This is the second in a series of essays I'm writing on life and moving. You can read the first essay on choice at the Poynter website.
My life in 10 moves - essay #2: Failure
Hokhmah, or revelation translated from the Hebrew, is known to Kabbalists as the "lightning flash" because of its sudden, illuminatory power and its capacity to transform darkness into light by brilliant insight.
Simply, sometimes the lesson we think we have come to learn is often not the lesson we end up learning.
While a student at the Defense Information School at Fort Meade, Maryland I failed a test: One test.
One of our instructors, Marcia Hart-Wise pulled me into an empty classroom and comforted me.
You might not think it's a big deal but for me it was devastating. Tears filled my downcast eyes as I repeated, "I don't fail things. I don't fail."
But the truth is I do fail. I fail everyday. Everyone does.
I was not upset because I failed - that was not at the core of my distress.
For me failure comes with a heavy personal burden - it defines me in the most negative sense, it labels me with adjectives like homeless, whore, useless, stupid.
It announces loudly to the world that I am not lovable.
For me: Success equals love.
And I will twist myself into the most uncomfortable positions trying to obtain that love. I have stayed awake for days studying, worked six jobs at the same time and collected pieces of paper that say I'm worthy - trying to covet that love. I've exhausted myself, made myself sick and shed an ocean of tears - trying to earn that love.
Where this has played out most is in my personal relationships.
Each time a relationship failed it reflected negatively on my net worth as an individual - or at least that is how I interpreted it.
For this reason, I have stayed in relationship far past the expiration date - convinced that I could cut off the moldy parts, bread and fry what was left to create a petite delicacy and all would be well with the world. But sometimes you can't fix things.
Move 102
"I moved here for a boy," I say when people asked me how I ended up in Holland, Michigan. Their shock is not surprising. I, a mousy-haired, mix-raced Jewish girl, am the antithesis of the West Michigan small conservative Christian Dutch Reform town.
But for love I was willing to risk everything - for love I traded Palestine for Tulip Time.
And I can say honestly I loved this boy. But sometimes love isn't enough.
His inability to stand up to the racism in his own family made that apparent. It might be legal for us to marry in the state of Michigan but his individual family is still centuries behind the legal system.
The overt and in advert racist statements, the weekly, daily, hourly calls from his father prodding him to dump me like yesterday's news, and the un-invitations took their toll on our relationship.
I bit my tongue until it bled and swallowed the blood until I was full.
He dealt with his family's animosity by cheating on me. I dealt with it by joining the Army. Neither were particularly good ideas.
The final nail in a coffin already half-buried was when he told me he couldn't support me emotionally as I struggled with the idea of being deployed to Iraq for a year.
This was the last lesson in a sequence of lessons. The idea that if I tried hard enough; was good enough; worked hard enough; that if I was simply enough that I would be loved.
But sometimes love isn't enough.
Move 23
When I moved to Eugene, Oregon the school put me in the first-grade reading group. School officials said I was frustrated by the second-grade reading group. I believe them. Sometimes it's still embarrassing for me to read out loud. I sound like a child. I hesitate. I stumble over, mispronounce, words that my contemporaries read with confidence. My inadequacy was only amplified by my mother.
Her would affectionately call me "stupid." She would affectionately equate my intelligence to that of a stone. I was her "little pet rock."
Maybe, she was right.
But I have spent my life trying to prove her wrong, trying to win her love. However, my successes did not win me her love - even as she lied dying she still could not love me. For her, each insurmountable hurtle I conquered simply reaffirmed her belief that she was not a bad mother. For her, it justified the beating, the abandonment, and the lies. And each month as I chip away at $60,000 in student loan debt, the cost of my wanting, I have to ask who the more intelligent one was? Her or I?
At 8 years and 8 months old they tested me. They being: The DeBusk Memorial Center in Eugene, Oregon, my school and my parents. It was an 18-day test that included my reading words individually and as part of a passage. I even read made up words to test my ability to decipher phonetics.
The fact that I'd spent my first year at a school in Guam, with a teacher that did not have a full grasp of the English language herself, made everyone nervous. And I was having trouble reading. During the exam I substituted the words "closen" for clean, "string" for strong, "and" for on, "saw" for was, "they" for there. And I mispronounced phonetically irregular words like were, through, yesterday, and deal.
However, according to the centers report when I read silently I answered questions at a 4.5 grade reading level. The evaluator suggested I sound the word out to myself, decide on the correct pronunciation, and then read the words quickly out loud. I still use that advice today. The child that they thought would never read now owns more than a 1,500 books and reads at least one a week.
Move number 89
Two years after that test another test would diagnose me with dyslexia, a learning disability that affects ones ability to interpret words, to read.
This became the second area of my life where the idea of success manifest as love would play itself out.
If I could just ... enough ... I would be loved, right?
I persuade words like a bad lover - each beating, each failure, just made me want more.
Just learning to read wasn't enough. And I began a journey that on bad days made me feel I couldn't continue one more minute and on good days that I could do anything including save the world.
One might think these two things ---a learning disability that affects ones ability to see and understand words and a profession that depends on words - are mutually exclusive.
And honestly, I often joke with people that I made myself an oxy-moron the day I decided to become a journalist.
However, in truth it was just another way for me to prove my mother wrong and covet her love.
Slowly, I have learned to work with "my gift." I have learned tricks. I have become an expert at wrangling words and forcing them to submit to my will. I have the bruises and scars to prove it.
While interviewing a source I'll write they're name in my notebook, show the source the notebook and ask, "Is this correct?" I read back quotes and than paraphrase asking, "Is this, what you meant?"
Some sources think I am dim-witted, I can hear it in their voices - that condescending chirp - like an angry bird protecting its territory.
And I am slower, or more meticulous, than most reporters. I have to stop, read each letter out loud, and match it up to the words in my notebook. Numbers are always a concern.
But most sources appreciate my effort and passion if not my technique.
It has become my passion and my nemesis. Don't get me wrong. I don't regret the tenacity with which I have pursued my career. But it has come at a high price.
Move 102
When I started at The Holland Sentinel I was forth coming about my learning disability.
"You should be aware that I am dyslexic. My copy is sometimes rough," I told each editor as they interviewed me. But either they did not realize what dyslexia was or they thought I was exaggerating because after they hired me there seemed to be no understand and little desire to understand how my mind worked. And as uncomfortable as it became I, perhaps misguided, refused to give up.
That was more than two years ago, I have watched my peers and colleagues flee an increasingly unhealthy work environment.
And since my mother had died six-months after I started at The Sentinel, I had to ask myself whose love was I trying to win by staying?
Whose love was I trying to win by staying in an unfulfilled relationship? Whose love was I trying to win by … any number of things I do each day trying so hard to be worthy?
And like the lightening bolt that illuminates the night it came to me. I truly need no ones love but my own.
I didn't need my editor's praise. I know what I do changes peoples lives. I didn't need my boyfriend's family's approval. I know I am a good person and I can stand in the integrity of that knowledge. And most importantly I didn't need my mother's love. I know that I am worth, so much, much, much more then I was ever willing to admit.
Move 103
This I will take with me as I move to Dixon, Illinois and start my new life.