Queen of Impossible

The last month, I’ve been using a piece of black jade given to me by a friend in my meditations. I hold it in my hand and it has become a talisman to remind me that I can do impossible things. I had been suicidal for months over my never-ending divorce and the damage it had done to my five living children. And I had before me two tasks that seemed impossible: my daughter’s graduation from law school, for which I had to muster the courage to be in the room with my estranged husband for extended periods of time and make sure my daughter knew how awesome she was, and the judicial settlement conference preparatory to our court dates. And to these two things was added a third when I got a positive result from a cancer screening: an emergency colonoscopy I would have to be fasting the whole day of the conference.

I was so angry at the universe for dealing me these cards. A few people suggested I cancel either the colonoscopy or the conference, but both had to be done. So I would simply add a third impossible thing to the list of two in that one week. And then number four: my therapist and GP both insisted that with my level of suicidality, I needed to stop protesting the nasty nausea that resulted from me trying to get onto a depression med, and just get through the temporary problems so that I could have later benefit. In the end, I was so nauseous that I could barely managed 500 calories a day for the impossible week. The day of fasting ended up being the least of my problems because I was used to almost nothing by then.

I managed to negotiate the divorce settlement to what (I think) was what both of us wanted. A lump sum settlement for me and no alimony for him. The judge was perplexed as to why it had taken three years for “two reasonable adults” to come to a conclusion in the case. My attorney tried to explain the complexities. In the end, she also gave me a lot of credit for having multiple pathways of solutions that would work for me, so that my now ex-husband could choose from them. I’m proud not only of what I did that day, but that whole week of impossible things. And the following day at the cancer screening, the doctor found a polyp, but didn’t think it was cancerous (still waiting on final results from that).

It's not as if this is the first set of impossible things I’ve done. My life has been a long series of me doing impossible things, from graduating with a B.A. and M.A. at age nineteen (two years after high school) and getting a perfect score on the GRE to end up at a PhD program at Princeton at the same age, to managing NOT to declare bankruptcy when the CCC told me I had no other choice when I called in to ask for help when I was in medical debt after the emergency hospital transport with my third child and $100,000 in credit card debt, to publishing a national bestseller after thirty years of dreaming of writing success, to finishing five major financial securities exams in eighteen months to reinvent myself and my career following the divorce.

But I guess I sometimes need a reminder. This stone is a useful concrete one that warms in my hand as I lie down, close my eyes, and listen to another voice tell me that I’m safe and that all I need to do is breathe (a lie, perhaps, but a comforting one for the moment). Are the medals on my walls not enough of a reminder? Are the books all in a row not enough? Are the afghans on display from my new fabric art hobby not enough? I suppose my demons are still chasing me from childhood and beyond, whispering that I will never be enough, that I must always keep running. But the stone tells me I can stop and trust myself, that in fact, I am always and always will be—enough.