Who's Who in the Mirror

Wednesday, December 10, 2003
being an identical twin



When I was six, I ran into a mirror, thinking it was Celia. My twin and I had gotten
separated in a department store while Mom tortured us
by trying on clothes for hours. Surrounded by
stockinged-legs and whirling, circular clothing racks,
I panicked, until I thought I spotted Celia amidst the
merchandise that engulfed. It was a real Kodak
Moment: the estranged beloved, re-uniting in slow
motion ecstasy; right up until the instant my nose
slammed against a full-length mirror.
Not being all alone hurts when you find out you really
are.
I don’t know what’s worse, being alone or being
cloned. Oh, it was great to have a person in the
nearby twin bed, who’d finish my sentences when I got
groggy. or to have someone who could look at me and
giggle in response to my unspoken musings. We felt
privileged, eulogized even, when out in public, we’d
draw small crowds of wistful, mostly kindly-parent
type, admirers. Lunching on the deck of a prestigious
LA health food restaurant (after my Hollywood
brother’s wedding in the early seventies) we’d give
patient explanations to the familiar inquiries of our
fans who looked upon us as if we were the celebrities,
or some exotic, endangered species. We felt smugly
superior, sharing a double window into the rest of the
world that we found so absurd, a world where people
pressed their noses up against an imagined barrier of
separation between souls. Weren’t we all kindred?
The unaffected perception of childhood twins, required
as little explanation from each other as the world
required precision. Our bond held at bay the
forthcoming tide of doubts regarding finding a place
in that dizzying world where people perceived
themselves as other. If there was a country of
loneliness and alienation, from which those questions
whose answers we thought obvious seemed to resound, as
long as we had each other, we were immune to living
there.
I once read and was greatly moved by a childhood story
(in Marry Poppins) about a verbal relationship between
a bird and a baby, and that bird’s sad promise to the
child that as that child aged he would forget he’d
once known that bird, along with the language bridging
them. The child adamantly insisted he would never
forget. On a certain birthday, I don’t recall which
(four?) the bird came to visit for one last time,
confirming that the child would no longer apprehend
that bird’s song or the connection between them, nor
heeding its resonance as meaningful.
In some way, I didn’t quite forget some common
language that crossed boundaries. Animals have always
made their needs known to me. [I’m not referring to
men] Perhaps this very boundary-less-ness was the
double-edged sword that invited such trouble later.
Had I continued operating from an unrealistic
assumption of commonality? Were most of the major
problems I encountered blending into society, due to
unrealistic feelings of commonality? Or was it my
anger that people acting so stiff and estranged, in
the name of correctness. Example:
“I just can’t work for a supervisor who has no idea
what I’m doing” I once complained to my super’s boss,
who replied: “that’s right, which’s why we’re going
to have to let you go”
I assumed, in spite of evidence to the contrary, that
others shared a feeling of being one big family, as if
they were only pretending to be separate from me. This
perception angered me against perfectly nice, normal
people by anyone else’s standards. I lacked a certain
visceral knowledge, a wisdom regarding how others
don’t and shouldn’t, walk to the same pulse as me.
I’d somehow grown up expecting to be understood and
when let down, upping the ante’ by demanding
understanding. [Try that on in marriage!]
I remember after leaving the commune, a
neighbor/friend had to explain to me that the world
was not my extended family. This unrealistic
expectation, based in a memory of a more refined
communication, could be seen as delusion. There are
and have always been, those who do not by their
natures, recognize or respond to the nuances of others
around them, people who don’t acknowledge, minimal
cues: Husbands. Fathers. Teachers. Bosses (a
symptom of dominance?) Ironically, even me! The more
sensitive you are, the more sensitive you must be to
others. I had about as little empathy for them as I
had excess for Celia when we were little.
For all my ability to say ouch when Celia was hurting,
I was unspeakably numb to my own father at the end of
his life here. Four decades after that, it all came
back; superimposed on my life as I had myself a good
old nervous breakdown. I had worked hard for that
breakdown, had earned it and -dammit! - I was going to
have it. No one was going to be able to keep me from
what life owed me in losses. I lost my job, my home,
my son, my husband, and my mind.
A year before, my sister, Lenore had passed from
cancer. Before she died, she looked at me with great
concern, warning me that if I didn’t get out of the
marriage, I could be next and cancer ran in the
family. I still had my body organs and that was the
one thing I wouldn’t sacrifice. So I ran away from
home, much like I’d done as an adolescent but this
time the stakes were higher. The only thing that
didn’t die was my body.
Even when you’re dying inside, you still encounter
guess who. As the saying goes, ìno matter where you
go there you areî, or as my Kaballa teacher recently
said, ìyou’re karma hunts you down.î After nearly half
a century of running, one gets tired and either
surrenders to learning life’s lessons, or goes under
(a less noble form of surrender, like depression).
The only way I had to insure that it didn’t go next
was to begin facing, and grieving my previous, both
precious and miserable life. The betrayal of parents,
teachers, husbands, even my children, all passed
through me like ghosts, begging emergence from my
body, like an exorcism. Everything turned to
shitówhich, it turns out, makes good compost.
As singer/songwriter John Gorka put it, ìI don’t feel
like a train any more. I feel like the tracks.î The
Egyptians claimed that all healing is in telling the
story. I’ve pieced together this collection of
writings in hopes of constructing a map not only for
myself, having survived after all, but for others
seeking a way out of the mental breakdown lane of
life’s crowded highway.