Stranger in a Strange Place

     There were early indications I'd be a problem in the Hall household. In 1983 I was nine years old and was getting ready to go back to public school after my parents pulled us out of the public school system for my entire 5th grade. I spent that school year either in the dubious Learning Tree “private school” run by my parent’s church friends, The Brilliants, and then the remainder was spent at home because it didn’t take more than a semester before organizationally and financially falling apart. My parents chose to homeschool the 3 school age kids (while also caring for 1 toddler and 1 infant) for the rest of the school year. My Lost Year, educationally. I was reading at a 9th grade level and The Learning Tree was only teaching 1st grade basic arithmetic, so although I missed the boat on learning fractions and decimals, I devoured Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff being a clear harbinger for the type of men I would later seek out. If my mother were to reflect back to...

     I’ve seen the look on my manager’s faces when they are straining to understand what they are looking at. I’m sure they are perplexed, annoyed and sometimes exasperated while I sit across from them fighting back tears from my own frustration over why I am needing to be counseled and it makes the whole thing even worse. I am often at a loss over where to start- explaining myself not as an excuse for my behavior but as an attempt to be understood is often inadequate and not received well because it’s a long story. Here, in front of them there is a person who is passionate about the job, competent, self-realized, responsible, punctual and adaptable, the person they usually see is affable and charming and capable. But they don’t know that the reasonably good employee they hired is not the only person behind those green eyes looking back at them.       I’m sitting in their office receiving a correction because the other Emily made an appearance somewher...

  As I lay in my beanbag recuperating from a total hysterectomy I am comparing this experience to the last time I went under general anesthesia in a hospital setting. I’m 50 now- one would think at this age I would have found reason to be put under the knife in my 20’s, 30’s or 40’s but luckily I’d escaped any serious illness or injury that would have required total sedation until this elective surgery, which was to remove all the bits and pieces to my fertility that were silently plotting to overtake me, and all the additional harmless cysts, growths and tumors that had collected over the decades who were crowding out more gainfully employed organs as well.  The best part about major surgery is the amnesia that comes with it. I can’t remember anything about this robotic laparoscopic procedure that removed masses larger than the organs to which they were attached. I was worried that if I didn’t have evidence it was all removed my body wouldn’t acknowledge the change so I i...