PROTECTION RACKET
I identify with Baby’s paranoid hyper-vigilance. My parents were socialites, restless travelers, and world class booze hounds who weren’t around much. When I was five-years-old, late one night, I was awakened by a noise that sounded like professional wrestling. I tiptoed down the stairs. It was dark but I could make out my parents brawling on the carpet in the living room, surrounded by glasses and overturned bottles, the aftermath from another of their wild parties. Mom was clubbing dad with a designer high-heel shoe, not in a playful way. When they tried to get up, they kept bumping into furniture and falling down. I was struck with the horrifying realization that these people could not protect me. Flooded with the fear that the world was a dangerous place where I was going to get hurt, and could do nothing about it, I embarked on a mission to find a protector. I first turned to my uncle Mac, a thick-necked owner of a great dane whose head was as big as my entire body. The beast wouldn’t let me near my uncle, and covered me with drool. Next up, my rabbi, whose flaming, dyed red hair and one glass eye spooked me. I couldn’t figure out which eye was looking at me. Finally, a camp counselor nicknamed Turk who I thought had protection potential until he dry-humped me on my bunk in front of the other campers in the cabin. I called off my search, and figuring I had to protect myself, I asked my parents to get me a gun for Hanukkah, explored marshal arts, and lifted weights. I wound up with decent biceps but none of these efforts improved the gnawing sense of vulnerability that pervaded the rest of my life.
Recently, I was diagnosed with Stage 3 kidney failure. I was sent to a nephrologist, a man who told me, point blank, “You’ll be on dialysis in two years, and you have maybe five more years left.” I told him he should improve his bedside manner, and after three of my allotted fifteen minutes, I fled his office, and sought a second opinion. I was fortunate to find a doctor with real humanity and a much less dire outlook for me. But she is rare. In the last few years, my experiences with doctors have been disappointing, to say the least, especially when it seems that getting them paid trumps getting me well. It finally occurred to me that I had to be more responsible for my health and become my own medical advocate. I could not continue to view doctors as gods, as I was taught to believe. It wasn't fair to doctors or me.
Back to Baby. Ever since I rescued her five years ago, my life has improved dramatically; paralyzing fear is a thing of the past. Sudden sounds no longer cause me to jump out of my skin. I have stopped seeing the universe as perilous and punishing. Not that Baby is going to save me from an attack by the Brotherhood of Evil, but her unconditional love, constant companionship, and noble efforts to be my protector have given me a new life.
I’m the one who got rescued.