A Story and a Metaphor?

When I was in 10th grade, in Miss Keck's Virginia and US A.P. History Class (It was Virginia, and Virginia came first, because that is how it is Virginia), I once hid my eyes during a movie about the holocaust. It was a grainy documentary of Germans dumping starved Jewish cadavers into giant holes and burying them in mass graves. The movie went on and on and on. It was 45 minutes of human suffering with a muffled and disturbing soundtrack. I put my head down on my desk. For me, it was too much to bear.

Ms. Keck, a.k.a. Sgt. Keck at Wakefield Highfield School, came and rapped me on the back of a head with a ruler. I was her star student. She loved me. She was angry.

"Pick up your head and watch," she said. "You cannot look away from the truth. You need to look at what happened. Do not avert your eyes."

Then she stood next to me in the dark and made sure my eyes were on the screen. She did not move from my side until the movie was over.

What was wrong with me that I could not watch? No one else had my problem. They could put their eyes on the screen. They could watch. They did not feel sick. Or at least they were strong enough to keep on watching. And the truth is I agree with her. You cannot avert your eyes from the ugliness of the world. It is your job as a human being to look it head on, so that you feel compelled to do something about it.

But I often think back to that moment. I wonder if she found some flaw in my character. I do not want to look at the ugliness of the world. I have worked hard to take jobs, to do work, to immerse myself in the world, to be aware of what is going on. To not hide from the world and insulate myself from the ugliness and tragedy of the human condition. And yet, there are times when I just have trouble picking up my head and facing it.

I want to hide. I want to be ignorant. I want to look the other way. I want to put my head back down on the desk and cover my ears and wait until the horror has passed.

Jane Smiley has a new novel out, and I have only read the book review. But the premise is intriguing. A woman witnesses a hanging as a child. She averts her eyes. That inability to look at the lynching head on leads to, and is representative of, a passivity that affects her whole life--her marriage, her family, everything. Because she will not look at what is, she is trapped in it, and cannot move.

I am trying to moe. To lift up my head and look. But I get so overwhelmed sometimes I cannot hold there.

When Natalie was sick she spent much of her illness in denial. When I saw her I could not be in denial. I saw her disintegrating. I held up my head. I was strong for her. Then I would get on the plane and projectile vomit on the way home. Sometimes I would take to bed from the effort of looking, and of acting. And yet, I knew I did right.

Now it is time to look at my own health. I feel sick. I have not slept in three nights. I cannot eat. When I open my eyes I imagine myself back in the MRI room with blood everywhere after my biopsy. I know I need to know the answer of whether I have cancer. To take the truth head on, to see clearly, so clearly that I must act.

But how hard it is for me. I find myself full of anger. Angry at the doctors, the machines, the health care system, my husband, my friends. But in the end I know my rage is at myself. It is a rage that I have to look at the truth. That I am being dragged to the edge of the abyss and I am scared shitless because I don't want to die. I know that I would rather know than not. I know that knowing will help me to live--if that is my truth. But a deep part of me wishes I could live in ignorance. I wish I could live in a place without tests, where I would grow sick and die, slowly, without living in a constant state of fear, and a promise that technology will provide answers, when for me, it seems not to.

I crave ignorance. I know it is wrong. But I am enraged that I must look at my mortality. I feel resentful and scared.

It is the right thing. It is the brave thing. It is the necessary thing, to know. But for me, it is just as hard as 10th grade.