The Woody in Me

The Woody in Me

I wanted to be that girl.

I think it must have been Woody Allen that ruined me. 

I used to love to pretend I was Mitzi Gaynor while strumming my autoharp, singing “When the skies are a bright canary yellow/ I forget ev'ry cloud I've ever seen/ So they called me a cockeyed optimist/ Immature and incurably green.” 

 There I'd be singing lovely on canary sun and blue skies. I wanted to be that girl. I wanted to be called a cock eyed optimist! That could be me! The girl everyone thinks of as bright and sunny and lovely. The girl everyone looks to for a cheery disposition! I would take out the dictionary to diligently copy down the definition of optimist while furiously and quite seriously nodding my head in agreement. I became obsessed, asking questions at the dinner table, “Daddy who is the eternal optimist?” I had heard that phrase somewhere and it made me feel smart just to say it. My Dad would answer with some crazy intellectual response which made no sense to me anyhow about Voltaire or Pan or something. 

Then I saw Annie Hall and everything changed. I knew what I wasn’t. And that was a damn cock eyed optimist. 

I asked my ma just to be sure. “Am I an optimist?” She said “well are you a glass half full or a glass half empty kinda gal?”  Half glass full half glass full half glass full I would chant to myself as I felt my heart sink at the one chocolate I had in my hand.  I had to accept reality.  I felt no joy for that one chocolate but instead the sorrow of losing it. The reality of the matter was I always wanted more juice. I had anxiety when my glass would lessen in liquid. I grew tired of pretending that everything was joyful and while I had a wonderful childhood with a beautiful family and great teachers, I had been wearing the weight of the world on my shoulders since I was eight. I thought to myself, why keep pretending that damn glass is half full, it's empty and I'm thirsty.  Something Woody said must have struck me at that young age. Somewhere in the midst of his wisdom this boney arms akimbo little girl latched on and didn't let go.  "That's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.”  How could words be truer? Certainly not a lyric like “But I'm stuck like a dope/ With a thing called hope/ And I can't get it out of my heart!” I became more and more uneasy with the way things were. Who cared about assigned reading? Who cared about 321 Contact and Reading Rainbow? I was eight and soon I would be old enough to get my heart broken and not have a job. I started developing bizarre habits and rituals almost in an obsessive compulsive manner making my mother blink her headlights thrice every time she left the house in order to assure a safe homecoming later that night. I would stay up to two am thinking about the future and the inevitable death of my loved ones and the undeniable disintegration of the physical makeup of the world. I imagined it crumbling into the sea and taking with it my beautiful colonial American Girl doll Felicity I had saved up for by collecting allowance and the coins that slipped into couch cushions. I never really understood why I did this in my childhood but then to understand that would be to get everything else, the fears, the joys, the crying, the addictions. How strange and yet somehow sweet to yearn for identification in simply, positive thinking. Of course there really were many more identifications I made with many more things. Boys, girls, best friends, enemies, inanimate objects, books, barbies, and one particular stuffed bear that was perfect in touchy situations. I mean somewhere there must have been a hint of optimism. If not, how come I would spend so much time hoping? Always hoping that perhaps I could be happy go lucky. Even as a little girl I struggled with identity and the sometimes falsehood of what we wish ourselves to be. 

 And now it's come full circle.

“No more sun” the doctor said.

“Great” I said “thats fine, for how long?”

“Never” she answered

“No no no” I said “I get it but then after the steroids when can I go back in the sun?”

“You don’t get it honey. You cant.”

WHAT THE FUCKING WHAT?

“I'm confused.” I replied “what about swimming?”

“No swimming” she said “at least not in daylight.” She actually looked at me surprised this would put me off so hard.

“I'm sorry” I managed to muster, “this is the first I'm hearing all this”

“Well” she replied coldly “you knew there was a problem, you see a rheumatologist regularly.”

I wanted my mommy. I needed someone to hug me and say nothing's gonna harm me not while she's around. Instead of this cold bitch telling me I had to be fine letting my fantasies of prolonged beach life go.

My life flashed before my eyes. My dreams of browning under the Maldives sun melted like the ice cubes in the drink alongside my beach chair. Brushed off like the sweat on my brow collected there by the hours of relaxation and rays. And I went deeper. How does a mom play in the park with her kid if she cant go in the sun? How does one be a mom if she can't be in the sun? How does one have fun in the sun if she can't...well you get it.

I went home and started the great descent into Internet research. You all know it too well.

Discoid Lupus. How long does it last? Does it scar? Will it go away? Discoid lupus and weed. Does marijuana cure discoid lupus? Likelihood of discoid lupus turning into systemic lupus. Natural remedies for discoid lupus. Will discoid lupus ruin my life? Will discoid lupus ruin my face? Celebrities with Discoid Lupus. (This was my heart dropping fave as results showed me Seal.  Oh shit.) Will I die from discoid lupus?

I started seeing statistics like 5% of discoid cases turn systemic which for some people is a great thing! A very small chance of this becoming a bigger issue. But obviously the Woody in me has a hard time going in that direction. I started thinking gosh here I am on the brink of having too many anti-phospholipid antibodies and now this brink of something else. Am I on the brink of hell? Wouldn't it just be my luck to be part of that rare 5 %.  I cried.  I hugged onto Aidan my husband who promised me no matter what and if this did anything to my face he would still love me. I felt downtrodden and desperate.  Scared that after this bout of prednisone my face might go back to the red, flakey, burney, itchy, dry, hivey and oy vey. 

But something deep in me, almost embedded in my soul, recalled that image of Mitzi Gaynor against that bright canary yellow south pacific sky (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0DusO6ipLw) and I started praying that my mind would go in that direction. “But I'm stuck like a dope, with a thing called hope, And I can't get it out of my heart! Not this heart...” That instead of Woody I might follow Mitzi down this righteous path. That instead of the pessimistic realist I had become I could again start that search that had been ingrained in me from childhood. That I could find the cock eyed optimist instead of the Woody in me.                                

me in the sun.

me in the car.