Dear Google, who am I?

23

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

July 13, 2003

Dear Charlie,

Almost everyone owns a home computer now. Sometimes I stay up late, laptop my divination tool. The curser blinks in the empty search bar mocking my own vacancy. I type “Who am I” but Google thinks Christian rock youtube videos are my answer.

Mom and I spoke earlier on the phone and your name came up. Again. Over the years she occasionally talks about the day you two met, but no new details—just a sweet story of two strangers connecting and a longing to know herself in a new way. But when I hear your name—Charlie—it bewilders my synapses like a forgotten tune.

So with digital tea-leaves at my fingertips, I search again. Charlie Bower. Charlie Brewer. Charlie Wisconsin Public Access Television. Charlie musician.

German actor born in 1935 aside, the results offer nothing remotely resembling the “you” mom describes.

Charlie, where are you?

I let it go.

I sample new career paths for two years. The NW Film Center and Attic writing classes are enlivening. I also take improv, Meisner acting, a community psychology course at Portland State, a hospice course with Roshi Joan Halifax (no, no-one is dying), facilitate bereavement groups at the Dougy Center, continue my receptionist position at Downstream, work retail at a friend’s clothing boutique, take modern dance, sign with a modeling agency, and act in a few small film productions and commercials.

My outer life feels big and unrestricted. The inner landscape, not so much, but the horizon is widening.

One of dad’s favorite tee’s used to read, Life is mysterious, don’t take it so serious. As a teen, the dismembered adverb drove me insane—a grammar worm eating itself through my brain demanding I sharpie a fat “LY” at the end of “serious.” I missed the point—the great mystery pinched between a rule and a rule-follower.

Now, I’m letting that mystery breathe. The reclaimed oxygen ignites a creative fire within.

My new manifesto proclaims: Create. Stop thinking so hard. Fail. Make a fool out of yourself. Embrace meaninglessness. Do what feels good. Stop hiding. Risk being lost, embarrassed, nervous, judged, misinterpreted, and unloved.

And most importantly, don’t turn the manifesto into a new psycho-spiritual goal.

But the fire is too hot. I forget to contain the flames. Soon my thyroid shows signs of alarming imbalance again. My resting heart rate elevates to 125. I can’t stand upright without feeling dizzy. I sweat and shake constantly. I develop insomnia. In three months, I drop from a healthy 135 to 115. I see a cardiologist. An endocrinologist. I revisit the drip-of-death in Arizona and deteriorate after each treatment. “That’s good,” the doctor says, “your body is ridding itself of toxins!” I start back up on my giant clutch of homeopathic vials. I juice. I do yin yoga. I start meditating again. I buy expensive supplements. And I purge when overwhelmed, sitting sukhasana at my porcelain altar, resting at ground zero.

And just like that, I lose enthusiasm for the mystery.

I need safety, comfort and familiarity.

I need everything to slow…way…down.

I am a child sitting under the dinner table. Above my laminate horizon are too many voices, too many lights, too much static. In my dark linen enclosure, I disappear into every bad carpet in every bad restaurant in Wisconsin. The smells, patterns, and erratic animation of conversing shoes dampen my overwhelm. I prefer it down here—quiet, safe, away from the human realm. When the world is too much, darkness and a dank carpet are good friends.

But now I'm an adult and it's not appropriate to sit under the table at Dragon Gate and read discarded fortunes. 

And I begin to wonder if I've discarded my own fortune.

Panting, panicked and ten feet above my body, I see an MD/ND/DCOM—west and east harmonized in the mind of one, brilliant physician—a few blocks from my apartment. Within a few miraculous months on corticosteroids, my heart rate slows. I am no longer dizzy standing at the grocery check-out. I stop sprinting through time toward an early death. I return to my normal weight. My thoughts slow down and become calm and clear. With a second chance at life, this dramatic turn-around reestablishes healthcare as my raison d’être.

September 2003, I walk through the front doors of NCNM (again) and recommit to a career in medicine.

NEXT CHAPTER

Biking to the Temple of Honor—a final, carefree hurrah before heading back to medical school. (Burning Man, August 2003)

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