Day 65
It was one of those conversations that changes everything.
It took place over lunch with one of the local Puerto Escondido surfers. He’d grown up surfing Mexican Pipeline and had seen the inside of many 30 foot tall barreling waves.
“You have more muscle than me, and I see the wipeouts you are willing to take. Your commitment is off the charts. You are fit enough, mentally and physically. All you need is technique. If you wanted to surf big, you could.”
“I do want to, I really want to.” I felt like a little kid announcing I was going to be a famous singer when I grew up.
“Then do it!”
His vote of confidence changed everything.
T Minus 14 years
Homeschooling shaped me into a curious learner, confident that I could teach myself most things. I learned how to learn. What I did not learn was math, history, English and science.
My most advanced math class was Algebra 1, in 8th grade. My Mom gave me some textbooks for advanced algebra and geometry, but I had a hard time understanding even what was being asked; without a teacher I kind of gave up. I felt like I was stupid. Most every subject I wanted to learn about I could figure out from textbooks or the internet. But math was different. In elementary school, my Mom would assign me math problems and I would slink off to my bedroom to give them a try. I’d return scarcely twenty minutes later, in tears, terrified of asking for help, terrified that my Mom might actually be smarter, stronger, and more powerful than me. My poor mother! She did her best to teach me, but like most teenage girls, I couldn’t stand my Mom. The last thing I wanted to do was sit near her, listening to her try to tell me how to do something, sullenly tolerating her peanut butter toast breath. She was such know it all. I didn’t need her to learn a thing! So, I simply did not learn many things.
I first met Professor Hilbert when I took precalculus in my first semester of community college. I was 17 years old. He was the epitome of a math dork. He gushed about math problems being “beautiful” and he had favorite equations.
I entered college with a profound emptiness. I was lonely in my bones. I didn’t feel connected to God like I thought I should be. I was taught that Christianity was a relationship with God, not a religion. But I just knew I was doing something wrong. I didn’t feel close to God at all. Something was missing. I couldn’t put my finger on it , and it haunted me. Professor Hilbert and his theorems and postulates and axiomatic structures seemed to hold some deeper understanding for the rules of the universe. Mathematics hinted that it could provide answers to the questions I didn’t know how to ask.
Professor Hilbert was also the hardest profesor I ever had. He assigned dozens of problems daily and graded every one of them meticulously. I was in way over my head, completely unprepared without really having studied math in high school. And I was hooked. Political Science, English Comp, even Chemistry all seemed like a breeze, but PreCalc was kicking my butt. I stayed up late, night after night, re-working the same problems until I understood them. I was compelled to prove to myself that I could do it.
It was the only class that semester in which I didn’t get an A. I think I got a B+ (To be honest, even as I write this, I know I could dig up my old transcripts to give the exact grade. The researcher inside me says I should. But I don’t really want to know, just in case it was actually a B-…I’d be crushed all over again). I was relieved that it was over and felt a sense of accomplishment–but also a sense of loss. I too had become a bit of a math dork over the course of that semester. The thrill of doing something really hard was invigorating.
On the day of the final exam I remember setting down my test papers onto Hilbert’s desk. He looked up and motioned for me to step out into the hall with him. In a low voice, so as not to disturb the students who were still testing, he asked what I planned to major in. I told him I wanted to be a lawyer. He said I should reconsider. He said I had some ability in math and it would be too bad if I didn’t explore it, especially since I enjoyed it. I’ll never forget those words: some ability. He didn’t say I was gifted or brilliant, he didn’t flatter me. But he believed in me when I didn’t. And that was enough. The next semester I signed up for Calc 1 with Hilbert and eventually took four more math classes with him before I transferred to a four year school to finish my major in math. After a BS in Math, I wasn’t finished proving to myself that I was smart enough. So I moved to San Diego for a graduate degree in math as well.
I created a place I called “Mathland”. I was living in the tiniest roach infested upstairs apartment in a ghetto San Diego neighborhood. I found a desk, abandoned in an alley with a “free” sign. I took it home and painted it my favorite colors, stenciling it with moons and stars. I bought pens I liked and stocked them in my favorite mug. A clean stack of blank, extra bright, heavy stock white computer paper sat on one side of the desk, waiting to be filled with ideas. On the other side of the desk sat a stack of blank 3×5 cards. I mounted a huge tackboard on the wall above the desk. On the tackboard, I hung 3×5 cards with every theorem, definition or postulate I had learned in the current chapter. For hours, I would rearrange the cards, trying to make them say something brilliant.
The idea was that each card contained something already accepted as true, and that if anything coherent came from combining the true statements, then the result would also be true. But first you had to make something coherent. This is why I loved math, you could create new truth.
So I would arrange, remove, write and rewrite, using a whiteboard marker on the window over my desk to write symbols and Greek letters. Eventually, something would jump out at me like one of those images in those “magic eye” books popular in the 90’s. BOOM–there it would be; truth that didn’t exist in the parts suddenly came into existence through the whole. I called this little corner of my house, with the whiteboard-window, tackboard and desk, “Mathland”. In Mathland, everything made sense or could be made to do so eventually. In Mathland, order and control ruled. Mathland was my sanctuary.
Grad school was a whole new ball game. It was much harder than undergraduate studies, which were already very hard. But I could do anything I set my mind to. At least that’s what Mom always said, and I wanted to to prove it was right. One particular class in my second semester was crushing my self esteem. We had a test every Tuesday. It didn’t seem to matter how long I spent at my desk in Mathland, preparing for the test, I always did poorly. One Thursday, having received my test results I stepped out into the hall in tears. I had scored two points out of forty. Two Points. I drove home that afternoon, let my book bag slump to the floor, and looked up toward Mathland. I had left the window open, and the Santa Ana winds had come through while I was gone. Pens were spilled everywhere. 3×5 cards bearing theorems were scattered about, a half-drunk cup of coffee spilled on my notes. The chaos in Mathland reflected the failure in my bones.
Failed Marriage Number One
T Minus 10 Years
I had been beating my body into submission since 1998, when my butt made its first appearance. Sadly, I was 10 years too late and 20 years too early for the big butt fad. My body, in its infinite wisdom, knew I was an athlete. My body understood that boobs would be in my way and that oversized legs, butt, shoulders and arms would serve me better. My Mom had to sew extra fabric in my prom dress sleeves to accommodate my biceps. I never could wear the “flare leg” jeans popular in my high school era because my calves didn’t fit in them. Yet my chest remained a size 32 AA. I was the starting center on my basketball team, the MVP goalie of the soccer team, a marathon runner and, eventually, a professional women’s football linebacker. But none of that really mattered since I was homeschooled, and the leagues I played in were not as good as those in “real” schools. I assumed I sucked at athletics as well as everything else. All I knew at the time was that my butt was too big and my boobs were too small and boys never looked at me twice.
When my athletic body didn’t bring me popularity, I knew it was because I was flawed by nature. I learned every Sunday that our bodies are sinful and we must never succumb to desire, but always work instead to make ourselves acceptable to God. God, who could not stand to look upon our unrighteousness. I made it my mission to reshape my body.
Freshman year of high school, I started imposing rules on my unruly body. My body did not have my permission nor the permission of society to take up as much space as it did. The rules commenced with calorie counting and low fat. I lived on poptarts and fat free muffins. In college, the rules continued with extreme exercise–hours a day–coffee and cigarettes. In graduate school, it was all about how tiny my portions could be. Later, it was ketosis and avoiding carbs like the plague. Over the years, the rules morphed but the idea was always the same: this body is unruly and cannot be trusted…if left alone, she will explode to 500 pounds. Submit, you fat cow!
Josh was seven years older than me. He had no college education, and no drivers license after receiving too many DUIs. I never would have picked him if I thought I had a choice. But I was damaged goods. Looking back on it, I think he probably felt the same. I was a chubby, awkward, tomboyish, guilt-ridden failure. And Josh liked me. And that was enough for me to say “yes” when he asked me to marry him, one year after we first met.
It was two days before my wedding. Five hundred people were invited and close to 400 had RSVPed. The details were arranged, the caterers paid, my parents backyard perfectly manicured, and I was crying. Was it cold feet or was it something more? I had just returned from Josh’s house, which would also be my house in two days. He was on his way home from class, so I let myself in with my key and started cooking dinner. I hoped we could discuss some last minute wedding details. He arrived to the smell of garlic and onion frying in a pan of butter. He was grumpy. He seemed upset that I was there. He didn’t say it, but he didn’t have to. He wanted his space. I hadn’t seen him for two days. It seemed like forever to me, but apparently he didn’t feel the same way. He unpacked his computer from his backpack and set up his video game station at the dinner table, pushing aside the plates I had set out for dinner. He said he wasn’t hungry. I made myself a plate of food and sat next to him. I ate without talking, listening to the sound of his mouse clicks and the slashing of a stupid digital sword as he hacked down some stupid digital monsters. I cleaned the kitchen, put the leftovers in the fridge and returned in tears to my friend’s house, where I was renting a room until the wedding.
Two days later I stood in front of all my friends and family and promised to love Josh until death do us part. I was beautiful: daisies in my hair and a huge white dress. The wedding was in the woods, by a creek in my parents backyard. My Dad and I walked down a rolling green hill behind the guests for my big entrance. We feasted on a pig named Roy that my younger brother had raised for 4-H. It was one of the best days of my life.
Josh and I had rushed things, of course. I knew it, my parents knew it, my friends knew it, Josh knew it. But I had no idea how to say no once the ring was on my finger. I’m sure Josh probably felt the same way. We both had been raised with strict Christian values; neither of us valued ourselves enough to know how to say what we wanted. We did, however, know that we wanted to have sex, and in order to do that we would need God’s Permission. We would need to get married. So we did.
For the next two years, I wanted out. He probably did too. I didn’t like what I had signed up for. We had some good days, but not many. Mostly, it was two years of me working on my graduate studies, ignoring him playing video games, and him ignoring me while I slept alone. We moved to California so he could stop waiting for the bus in the snow and so I could go to grad school– but mostly so he could get out of the snow.
It should have been obvious to me that my husband had substance abuse issues. And it might have been, but I didn’t think I deserved a whole person. And, at that point in my life, I had already learned the bliss of codependency. Being around someone more damaged than me made me feel powerful, giving me the confidence I so desperately lacked. Specifically, being with a man who needed me made me feel powerful in spite of the fact that men were supposed to be superior to women. I had tricked the system. He needed me, a man needed me. Perhaps I wasn’t changing the world like my youth leader said I would, but at least I was changing this man. Predictably, he didn’t always appreciate my “help”.
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*some names have been changed to protect privacy
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