Non Ministrari Sed Ministrare

I started writing this in November, and then things took a turn for the seizure-y and strange. Here it is, though, finished up.

I had a seizure a few days ago. I tweaked both legs and bit my mouth in three different places, had to immediately stop taking one of my medications, and was beset with a throbbing headache the likes of which even a past concussion had not prepared me for. My husband was with me at the time, so he was able to immediately call my psychiatrist and the hospital, and then take me to the emerency room. If he hadn't been there, I wouldn't have even known that I had a seizure.

How does it feel to have a seizure? You're suddenly awake after a great indistinct distance, with a hazy grasp on reality and really wobbly legs. It felt like there was this great electric pulse deep in the center of my brain, throbbing and reverberating. Pain slowly seeped around the front of my head. It was kind of like someone had rubbed water all over the world, turning it into a shaky nighttime watercolor painting.

Things have been weird. I've had Jack to help me eat, to bring me medication, and to stand behind me with my elbows braced on his hands to help me walk around. It got me thinking, though, about marriage, about the kind of absolute independence young women are encouraged to focus on, and about companionship.

A lot of people have been very open about how they see Jack's and my marriage: a caretaker throwing in his lot with an ill young woman. They're not wrong. Jack and I do our best to even out our dyamic, to have a relationship where I provide for Jack as much as Jack provides for me, but people looking at our marriage from the outside don't necessarily see that. I've heard my mother ask Jack, one time when he stepped in to do a chore in my place because, well, I had just had a seizure and wasn't able to stand or focus very well, whether he was really going to put up with this for the rest of his life. We've talked about this moment together: I check up on Jack to make sure he doesn't feel taken advantage of, and he assures me that he never has.

Wellesley College's motto is non ministrari sed ministrare, not to be ministered unto, but to minister, a motto whose very grammatical structure urges students to turn away from a passive state of being and instead take up the active tense. It echoes the mantra I've always heard from the women around me, become independent first of all things and don't rely on a man for anything.

I know that these people have ultimately meant well: they sought to counteract a pervasive cultural message of female infantilization, the long-established idea that women are incomplete, somehow, without men, and that women are defined in relation to men. And of course I would not and do not consider myself fundamentally less without the presence of my husband.

But for women who do very much rely on partners for physical and psychological day-to-day help, for women, like me, who depend on their husbands, all of this can feel like a serious blow to your sense of worth. At this point in my life, my husband financially supports me. I'm not jetting around the world as a Woman Who Will, jump-starting my career or even leaving the house all that often: I still have days where taking my medication is a huge expenditure of energy and people's voices are enough to overwhelm me. It's not hard for me to see myself as everything my mother warned me not to be: tied down, life ruined, game over, all that nonsense. And it is nonsense. I am just as strong and capable a woman as any of my classmates. My life is just ... different.

I wrote some more about this while brainstorming for this article. Things on Facebook like:

The whole "be independent first and don't get put in a situation where you have to rely on a man to take care of you; provide for yourself and be your own woman" narrative means well enough but it can also feel like a slap in the face and a huge dash to your self-esteem when you're a disabled woman who really does rely on a spouse for basic day-to-day support. People with disabilities already face the stigma of being considered less than fully human: women with disabilities can find that stigma compounded with the sense of being perceived as more infantile, a bad feminist, a failure as a modern woman -- you get the idea. Some people really cherish that mantra. I'm not here to take it away from you. It would just be cool if you would put some thought into who you say it to, and why, and what effect it may have. We want to bolster our sisters, not tear them down.

And, later:

I was sitting next to my husband in the car, singing together with him to the radio, and it just struck me how my life has changed since I married this young man, this utter goofball, this supportive guinea pig-loving tea-brewing hippie bear of a husband. Marriage has always been described to me as an institution of costs: independence, opportunity, and power. Now that I am married, I've discovered that none of this is true. None. Marriage has helped me grow into a more independent soul. Marriage has opened the doors to literally hundreds of possibilities. And marriage has empowered me and my vision for my future. I have lost nothing, and gained everything. And I'm glad, really glad, that I did not let the fear of loss keep me from marrying.

The end conclusion, I suppose, is that you are not any less strong or less capable because you have recognized that you need help; and being helped does not make you weak.

So aim to be the helper, the active one, sure, that's a goal to pursue. But only the Sith deal in absolutes. If human relationships are about building each other up to be greater than when we found each other, then letting someone in to help is sometimes what your own architecture needs to stay stable.

#Wellesley #Jack