On The Edge

The Event Horizon

I always feel slightly on the edge. Not edgy; I’m not that cool. Not on edge; that’s always true, but not essay-worthy. And not on the edge - like precipice - of something either wonderful or jump-inducing. More like not quite on the outside, but neither on the inside.

The Edge of the Social Network

At Westfield Senior High School, in suburban New Jersey, I hovered happily in the social economy class; neither abject loser nor ultra-cool kid. I attended both junior and senior proms and had plenty of friends. But my slate lost the student government elections to a cadre of hipper hopefuls who used lyrics from The Who’s Bargain as their campaign battle cry. In retrospect, the kids we classified as first class were, in the parlance of the day, “fast.” They took more risks and indulged in more of the activities that my parents strictly forbid: Sex and drugs and… rock ‘n roll was ok. I wore no halo; we spent weekend nights in friends’ basements drinking shitty beer that someone’s older brother had passed down to us through small subterranean windows while we listened to Pink Floyd, Genesis, and Led Zeppelin. I had lots of short term boyfriends and two long term relationships. Pot didn’t agree with me so I stayed away from it not to be a goody two-shoes, but because the one time I did smoke I ended up banging my head against the chalk shelf in the back of Chemistry class to assure myself that I was there. I kept score for the baseball team (my boyfriend at the time played second base), but sat socially, as I did at the games, on the bench; decidedly on the B Team.

While college presented a new start, I stayed on the periphery there too. As a “February Freshman,” or “Feb,” our small group of second semester admits plummeted into the well-established social structure of the September admits. Also, this Jersey Girl was as alien to the New England prep school contingent that populated the Middlebury campus as Fair Isle sweaters were to me. Fearing I’d missed the uniform memo, I called my mother on the dorm hall pay phone soon after arriving to ask that she source and send some of those sweaters and white turtlenecks to wear underneath stat. I had to describe the detailed patterns that formed the sweater yolk in great detail since we didn’t have the luxury of snapping and sending a photo. Neither of us had any idea where to look for them - we’d never even heard of L.L.Bean or Land’s End, and the ones in the tiny shop downtown were well out of my price range. She managed to find a few at Daffy Dan’s… shoddy acrylic facsimiles, but at least I looked more like a native. I belonged to no specific group: neither an athlete nor a “theater geek,” I had only my Feb friends and roommate as a foundation. I eventually found my niche - many of them in fact - but started very much on the margin.

The Edge of the Star of David

Nor did I slot easily into any religious category, leaving me bereft of a congregation of any kind to turn to for community. Both sets of my grandparents hailed from long lines of Orthodox Jews (Greek, paternally, and Russian, maternally). I fell by the wayside to become more culturally Jew-ish than devout for several reasons:

• Many years of enforced attendance at a stuffy subterranean Bronx shul davening with tallis-and-yarmulke-clad old men turned my father off to the religion. Ironically, his sister became the first female cantor in the country, and her daughter a rabbi and cantor as well. He refused to even join a temple when we moved from Queens to New Jersey, much to my mother’s dismay. She craved the discipline and community she had grown up with. As a result, my sister and I never formally studied Judaism and did not become Bat Mitzvahs at 13.

• The High Holy Days often coincided with my birthday, so as a child and adolescent I found myself sitting upstairs with the women, hungry from fasting, unable to understand a word of the service rather than celebrating with friends. The segregation, boredom, and restriction alienated me.

• I bristle with healthy skepticism toward most organized religions that purport to a) know the absolute truth based on ancient fiction, and b) preach love, peace, and acceptance while often acting in blatant contradiction to those admirable tenets.

I do feel spiritual and quite specific about what I believe, but no fold has ever welcomed me with open arms because I fall outside of the rigid boundaries of the religion into which I was born.

On the Edge of the Glass Ceiling

As a working woman in the late 1980s I struggled to earn credibility and respect. The mega-shoulder-padded suits did nothing to hide my petite stature. I looked younger than my young age. Men trivialized women in the workplace; other women were often bitchy, protecting territory they’d fought hard to earn. When my married boss sexually harassed me repeatedly, and then gave me poor performance reviews after I rebuffed him repeatedly, my company moved me to a different department rather than fire him. He earned, after all, a lot of money for the firm. I was dispensable. He was fucking his boss’s secretary, a client, and an actuary in the office simultaneously - and those were only the ones I knew about. I didn’t want to join his harem. Gloria Allred, very active at the time in defending women in the workplace, would have had a field day with him, and I’d likely have received some compensation. But I was a scared 20-something year old, albeit an MBA doing some excellent client work. I feared retribution from the company and worried that a lawsuit would sully my reputation and impede a job search. I slunk away with my tail between my legs, while he kept what was between his legs intact and undeterred.

The Edge of The Real Housewives of…

The moniker of stay-at-home-mom eclipsed any other I’d earned, along with my identity and priorities. I felt fortunate to not have to work, and to devote myself to raising my boys. But the PTA meetings and sports sidelines smelled of teen spirit: friends were not chosen so much as assigned by what class or activities your child was in or on. Our coastal Connecticut community bathed in finance bro money and ego, and I felt that rip tide pull me under. Yes, some genuinely nice people floated up from the sea floor to bob along with me. But many thrashed and drowned in the strong current of which car you drove or how thin you were or how many carats you wore on your left ring finger or which club you belonged to or where you were vacationing. I treaded water and gasped for air and some intellectual conversation. I never felt like I looked or dressed quite right, and didn’t care enough to try to discover the secret ingredients that would make me fit in.

Later, as a divorcee, I lost what little suburban street cred I had amassed, and drifted further from the social epicenter. Women who claimed to be friends either feared it was contagious or that I’d covet their husbands, and seemed averse to gatherings with odd numbers of attendees. My dance card remained determinedly empty.

On the Edge of the Mat

Post-divorce I trained to become a yoga instructor. The 200-hour, in person course took a year, and I earned several other sub-certifications in reiki, restorative and yin yoga, and meditation. I taught cancer patients and survivors, town employees, and private clients. I subbed often at the studio I’d attended regularly for over a decade, always letting them know that I’d welcome a regular class. When one of my favorite teachers moved to be closer to family, the owner did not even consider me to replace her (despite the fact that I subbed for her regularly and had a strong following within that community) and brought in an unknown and unfamiliar teacher who didn’t even practice with us. I cried all the way home after the manager unceremoniously delivered the news in the coldest, most non-yogic way imaginable. I felt deceived and disappointed and never practiced yoga there again, but more significantly, questioned my own value as a yoga teacher.

The Edge of the River Avon

I felt more accepted and more part of a tribe than I ever had during the year I earned my Masters in Shakespeare Studies in Stratford Upon Avon. My heart beat in unison with these kindred spirits, both at the Shakespeare Institute and in the Bard-centric town. But my student visa expired and I did not pursue a PhD and returned to the States where I felt like I’d left my beating heart in the CV37 postcode. Although I have happily found myriad ways to incorporate Shakespeare into my life here (and return often to Stratford Upon Avon for an up-close and personal fix), my lack of PhD excludes me from the coven of Shakespearacademia. Stopping at the MA relegated me to the junior leagues of a cohort about which I feel so passionate.

The Edge of the Black Hole

“I write to find out what I’m thinking,” said Joan Didion, one of my writing heroes. As I write this, what I’m thinking reveals itself. In some ways it smacks of dissatisfaction: never quite being happy with the bird I have in my hand. And maybe it is 1700 words of whinging. I do not mean it thus. In the writing, it dawned on me that I need to reassess the value of being in the thick of things. Maybe my perimeter position is largely of my own making; my own choice. Maybe the degree to which I lament the perceived exclusion depends on the extent to which I value each particular community.

I recall my mother saying the same thing often: yet I perceived her as a wise and vibrant part of the communities in which she participated, so maybe it’s insecurity and low self esteem that runs in the family. Reflection has afforded me perspective on the pattern. It has forced me to recognize that my perception may vary from others’; to wonder why it even matters. Perhaps I have intentionally chosen my position on the periphery. Remaining on the event horizon of a black hole is safer and wiser than sacrificing my individuality and values to get sucked into and crushed by the weight and force within.

My buddy AI notes that: “When an object falls into a black hole, it crosses the event horizon, the point of no return, and is stretched apart by immense tidal forces (spaghettification) into its smallest components, eventually being crushed into the infinitely dense singularity at the center, adding to the black hole’s mass and effectively disappearing from the observable universe, though some theories suggest information might be encoded on the event horizon.”

I do not mean to suggest that every community or cohort is a destructive black hole. But I am coming to realize that hovering on the outside of the in crowd may actually be more a healthy choice than an imposed punishment.