Numb

(“Numb” was originally posted at the Yahoo! 360 Sanitarium in June 2007.  I received more feedback, more emails, more private messages from this entry than anything else I’ve ever written.)

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We were just west of downtown Houston, speeding through some faceless yuppie townhome community on the way back from the court hearing, when the rain began to come down.

The hearing itself had been a glorious thing of pristine beauty and the culmination of seven months’ work. We’d gone head to head – the other side’s team of men who’d been licensed since at least the Eisenhower Administration against little old me – and the judge had stumbled surprisingly close to laughing them right out of the courtroom. Afterwards, they were left with little choice but to settle at a price that would have been unthinkable just a few hours before. Ha.

But it was after the hearing now, and Sorcha (my brand-spanking new assistant) and I were nearly flying through a neighborhood west of downtown, while I was trying to remember which turn after which turn made this route a shortcut in the first place.

And I was thinking about Yahoo 360.

Really, I was. I was thinking about how so many of my fellow 360’ers share pictures, joys, and tragedies involving their children or talk about why they feel such love for a particular holiday. They write about their own experiences from childhood or even their favorite television programs. Their blogs make readers smile or cry or think about something in their own pasts, all very effectively and on cue.

Meanwhile, my own blog mostly involves little stories about a guy I was dating being abducted by neoconservative aliens, or a giant Toxic Toad trapping me in my room, or even angels preventing my airplane from reaching its destination on time. In theory at least, a reader could very well know less about me after reading a year’s worth of my blogs than before.

Which is why I’m sure at least a couple of you might be surprised to hear that my friends here in the Sanitarium have actually witnessed more emotion and humanity on my part than most of the people who know me out there, in the big wide world of flesh-and-blood. You probably know me as almost warm and cuddly when compared to even some of my best friends.

Really, you do. I suspect I’m considered a bit of an Ice Queen by those who must deal with me in the real world. And I’m not just saying this because I was recently (inadvertently) CC’d on an email in which the sender referred to me as “Cruella De Vil.”

Cruella De Vil is the primary villain in Disney’s animated 101 Dalmatians film, in which she is best remembered for possessing hair that is black on one side of her head, white on the other, as well as for kidnapping cute little Dalmatian puppies for their pelts.

For the record, I possess neither of those characteristics. I mean, sure, I own a puppy hair coat, but I personally had nothing to do with its preparation.  And anyway, the puppies had it coming.

But on the day of the hearing, as the rain began to fall substantially harder, the car hit what I thought was a pothole but turned out not to be a pothole at all.

I had a flat tire, and as I slipped off my coat and my hose and my heels in order to trudge out into the Houston downpour to change it, I admit that I stopped thinking about Yahoo 360 and all of you for at least a few moments. And as the rain soaked through my clothes, I just knew that Sorcha spotted the stretchable gauze bandages wrapped around both of my wrists, but I tried to shove that out of my mind, too.

And I did put it out of my mind, I did. By the time Cruella de Vil had stopped home for a change of clothes and had marched triumphantly into the office with – well, with whomever it is that Cruella De Vil would march in triumphantly with who would allegorically represent Sorcha – by this time, I’d forgotten almost entirely about the tire incident.

Everyone in the office had already heard the news of my victory and settlement, and they all clapped as I entered, at least a little. At least as much as any roomful of people would dare clap at the entrance of Cruella De Vil. But really, c’mon: We’re all attorneys, you’d think they could appreciate the whole “Evil Genius / Ice Queen” thing more than they do.

As soon as I was safely ensconced within my office, Sorcha slipped in looking more mouselike than I’d ever seen her, and she closed the door behind her.

Then she asked me, “Do you have a minute, Adri?” which must have been a rhetorical question because before I could answer she sat in the chair across from me and began to look even more nervous. “I’ve only known you a few days, and this is way outside the area of what could possibly be characterized as my business, and you can tell me to screw off if you want to.”

It is really fairly easy to learn how to appear calm and collected and confident when the person sitting across from you has the upper hand. You can train yourself to remember to regulate your breathing. To maintain eye contact at any cost. To never look down or away. To hold off on swallowing or blinking until no one is talking. To give one word answers so that the other party cannot figure out what you’re thinking.

“Um,” Sorcha broke eye contact with me, glanced at my wrists, now covered by shirt sleeves again. “Do you have someone to talk to about the fact you’ve been intentionally cutting yourself, your wrists?”

Eye contact, Adri, eye contact. “Yes.”

“Is this person you talk to, um, a professional?”

No swallowing, Adri, no swallowing. “Yes.”

“Have you discussed the latest self-cutting episode or episodes with him or her?”

Breathe naturally, Adri, breathe naturally. “No.”

Sorcha got back up to leave. “Well. I’m transgendered, and let me assure you that there’s not a trans alive who has not gone through every variety of self-hatred and through every variety of destructive behavior known to humanity. So if you need to talk…You know…”

Then she walked out.

And with that, the day had taken a very strange turn indeed. I stayed seated, staring straight ahead, still not willing to break eye contact with the spot in my office where Sorcha’s eyes had been just moments before this.

And then, I slowly got up, walked over and locked the door, and I tore my office apart from ceiling to floor. In what must have sounded to everyone outside like a demolition crew at work, I tore my office apart and then I stoically marched out of my office and went home. Home. Where the fantastical monsters and demonical spirits and cartoonish characters in my Sanitarium allow me to forget – if only for a while – that I probably haven’t felt a genuine emotion in five and a half years or so. Boo-hoo-hoo and all that jazz...

And my usual jokes? Have no fear, they’ve merely taken a weekend off – a well-deserved break, if you will – from which I’m certain they shall return by next week, tanned, rested, and ready to entertain you.

Because I’m okay.