Somewhere Between Worlds
By Olivia Cobiskey
I sat there, hyperventilating, that nails-on-a-chalkboard sound reverberating in my head. I'm sure my eyes started to resemble those of a dead fish. I stared at the back of my hands. I bit my lip, and hoped by sheer force of will to make myself sink through my chair, the floor, into the earth, and I wondered, "WHAT IN THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?"
I am sure Bill Mitchell is a nice man. But as I stared at him over a pile of papers I could feel my body tense up as he asked me what he could do for me? I had been wondering for weeks why I was so uncomfortable with the coaching process. I wanted to be coached. I was open to being coached.
As I drove to the Enoch Davis Center to interview a source for my story on breast cancer it dawned on me. Dawned like the bright light of G-d's hand reaching down out of the clear blue sky and smacking me across the head.
"I DON'T LIKE CHOICES!" "I HATE CHOICES!"
And in that moment my life became clear. I ran into Bill's office the next day still clutching my Starbucks, New York Times pressed against my chest, my purse sliding down my arm and screamed at the bewildered man, "I KNOW WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME."
"I'm much more comfortable being told what to do," I said. He just stared at me and listened as I ranted for about ten minutes, before I ran away to work on my story.
I've rarely made choices for myself. Most of my choices were made for me, either by a person or by circumstances. Moving every year I learned that if I was unhappy, I only had to wait it out and I would be in another school, with new potential. I have been a cheerleader, a geek, a weirdo, a jock, you name it I've tried it. Altering identities like a chameleon changes color to emulate its environment. The problem was no one actually knew who I was, least of all myself.
Move number 32.
My father had just left for the Gulf, for Beirut. My mother would pack. This was the hardest move. We had lived in Italy for six years. Six years of the same beaches, the same playmates, and the same language. My brother and I would say good-bye to the villa that had been our home. We would brace ourselves for a world we did not know, a world our parents revered, a world called America.
We moved to Norfolk, Va., a "Navy" town. I was enrolled in Granby High; this would be number two in a litany of six high schools. I arrived in German class in my fluorescent orange coolots, bright and flowered tunic blouse and a matching spongy belt cinched at my waist. Fluorescent wouldn't hit the American fashion scene for another year. I felt like a clown. I sat next to Steven Loy. He was tall and thin with shaggy unkempt hair the color of dark chocolate. He played Cello and according to The Virginian-Pilot was a prodigy. I don't know why he talked to me. Maybe it had to do with the fact that he stuttered and I could barely speak, but he introduced me to his friends. They sat outside during lunch, played music, read poetry and books, pontificated in artsy-fartsy philosophical diatribes, and I listened. I found my place with them. Writing was easier than speaking. Since I was nine I had kept a journal and I had enough teen-aged angst to take out most of downtown Norfolk. In elementary school, I had secretly obsessed over Edgar Allen Poe. I could recite from memory, "The Raven," nameless here forevermore.
I wrote on everything: my notebooks, scraps of paper, my skin. This was when I first started collecting words. But, I also met Pam and Sheila in German class. They were ballerinas. Pam was tall and thin with the creamiest skin I had ever seen. Sheila was voluptuous and the color of earth. I loved to watch her do pirouettes. So, I got a paper route and started taking ballet classes. I would sashay across the floor landing like a wildebeest. What I enjoyed most about the ballet class, wasn't the ballet class, it was the time the three of us; Sheila, Pam and I spent at Arby's next door eating potato hashbrowns. I would continue to try and force my body to be limber and light until my third year of university when I realized that the chances of my being a prima-anything were few and far between.
Moving only accounts for half of my reticence to make choices. I am mixed culturally, religiously and ethnically. The valleys these mixtures have etched into my skin; claimed only by memory and their place in my evolution, have become worlds onto themselves. And I have lived between these worlds my entire life. Neither living here nor there afraid to choose one, because by choosing I would be saying one is better than the other.
For this reason, more than any, I do not like to make choices. How can a child choose between her parents? How can a child choose between her parent's faiths? Especially when those people and those faiths are in conflict.
When I say I am from a mixed marriage I see their doubt. Their faces twist up as they search my translucent skin for color. As my birthdays have slipped by I have smartened up. I am defiant, I tell them they were not there the day the nice, Jewish woman from New York said, "But, you don't look Jewish, dear." That they didn't sit next to me at the Passover Seder when a Hassidic man asked his friends loud enough for me to hear, how a convert became president of Hillel.
I took their distaste for my small pug-nose and high-cheek bones as a challenge. I would become the über-Jew. I would eat more matzo, dance the Hora harder and pray louder. So, I thought move to Israel, what could be more Jewish than that.
Move number 64.
The gates of old Jerusalem are like the bridges over the Seine in Paris, each person has their favorite. My favorite was the Jaffa gate. To get to the Jewish quarter of the old city from the Jaffa gate you could walk through the other three quarters. I would meander through the Christian, Muslim, and Armenian quarters. Running my hand against the stones and imagining the history that had worn them down. I would get to the Jewish quarter and sit in front of the Kotel (Wailing Wall), across the great plaza and people watch. The array of people who came there to daven (pray) was so profound; from translucent to mahogany. But, one day as I was walking through the arches of the Jaffa gate, I decided to try and walk outside the city to the Damascus gate, the gate that goes directly into the Muslim quarter.
I dressed like the religious Jewish women in Jerusalem; ankle length skirts, conservative long sleeved shirts and my hair pulled back and pinned at the nape of my neck, trying that life on like a new shade of lipstick.
As I made my way down the sidewalk, past the bus stop, I saw a young Palestinian man. I lifted my face up to meet his eyes and smiled. But, as the man made eye contact with me, his look sucked the air out of my lungs, like when you fall off the jungle gym as a child. I had never seen such hatred as I saw in his eyes. I have met angry men since then, but you never forget your first. It didn't frighten me, not the way you might think. It left me empty and profoundly sad.
I didn't make it to the Damascus gate that day. Instead I made my way back to a coffee shop on Ben Yehuda and had the first of many political debates with myself.
I finally gave myself permission to hear the inequality around me. I started to see it. I could smell it and it made me sick. It was like the first moment you realize your parents are imperfect. This was not the Israel of my dreams. It was not the kibbutzim utopia. It was not the garden in the desert. It was not my home. But, I still refused to make a choice. How could I choose between them?
Even before that moment I knew I couldn't live in that world completely. I was drawn to ritual, collecting them like other people collect stamps. Moving every year of your life as a child will do that to you. Rituals are easy to pack. They are private and intimate. Some are profoundly spiritual and my habit of screaming at G-d didn't go over so well in Rabbinical school. Did I tell you I don't like making choices? And besides it was easier to run away.
Move number 83.
Moving makes for some interesting stories, but not for lasting relationships. After Israel came Korea. I wanted to be as far away from the Middle East as possible. I didn't want to discuss the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I didn't want to discuss my heritage. I just wanted to be a Mi-guk (American) in a homogeneous sea of Koreans. But even the Koreans would look at me with those twisted up faces. "You don't look American," the Ahjima (married Korean woman) would say to me at the Mok-yuk-tong (bathhouse).
In Korea I finally made the first deliberate decision of my life. I made a conscious effort to keep the friends I had made at university in New Mexico, because I realized the need we all inherently have to connect with other people. It was eventually their unconditional love that helped me finally to come home. They've encouraged me to stretch until my bones have cracked and then to stretch some more. It's been their unconditional love that has encouraged me to keep writing, to go to graduate school and to finally fulfill my dream of becoming a journalist. They've encouraged me to continue explore my fascination with ritual and languages. They've helped me to be braver and finally it was they, who encouraged me to come to Poynter.
I will continue to struggle to live in whatever world I'm in; reconciling my urge to run with my urge to belong. A wise woman once told me that the act of not making a choice is in itself a choice. But, only time will tell, and just like the stones of old Jerusalem only time can wear down the etching in my skin and allow me to be more fluid and whole. A woman who does not allow shoes in her house, who wears Tibetan dresses to synagogue, who likes to watch the news in languages she doesn't understand. A woman, who spells humour with a u, who eats vegetables for breakfast and drinks coffee after dinner, and is so profoundly shy that she can not speak to the man, she admires. A woman, who collects images of goddesses, keeps kimchi in the refrigerator next to her Nutella and covers her mouth when she laughs. A woman who owns more books then furniture, who loves her cat, Chleö so much she paid a $500 bribe to get her out of Korea, and speaks in a language peppered with all the life she has lived.
And now it's time to pack again.
Move number 102.
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