Memoir: Perfect Peter, Prologue- Installment 4, Gross Anatomy Lab & Fear
I got my masters in physical therapy here when I was 30. It took that long to clean up my grades, mature, and find purpose after quitting my scholarship.
One reason I’m sharing my memoir is because I have realized as a health coach, often, when we are struggling, like when trying to be healthier, our childhood may be holding us back. Until we address our past, our present and future may be affected.
Another reason is, when I shared it with friends, many said, “I feel the same. Can we talk?”
And maybe the most important reason; Right now, somewhere, an adult is harming a child. I pray it stops.
If what you read affects you, please reach out to me via email or phone, or leave a comment. My hope is to connect authentically with you, so we can support each other.
Caution, Dear Reader - Some of the content is graphic, and I have been told, disturbing at times. My goal is not to upset, but to share honestly. Only reflection and honesty have helped me glimpse what has eluded me for 50 years-happiness. Please read at your discretion.
*Most names have been changed.
Click here to read my memoir from the beginning.
Click here to read installment 3.
Note:
This excerpt describes the manifestation of perfectionism, and how it can isolate. When one cannot show fear, something we all experience, one may come to the conclusion there is something wrong with them, making them feel broken, and alone…
Installment 4
…After I walk away from my scholarship, I’ll never talk about it, like it never happened. I won’t talk to my roommates for 30 years; the guys I lived with, sweated with, and survived battles with. When we reconnect they’ll ask, “What the hell happened to you, Pete? You just disappeared.” That’s why Bella’s surprised when I tell her. I guess I couldn’t reconcile quitting with my perfect persona.
Years later I’m in graduate school studying physical therapy. We’re in gross anatomy lab, ready to dissect a body. Darla in my group says, “I don’t want to cut the body. Peter, you do it.”
“Okay,” I say, without hesitating, making sure to appear calm.
“But, Darla,” I say, “You’re going to have to do this too, eventually,” using an authoritative tone that I make sure also sounds supportive.
“I know,” she says, “But you start because nothing bothers you.”
That’s not true. I have fooled Darla, like I fool everyone else, including myself, by controlling my emotions, prompting some to confess to my friends, “Peter’s perfect. I wish I was like him.”
Writing this, I ask myself, How have I been able, at stressful times in my life, to stay calm and appear fine, even when I’m terrified? Like when Nicholas was suffocating in my arms. By mistake, I gave my 8 year old son a cookie with walnuts. He’s allergic and goes into anaphylactic shock. Slowly his throat is closing. He’s choking. We’re losing him. While my wife is pleading with him to wake up, and my daughters lock themselves in the bathroom, screaming for their little brother not to die, I calmly walk to the kitchen, open the cabinet, and reach in for the epinephrine pen. When I get back I warn him, “I’m sorry if this hurts you buddy,” and stab my young son’s thigh with the pen. Nothing happens. I panic, inside. Then, he’s back. I breathe. When the paramedics come, I’m ashamed when my wife has to tell them it was me who gave him the cookie. Hours later, after we leave the hospital in the middle of the night, I apologize to him. He says, “It’s okay daddy, I know you didn’t try to kill me with the cookie.” The guilt shoots an electrical charge down my right arm, stabbing my wrist, paralyzing it. My friend, an acupuncturist, says that’s my heart channel. My heart hurts so much it feels like it will stop beating. Secretly, I wish it would. When I ask my therapist how I can pretend to be calm no matter what is happening, he says, “Because of your childhood, you were used to facing your fears.”
Back in the gross anatomy lab, I’m standing in front of the cadaver of a 76 year old grey haired female. The body is thin and kyphotic; her upper back is rounded forward, making her look like she’s trying to rise from the steel medical table. Her body, half sitting up, covered by a sheet, creates a disturbing image. My job is to remove the skin, starting with her arm, so we could see the veins, arteries, nerves, muscles, ligaments, and bones underneath. As we move around the body, I’m volunteered to remove her genitals so we can examine the pelvic floor muscles. I accept, though I don’t want to. As I slice, I absorb my lab mates’ awe, unknowingly thriving on the cocktail of adrenaline and hit of dopamine produced by a mix of my fear and their admiration. I’ll learn that type of motivation is not sustainable, and never enough, leaving me feeling empty, and phony.
As I stand over the body, the scalpel in my gloved hand feels ice cold, like the room. There are six groups of around five people each, spread equally throughout the large lab that resembles an operating room. It smells like those formaldehyde frogs in high school, times 10. Wearing green scrubs and a mask, I follow the proctors lead, making several precise incisions on the forearm, deep enough to pierce the skin, but not much deeper so as not to disturb the underlying structures. As I deftly pull the skin back with forceps and reveal the tissues underneath, I realize, I have seen those tissues before, when I was 16. Except then, they were charred. I haven’t thought about that for a long time.
In that memory, I’m 16, but feel three, standing in a small private room in the critical intensive care unit of Passaic General Hospital; my brother and sister on each side of me. To our left, at the head of the bed, is a nurse telling us what to do. My father’s body is lying in front of us, unrecognizable, but I know it’s him. One of his arms, the right one, that held me tightly as a little boy, is inches away, skinless. The nurse warns, “Don’t touch him.” The air is thick with the smell of smoke, making me want to cough every time I inhale. I hold it all in. It’s already hard to breathe between my sobs. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Most disturbing of all, he’s still alive. Not for long.
More to come…