. This job that I have wanted and striven for, for a year. Part of me really wants to be like, "no. I give up. This communication situation is beyond my ability to tolerate, and it's going to fuck with me physically." 

I am bad at speaking up. At asking for help. Because then I will be a liability instead of an asset. I need h. What's that? I need hhhhe----. Pardon? I need help! So shut up and fuck off. I'm working on it. But breaking these constructs down is like approaching a brick mansion with an axe. 

The ghost of pain. Looking incompetent as a teacher when I walk into the wrong room, into walls, into desks, into children. The kids don't see how hard I work just to maintain. Sometimes the cracks in my facade are very deep indeed. About a month or so into my job at the same university with the pub-cafeteria, I tore some ligaments in my knee. From stepping into a pothole as I was getting off the bus. Fall number 16,250. And then I walked up the giant hill to my school because I was trying to "shake it off." 

Anyway, they put me in one of those rehab leg braces where you can lock and unlock the knee of it. My knee-thing was locked. I nicknamed my leg "baby redwood" because that's what it felt like. I felt like a relatively small person carrying around a tree as big as I was. I used a cane (the standard kind, not white) to walk, except I didn't use it 100% of the time in the classroom. One day I had sort of casually hung it on the edge of the teacher table, which I was leaning on the edge of as we went over some point of rhetoric or other. And I don't know how it happened but I think I must have jumped up in enthusiasm at some student making a good point because ... on my way back to the teacher table (may I remind you, I have no depth perception) I walked into the open classroom door. With some amount of force. You know... the skinny part of the door. The door's thickness. The door was open, and I transported my skull into it. So hard that I fell straight backward as if I'd been struck on the forehead by a faith healer... and.... me and my redwood leg landed *fwomp* or more like *phthunk* on the ground. On my back. Except I couldn't get up. Because I had no practice in hauling my ass off the ground with a redwood leg. 

So one of the biggest kids... I think he was seriously on the football team and he totally looked like one of the kids who would have picked on my throughout my school years, had the graciousness to ... well. .. he pretty much pulled me straight up, like my backward fall in reverse. 

So yeah, I had tears of humiliation and tears because I had sort of hit the bridge of my nose, along with my forehead, and that just brings the tears out reflexively. I sort of brushed myself off, leant back onto the teacher table and continued the lesson from where I left off. At first there was minimal participation. I think they expected me to say "class dismissed" or run (hobble? scurry?) my way out of the room or... I dunno. I think they maaaaaybe thought I was a little psycho for picking back up. They saw how hard I hit. The whole door rattled. But I must have had a grim look on my face because we finished the damn lesson and they went on their way.

Have I blogged that story before? Because it feels like I have. Well, it is a recurring ghost, that one.

Fear is the ghost of pain. Blind woman teaching. Blind woman falling. To mix some cliches, I've got my fingers crossed about Friday but I'm not holding my breath.