Hello my Darlings,
Grandma was a Clown as well. I'm sure there were some closeted Performers in the family over the centuries but usually my family let's their gift be known.
To hide a Clown is to diminish the world of their gifts. Annoying everyone with their Trauma based humour at the worst possible time to tightly gaurd their true feelings and need to make you feel at ease around me despite the harm on their own souls and hearts.
You know. Clown Stuff.
Love, Opal
August 2000 Age 17
“This is the pulse of a dead woman”
I heard the tiny doctor say as his hand flew to the special blue button on the wall under the hinged plastic in the private ER room where I saw two nurses in a row turn white as a ghost and run out of the room after examining me..
Code blue
The tiny room flooded with people. What I later learned was called a crash cart with electric paddles burst through the door and was stationed in front of me.The sound it made coming through the metal door with it’s metal frame was indeed a crash. My necklace fell to the ground. My clothes whipped off and the Dr started rubbing my chest with his fist as people flurried and didn’t say a word. The sound of held breath.
Warmth enveloped my body as people were pushed aside and replaced with the same Filipino nurses from before, this time with hot blankets and warm IV bags that made a discernible, distinct line of demarcation that travelled from my left hand all the way to the tips of my toes, my pregnant belly, mouth and face, ears, hair and where my underwear used to be as the warm saline met my chilled blood.
The next words said in the room once everyone started to file out were the tiny Doctor again.
“Don’t expect the babies to survive”
Babies? As in, plural?
“Babies?”
“Yes. It’s always twins with Hyperemesis Gravidarum. But there’s no way they’re alive after that.”
Hyperemesis Gravidarum. Someone said a word for what was killing me. Someone saved me and he had words for what what happening to me. I said the words over and over in my head like when I would practice for the spelling bees I always won. Trying different cadences and rhythms of reciting the letters until the word etched in my brain like a feeling along with it’s definition. Hyper, meaning Excessive. Emesis is the medical word for puke. Gravidarum, meaning the state of being pregnant.
I thought it was going to be twins.
I survived and so did my one survivor.
It took 7 more excruciating months of dying every day and being kept alive every day by Total Parental Nutrition administered through Central Lines I had in my neck, chest and biceps. I didn't eat a single meal for 7 months and was tortured by being sick every 5 minutes regardless.
I went into Canadian record books as the worst case of Hyperemesis Gravidarum in medical history that didn't result in death. Living in a teaching hospital meant daily groups of student doctors turning the lights on at 7am to remind me that as a patient in a teaching hospital I am subject to observation by students and do I have consent for them to examine me internally?
Every morning I'd lift my hospital gown and hear one nervous medical student a few years older than myself, almost always male, in a group of half a dozen standing around observing nervously, a pregnant teenager with a life threatening condition nobody can cure and she's just being kept alive and tortured.
They had an obligation to comment on how normal having hair on my nipples and belly button was and to not worry about it. Each time they said it by wrote I would imagine them in class talking about the vulnerability of Women and body hair and to do something to reassure them that they're not unusual and what a load of total shit it was that they couldn't just ignore it like the rest of my normal body like they all didn't also have nipple hairs in the room we're not talking about.
The risk to a fetus of introduced infection from unnecessary pelvis exams makes this practice unbearable to consider as a singular issue. The psychological impact of these circus freak show performances I learned to sleep through and just lift my gown in the air for definitely caused the carrying parent undo stress and they could have used this opportunity to teach a teenager how to say No thank you sir!
If I could go back in time I would have thought of ...let's see...what's 5 days a week by 30 weeks...150 sassy comebacks.
Weekly ultrasounds as well! Bloodwork 3 times a day to balance the nutrition in my bags. Hourly blood pressure cuffs. Surgery. Blood Sepsis that made them give me 12 hours to live and I survived, diapers, a bedside commode, being 99lbs and preparing to become a parent for 7 months.
That's just the short story of St Paul's hospital because I start to black out as I write and it's happening now my Darlings.
Love, opal
Hello my Darlings,
Have you heard the term "Unschooled" before?
What comes to mind?
If you imagined "kids running around in their socks" You're absolutely right. That's what the school board wrote about us.
If you imagine a type of experience where a learner explores without an institution telling them how, you're absolutely right. That's what the school board missed while they were staring at our stocking'd feet.
Many folks don't consider institutions optional and I was taught at a young age that they are. First through experience as I failed to meet any adults expectations regardless of exceptionally excellent scores in English Comprehension that baffled my teachers and tutors.
I'm sure they called me impossible because I was there and I didn't make it easy on anyone. Precocious, they called me. I never understood the negative connotation with the word as the dictionary calls us Precocious children "having developed certain abilities or proclivities at an earlier age than usual."
It was true. Like my dimples people commented on my old soul everywhere I went. I was absolutely certain that when I smiled, my face caved in and everyone would point out the disastrous sink-hole kid by gasping and pointing "THOSE DIMPLES!" grabbing their family members and telling me to stretch my face out again so they can see the craters in my cheeks fold inside out again, oh the shame. I tried as hard as I could to keep my face still along with my precocious disposition and deep vocabulary concealed and it was futile. I was born Opal Dar and I will perish with a ridiculous grin on my face laughing deeply at my own jokes and convincing kids to question the establishments that attack their sense of self worth and core value structures because they are as Sovereign and free as they allow themselves to be. I beg them to take up space, talk to lonely people, Be curious, kind and have fun. To let their unique ideas and minds reign over all institutions and carve new paths for their ancestors who are yet to be born because this world is theirs and we really messed it up. We really did.
The youth are already wiser than us. They seem different because they are. They're aware and becoming more-so each day and I'm so proud of them.
The unschooling program I attended was called Virtual High and was the first in-person adolescent aged in person child-led learning environment that the popular program many home learners know as Self Design developed by Brent Cameron, who was one of my personal mentors as a Learner in the program in the mid 90's. It led to me working as a Nanny, Personal Assistant and Production Assistant through my teens instead of attending and graduating school with my peers. I traveled and spent my time organizing community art gatherings for us to share music and poetry around East Vancouver and neighboring cities, Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, etc. Always singing on the #8 Fraser.
Hey, does anybody remember that graffiti on Fraser St in the 90's that was an entire brick wall that just said in wobbly writing RALPH HATE WORLD. That was my favourite ever. I always wanted that on my body somewhere. Not because I hate the world. I LOVE this ridiculous dumpster fire.
Because I love Ralph.
Are you unschooled? Do you remember Virtual High? Were you learning about Id in 8th grade instead of maths as well? Cool. Please tell me your story!
Love
Opal