To Bee, or Not To Bee--What's in a name?

I went to dinner by myself tonight which is actually something I like to do occasionally. Most of the time it's because I really want to eat something others don't or I don't want to be the "I can't eat that" party-pooper. But sometimes, I like to eat by myself because no one knows who I am. At dinner tonight, I felt a little triumphant because as I sat by myself, I knew I was trapped in a lack of conversation and the inability to get up from my seat. Though strange-sounding, I assure you it makes sense. When I eat, it's kind of an event. I get moments of sickitude (I like this better than sick as I don't always get sick, I just have an air of sick for a bit), and often have to get up and take a stroll to the ladies room for the sake of working my insides around a little. Sometimes I find I can't eat very much or that what I do eat is minimal. Today, I ate quite a bit and I couldn't take any of my standard strolls for stomach freedom. But part of what I really enjoyed was that nobody cared when I simply stared my tofu and scallops down, waiting for the moment I could attack. No one usually cares, but I care simply because I am aware there are people there to possibly care. Anonymity in a sea of people can be freeing.


So why did I feel so different in the one moment by myself? For that matter why did it matter if it happened surrounded by people? Alone, I am still just myself with my own limits. I would have stopped. I would have walked around. I would have eaten differently. Surrounded by people who wouldn't understand if I bolted for the nearest bathroom (nevermind the language barrier), I was forced to change into someone who could control themselves and who could eat what was in front of me (call it first world guilt). But more than that, I started to remember something I've thought of before. What's in a name?

A couple of weeks ago, when I wore my fake hair to school, one of my students told me it was incredibly strange because I looked like "Bee," which he said in a high squeaky voice, instead of "Bee," which he said in a deep, authoritative voice. I laughed and agreed. Though I had simply changed my hair, I was no longer just his teacher--I looked and felt like a different person. Even the name "Bee" is a different person. People often call me that here. In fact, it is the name I'll respond to first most days. It's different from Oglesbee or O or any other name. I rarely hear "April" said, and, when I do, it is often distracting and strange and thrilling all at the same time. Words, names, have power. They have the power to change us and transform us into something and someone else. I am a teacher and a student. I am a daughter and a friend. I am a responsible, serious person. I am a person who daydreams and longs have moments of spontaneity. These things are not entirely separate, but they are often compartmentalized. What would my students do if they saw me throwing myself on the couch in a moment of glee over a romantic moment in a drama? What would my mother say if she saw lecturing on the importance of organization? For that matter, can I look in the mirror and be all of these things at once? Can I reconcile the divisions of me? Is one better or more right?

I'm not sure of the answer. I'm inclined to say they're all me and they're all right. What's in a name? What's in a moment of self awareness or the lack of it? Can't I be BEE and bee? Can't I be April and Oglesbee? I think the danger is the power of the name. Like Voldemort in Harry Potter, we risk losing ourselves to the pieces we create in an effort to salvage and preserve separate chunks of who we are; we create horcruxes in names and labels. Like Voldemort, the sound of my name, April, can shock and astound (though only to my ears and usually not in stark terror).

This brings me back to my musings at dinner while contemplating Tofu as a trial worthy of Dumbledore's protection methods. To Bee, or not to Bee? In that moment, it didn't really matter. All of my pieces came together in one place and I was all of those things because I was none of those things. Whether I finished the food or whether I Linda Blair-ed it all over the grill, no one would ever remember ME, just some giant white woman who gave them a story to tell to their friends and a rather bad night of grill cleaning. And in taking away the power of the pieces and the people inside me, I became more powerful and more thoughtful. Sometimes I long to be just April. Sometimes I like being Bee. Today, I I think I'm comfortable in one skin with both of them.

Chasing Down the Demons

When I was a kid, I used to spend hours moping over the differences between my mother and I. She was so petite and graceful. I fell over my own feet and had "sturdy" limbs. She played sports well and could do cartwheels. Playing sports made me feel either more invisible or to much of a spectacle, and attempted cartwheels by throwing myself head and arms first at the ground repeatedly (this did not end well for me, but the ground was always fine). My mother had blond hair and blue eyes. I had brown hair and brown eyes. My mother's hands and ankles were delicate. My own were made to match my size.

There's a lot to be said for being functional. My cousin has such delicate ankles that she once sprained both of them on a trampoline in the same day. In fact, there was a period of about three years where she was constantly in ankle braces. I, despite my many graceful plunges down stairs, halls, sidewalks, carpets, grassy hills, and pavement have yet to break anything (knock on wood). My joints were made for the long haul--like an ox. But oxen don't dance Swan Lake either.

When I started running, it actually started as walking. The walking started as a way to have 30 minutes to myself with music that helped me to pound out my demons. When I finally started to run, it wasn't out of some beautiful moment in a movie where the spirit of the wind and the wings of athleticism allowed me to break the barrier of inactivity. It was angry, emotional music and my own sense that my demons were a little too close. It involved a lot of sweat and an uncomfortable amount of emotion. When I kept running, it became a way and a place for me to be both honestly functional and silently exorcised.

There are a lot of reasons to like being physical and even more reasons to like the performance of it, but one of the most prominent functions it has served in my life is to help me outrun my own demons until I am chasing them. When I run, when I listen to music while I do it, I'm chasing down the things I don't have time to face any other moment in the day. Or maybe it's that I don't have the courage. There's not a lot of time in my world to deal with complicated emotions and thoughts. I just don't have the time or the energy to examine them closely and discover their origin and purpose. I wish I did, sometimes. Sometimes, I don't want that at all. But when I run, I can channel all of those things into what I am being in that very moment--functional. By the time I finish, I've chased my demons out of me and into a moment I can look at like a picture later. Any time I hear that song, I'll remember the thoughts and emotions I worked out in my head. I'll remember the battles I waged against the horned fears and winged insecurities. But I'll also remember how it felt to pound them beneath me, conquering my body and my brain in one solid stride.

Tattood and Tabooed

My Dad is convinced I have a tattoo. I do. Actually, I have several. I have one big one on my stomach and three or four smaller ones on my side. I also have a few temporary tattoos on my face and hands.

Okay, Dad, take your nitro pills. I don't actually have any permanent ink on my body. I don't have any semi-permanent ink on my body for that matter. What I do have are scars and living. I have traces of time and culture on my face. My body is tattooed, just not by a needle.

I have often contemplated tattoos (hence my Dad's conviction that I MUST be sporting one behind his back--clearly he forgets I'm the skittish child). When my beloved childhood pet and best friend died, I thought about marking my body permanently with a snowflake to mark his existence; I thought at the time my body was already going to be scarred, so why not? I thought about having the Tree of Life tattooed on me somewhere as a personal symbol of my appreciation of the mysteries and and cycle of life and personal strife. I wanted a cherry blossom tattooed henna-style on the back of my neck as a symbol of the strength of something seemingly weak.



Instead, when my cat died, I chose to grow my hair for a year without cutting it a single time. I love mythology and traditions. I heard/read/saw a story about women who cut their hair as a sign of mourning for a lost loved one in a time and culture when short hair on a woman either meant she was somehow shamed or deeply lost in grief. Knowing how meaningless cutting my hair would be, I chose to grow it for a full year without a single cut. Instead of tattooing the Tree of Life or cherry blossoms on my body, I chose real scars that changed my life forever.

They're ugly scars. They're ugly in the way I would imagine my Dad feels about tattooed skin. Most people pull away from even thinking about them. I look at them a lot. They're symbols of the line I cut in my "fate" to be who I had always been by birth. I freed myself, with a lot of help from my family and my doctors, from any
path I didn't want to travel. Like a soldier should be, I am proud of my scars. I'll show them to anyone (ask my Dad who often gasps "My God, April" with a little bit of horror and a small amount of amazement, I think, when I do show them off). I feel as though I earned their ugliness. I feel as though they are my connection to something and someone who might not exist anymore.

Most people, I believe, are reluctant to think the way I do about my scars. It's scary. Mostly you just want to escape that kind of recognition...but...I don't. I never want to forget because to do so would be to pretend who I am is some kind of magic trick where I, as I am now, have popped into existence the way witness protection identities do. I am not afraid of who I was; I want her to be remembered for what she was--who she was is who I am...with a few new tattoos.

Written On My Body

I'm tall. This is not a shock to most people--well, the fact that I'm tall is not a shock. My actual height has astounded people for years. By most standards, I'm a very tall woman at 5 feet 11 inches. I have been this tall since I was 13. No, I don't play basketball. I am about as coordinated as an orangutan on roller skates much to my dismay and thwarted attempts to learn how to dance. 

I am also not a delicately put together person. I used to be fat. REALLY fat. I'm still not petite, but I am fairly normal-sized...at least for someone of my height. This often defies my need to be invisible. It's incredibly hard to go unnoticed. Ninja I am not. It certainly doesn't help living in Asia where I am surrounded by petite, delicate, graceful, and elegant looking short people. 

People stare. I think this is a given. I've sort of gotten used to it. Most days. 

What I haven't gotten used to is seeing myself. I think this is the hardest kind of looking to do. When you spend a great deal of your life waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting...when it's time to go and do and be...it's hard to see where you're supposed to be going. I think most people forget to look at a map or if they do, they start worrying about not having the right tools or enough time.

Some days I wake up and look in the mirror and all I can see is an aging face and wasted time. Like Bella in Twilight, I imagine I look like my own grandmother, but inside I am still 26, no 27, no 28. I think when you come unstuck in time, it takes a minute to look around and figure out where you've landed. It's scary and frightening and often unpleasant. It's a little bit like being stared at by people who can only see the shape of your body, and not the person. Only, you're the one doing the staring. I'm the one doing the staring and I can't stop. I immobilize myself. There's a Mat Kearney song that says "choose one, baby, your head or heart. Is this the game that I have played from the start?...one road opens and one road ends." 

I truly believe that our lives are written on our bodies and not just in wrinkles or the clothing choices we make. I think written on our bodies are our own beliefs and fears. I'm a terrible liar; the truth is always written all over my face. But I also believe that we shape the words we allow others to see in and on our skin and selves. If I believe my life is wasting away, others will see this. If I believe my life stretches in front of me, I will see this.

The other day a student caught me "dancing" in the library/my classroom. It was so unexpected, I screamed and laughed at the same time when I saw him standing in the doorway/shocked. I jokingly called out "Tell no one!" He assumed I was ashamed--I was. When he left, I thought "This is ridiculous. I'm just having fun before my day begins. Don't I deserve to be fun?" So rather than being embarrassed, I danced. A little horrifying in memory for me, I think the students who wandered in while I danced and wrote things on the board were a little bemused. I think they were happy because I was. I think they laughed because I did. And I think for just a moment, we shared a moment of invisibility because my body stopped mattering...to me.

Dog Days

Some days, no matter what you look like or who you have in your life, it is impossible to feel anything but unlovable and uncomfortable in your own body and mind. I think I have spent the majority of my childhood and adult life feeling this way on some level though in the last few years I have managed to stem the tide of these thoughts and feelings post-lap band. But, inevitably, there is the day I wake up and nothing looks or feels right about me (and then there are some weeks...).

Today, of course, is one of those days. I woke up feeling a bit like a dog with one ear and no hair except on the crown of his head. Tongue hanging out, three legs flopping along through the morning, and my one good eye allowing me to witness my own splendor. Days like today I pretty much consign to a file in my head called "Get Through and Get Over It."

I went to 7-11 to get some milk for my breakfast on the way to work. As I was checking out, as usually happens to me in Taiwan, the clerk was happy to speak to me in English. I smiled and waited for him to finish tallying my milk up (I always end up buying at least two cartons) and was surprised to hear him say something to me that had nothing to do with my milk.

"You smell nice."

Now, incredibly creepy aspect aside, his delivery was actually more on the pleasantly friendly side instead of the leering I'll take your picture when you're not looking side. After saying this, he told me my total, I paid, and we went our separate ways without any further speculation on my "smell" or anything else for that matter.

Striking off on my scooter for work in the morning sun, I thought "Well, there's something."

Although I might be a scraggly bit of a dog today in my own mind, for one person there was something notably pleasant about me that I couldn't see (or smell for that matter). I think this is true most days. When we feel most unlovable, somebody can see something in us to love. When we feel most unattractive, someone can see something to admire. It's a good reminder; it's good to have some perspective.

I will most likely never see Mr. 7-Eleven again and I have no desire to either. I'm happy for the moment in the sun he gave me this morning. Mostly, I am happy that though I will wake up some days and wonder why or how or WTH, someone will look at me and me and have an answer.

Fake It Until You Make It

In my weaker moments, I wonder, why did I need to mutilate my body? Why do I like to wear high heels and the feel of skirts playing against my legs? Have I become plastic? Have I become fake?

Maybe a little bit. Today, I wore fake hair to work. I wore it for two reasons: 1) in defense of some of the girls that I teach and who are constantly taunted by their male peers for wearing hair extensions and clip-ins, and 2) because I followed an impulse to pluck it up and put it on when I got to work. This is the same impulse that prompted me to buy the thing this summer whilst impulsively getting a second set of piercings in my ears (again...so re-piercing). I do that a lot.

Intently or intensely, I end up improv-ing most of my life. I spend most of my time vacilating between sticky notes with lists scrawled primly upon them and split second decisions to turn left or right or to buy a fake hair piece after surprise-violating my ears. All of these things are part of my ongoing and epic battle for control of my life and my body.

As my Dad says, "You might as well pee in the sea for all the difference it will make."

When I think about what it means to be "fake" I struggle with the idea of what it means to be "real." In my world, being "real" is a fake tv show on a fake music network. But beyond that, it's also a world filled with women who are told they are too fat, too thin, too curvy, too straight, too tall, too short, too smart, too dumb, too happy, too sad...too everything.

I'm not alone in my doubt of my body and my doubt of my choices. I'm not the only woman who has felt the need to "fix" everything. Is this wrong? I've come to decide that it's not. It's not wrong to want to feel comfortable in your body and it's even less wrong to want to feel comfortable in your mind. What is wrong is thinking these things so easily happen with anything you can do to "fix" yourself.

Today I wore fake hair to prove a point, but not just to my students. I wore it to prove something to myself. I enjoyed the fake hair. I enjoyed the different feeling and image of the fake hair. But it did feel like playing at wearing some sort of Halloween costume. One of my coworkers said, "You look like Aphrodite." I found this both flattering and embarassing. I felt like a caricature of an ideal. And that's what most people--not just women...men find themselves contained by all sorts of cultural assumptions, too--spend their lives trying to become. A image of something they think they are supposed to resemble.

Don't get me wrong; I think being compared to a legendarily beautiful woman is pretty sweet. But I think her job is pretty hard--always being perfect and expecting it from her followers. In my strongest moments, I imagine that I don't have control over anything. That my body is not my own and that written on me are the words and pictures of my culture, my fears, and my hopes. I wonder, have I become a real girl? Do my flaws show? Can I see my imperfections and find comfort in them?

So ladies (and gentlemen), raise your hair up if you're a little tarnished and flawed--maybe it's better to be Hephaestus.

Steady As She Goes

Every once in a while my body betrays me. I imagine that I am free from the cage that once held me. I imagine that there are no limits to hold me, contain me. I imagine, for a moment, that I have escaped Daedalus-like, the prison of physical self.

This is a mistake. In many ways it is a mistake.

To think of your body as your enemy and captor is wrong-minded. It should never be a contender for your sense of self--lap band or no. One of the many mistakes I have made in the last three years, well, the last 28 years is to think of my body and my lap band as something I must fight. I even went so far as to name my lap band "Freddy" after Freddy Krueger for the havoc and dream invading nightmare qualities I felt it created for me sometimes. But "Freddy" is really an alarm bell for me--one I didn't seem to have naturally (something else I blamed my body for).

But it's not just Freddy I think of as an enemy. For me, most recently, it's also a matter of my own jumble of weaknesses and physical dailies. This last spring I was finally given an opportunity to do something I had dreamed of doing, quietly dreamed of doing, for a long time. I ran a half-marathon. Let me repeat--I RAN a half-marathon. That's 13 miles in two hours, forty-seven minutes, and 30 seconds (give or take a few). For me, preparing for the half-marathon and running the half-marathon were a test of something much deeper than my legs, though they too felt the lesson. That much time alone with your own brain and a body you have never trusted works out a few things.

I cursed, I cried, I labored, and I lied: "Please God, let this be the end and I will never eat ice cream again."

But more important I began to remember, remembering rising like dough over the last few months, that my body should never be my enemy. The things my mind and my body are capable of together are amazing.

In the last few months, I've struggled with my own weaknesses again in different aspects of my health and body. It's infuriating to escape the chains a burdensome physical self only to discover you're tethered by some other means. I haven't been able to run in three months, almost to the day. It chafed and felt like some cruel joke. Beyond not being able to run, it meant my sense of control over my body was completely gone.

And isn't this the real problem? There are things in this world that we, that I, cannot control. There are things we shouldn't try to dominate. My mistake has been that I want to command my physical self and my world when I should be asking myself why my body is demanding so much from me of late.

If you fly too close to the sun, your wings melt. You fall into the ocean. If you fly to low, the waves catch you and you can't get high enough to escape them. When my body "fights" me, it is trying to tell me something. Heal. Think. Be mindful. Remember. My body hasn't betrayed me; my mind has betrayed my body.

In ran most of the half-marathon by myself, utterly alone, and without even a single other runner to pace me. Except, I didn't. For each second my mind fluttered closer to quitting and closer to pushing myself too hard, my skin and bones and muscle and nerves reminded me--steady as she goes.