Finding My Badass Self

by Sherry Stanfa-Stanley

  “Do the children seem familiar?” Ginny asked. “Are either of them the sons you have now?”

  I couldn’t quite come up with a distinct image of either boy. “I’m not certain. I can’t tell for sure.” I paused. “Maybe one. There’s a boy with wide eyes. He seems… familiar.”

  Nothing else became clear. Then, I had a sudden flash of this same woman, about twenty years earlier, perhaps in the thirties. Wearing a dress or skirt and high heels, she/I walked down a sidewalk in New York City. Just walking, alone, looking straight ahead. Nothing more to the scene.

  “Are you happy with this life,” Ginny asked, “either as a young woman or the older one?”

  I told her that although this life wasn’t particularly exciting, it seemed to be a contented one. The images offered nothing more.

  The third scenario was the clearest and most detailed of all. I envisioned myself as a wealthy man or nobleman wearing some type of robe. I sat at a desk in a large house or castle in England and was writing with a fountain pen—the early type dipped into an inkwell.

  “Are you a writer?” Ginny asked.

  “No. Just writing… something. A legal paper of sorts, I think.”

  In my mind, I rose to look out an upper-level window. From there, I observed people down below coming and going on horses and in carriages, on the front drive of my large estate.

  “Is anyone else with you?” Ginny asked. “Any family, friends, or servants?”

  I envisioned servants, somewhere in the house. No one else.

  From nowhere, a strange thought struck me. I believed one of the horse-drawn carriages carried a casket.

  “I… I think someone died,” I told Ginny. “A young woman.” I paused, as the scene seemed to illuminate in my mind. “I think she might have been my wife.”

  With further questioning, we concluded the woman had been very young. She had been weak and sickly for a long time.

  “If she was my wife,” I asked Ginny, “why am I watching from inside instead of being down there as part of the funeral procession?”

  “I don’t know,” Ginny said. “How do you feel? Are you angry? Sad?”

  I hesitated. “Not angry. Not sad, exactly. I feel, mostly, a sense of numb melancholy.”

  We never determined more about this scene, even while Ginny attempted to coax more specifics from me. While the segment was more detailed than the other two, it was still fuzzy and vague.

  Eventually, Ginny led my mind back to the mirror and the garden and then out of that hypnotized or deeply meditative state. I opened my eyes, and the lights came on. I sensed my bent leg was still cramped, and I stretched it across the ottoman.

  I squinted at Ginny. “OK. That was pretty weird,” I said. “I don’t know what to believe about all this. What do you think any of it meant?”

  She shook her head. “This was more difficult than many of my regression sessions. It may be because most of my clients point out specific problems or questions when they come in, and they are looking for answers to issues in their current life. Without your having a specific focus, your experience may have been broader and more vague.”

  As far as how any of these three visions could relate to my current life, Ginny saw only one common thread: I was always alone. I never spoke to or interacted with anyone.

  “That’s unusual,” she said. “It could be significant.”

  “You’re right. I was alone in all of them,” I said. “That seems kind of depressing. I really don’t think I’m depressed though.” I paused. “But, I am alone quite a bit.”

  I enjoyed socializing, yet I was probably more an “extroverted introvert” than most people thought. I had close relationships with family and friends, yet I greatly appreciated my solitude and independence. I told Ginny that I also had chosen not to enter into any serious romantic relationship in the fifteen years since my marriage ended. And, as I concentrated more on my writing, I was spending an increasing amount of time alone.

  Whether or not my seclusion in these envisioned scenes was actually related to my current life, it was at least an intriguing coincidence.

  This experience left me with more lingering questions than answers. Was I truly hypnotized? Based on my deep relaxation and my feeling of being either unable or uninclined to change my position, it was very possible. The second, more pressing, question I had was did I really return to three previous lives? I didn’t fully believe it. Yet, I didn’t disbelieve, either.

  The first two scenarios could have been a result of a couple of my lifelong interests: I’d always been captivated by Native American life and by New York City. It seemed natural that I might picture myself in those places and time periods.

  The third scene, however, couldn’t be so easily explained. I never had any interest in England or in that particular era. I had no idea why I would envision myself there, or why I might summon up the other odd details about it.

  Did I truly once live these former incarnations? Or was I just an imaginative writer who simply wrote myself into three fictional short stories? I will question that forever and will never know for certain.

  But, like so many items on my 52/52 list, my hypnosis session wasn’t truly about the final outcome, the experience’s success or its failure. It was mostly about taking part and tapping into something new or, in this case, perhaps something very, very old.

  In this life, the one that matters most, maybe that’s enough.

  Chapter 10:

  IF LOVING YOU IS WRONG, I DON’T WANT TO BE RIGHT

  I’d struggled with a handful of bad habits throughout my lifetime. Marlboro Lights, to be sure, were among the worst. I also had a love-hate relationship with carbohydrates, the Internet, and credit cards. (I mean, why pay today for something you can pay for over the next twenty years?)

  What I most relied upon to get me through life, however, was caffeine. Caffeine was my go-to, my crutch, my kryptonite. Except, unlike kryptonite, it didn’t outright kill me. In fact, I felt sure caffeine was all that stood every day between me and certain brain death.

  The day I was to start my newest 52/52 venture, I completely forgot about my objective until late that morning, after I had jumpstarted my body and my brain with a considerable amount—meaning my normal level—of caffeine.

  Unfortunately, this particular endeavor had been to give up caffeine. For an entire week.

  I started over the next day. I’d like to call it a fresh start, but by 9 a.m. I was feeling anything but “fresh.” The exact words I posted online that morning were, “It’s barely 9 a.m. Will this Hell Week never, ever end?”

  Yeah. It got ugly quick.

  I was in the minority of caffeine addicts. I was not a coffee whore. My drug of choice was Diet Coke. My first cracked-open can in the morning progressed into an eight-hour infusion of caffeine and delectable—but allegedly deadly—chemicals. Only midway through did I morph into a pleasant and productive person.

  Without it, I was nothing. Nothing. Except a blithering mess.

  I muddled through that first day, avoiding other people, heavy machinery, and important decisions. Luckily, I had no meetings scheduled at the office. I stared blankly at my computer monitor and let a couple phone calls go to voice mail, doubtful I could carry on a professional conversation. I jotted down very little in my 52/52 journal that night, since the day had been nothing more than a bleak blur.

  Somehow, I managed to survive. I crawled into bed, oh, just before the sun set. Only six more days to go, I reassured myself.

  Six more days. I buried my head below my pillow. Just kill me now. Or at least before 8 a.m. tomorrow.

  By day two, mornings had turned even nastier. As did I. My coworkers whispered among themselves and began taking elaborate detours through the office to avoid me. My friend, Lynn, cautiously peeked in my door and suggested that having gone a single day without caffeine might be enough of a challenge.

  I contemplated replacing the normal caffeine in my diet with alcohol. It would hav
e made me more amicable at the office, but I had a hunch it might be frowned upon.

  So, I persisted with my original ill-advised plan.

  Day three was by far the worst. As I huddled over my desk at 3 p.m., I devised an idea to get through the rest of the week. Perhaps I could finagle a prescription for Ritalin and take up chain-smoking. If smoking Ritalin had been a thing, I’d have been all over that.

  Sadly, I didn’t get my hands on any Ritalin before I got a phone call, on day four, from a local newspaper wanting to interview me about The 52/52 Project. I warned the reporter that I wasn’t my sharpest that day. And it was very possible I might fully snap, mid-interview.

  Although the interview remains hazy, I can’t be certain I didn’t tell him, “Shut up and high-tail it over here with a six-pack of Diet Coke!” Thankfully, the reporter knew the art of paraphrasing.

  Most unexpected was that I never suffered from the much forewarned caffeine-deprivation headaches. Or maybe I did. Honestly, I endured most of the week through a fog. I could have robbed a convenience store or married a one-night stand in a Las Vegas chapel of love, without being able to recall or being held accountable for my actions.

  The biggest surprise, however, was that the week gradually did grow a bit easier. I never stopped craving caffeine, but I did manage to get through a one- or two-hour stretch without obsessing about it.

  By Day Seven, I was not quite the bitch I was on Day One.

  The point was, I proved myself capable, with tremendous struggle and sacrifice, of getting through seven days without caffeine.

  I returned to caffeine the following week. However, this weeklong hiatus did enable me to cut back my intake to a level slightly less likely to kill a rat in a laboratory test—or at least to slow the process. Before I popped open a can of Diet Coke, I now gave it more consideration and occasionally poured a glass of ice water instead.

  Living without caffeine for a week was one of my most personally daunting experiences. While lots of huge challenges still awaited me, I wouldn’t need to rely upon heavy doses of my favorite drug for most of them. I needed only one, totally natural chemical to get through the rest of my list.

  Adrenaline, especially when it’s fear-induced, is mighty effective all on its own.

  Chapter 11:

  THE WOES OF WAXING, NOT SO POETIC

  On my way to the salon, I stopped at a red light and pondered why, on God’s Good Earth, I had chosen this particular impending fate. Never, on my true bucket list, would I ever, ever include undergoing a Brazilian wax.

  Personal humiliation, accompanied by excruciating pain, was likely the mother of all boundary-pushing challenges. The waxing of my nether regions, along with my legs, could take this year’s goal of going outside my comfort zone to an entirely new level in more ways than one.

  I’d been told “southern” waxing had become the norm of the under-thirty crowd. For most women of my generation, however, it remained a disturbing thought, much like a gynecological exam combined with botched Botox.

  When I made my appointment, the receptionist brushed over my Brazilian wax. I was happy to ignore the subject. She mentioned only that the hair on my legs should be about the length of a grain of rice. Hmm. During the recent chaos of packing up and moving twenty years’ worth of hoarded belongings from my old house to my new condo, my legs had been sorely neglected. When I arrived at the salon a couple days later, my once rice-length leg hair more closely resembled al dente spaghetti.

  We soon encountered bigger problems. After I’d stoically endured most of the waxing of my left leg, my esthetician, Rebekah, stepped back and frowned.

  “Wow,” she said. “Your leg looks like a road map.”

  Probably I should have remembered, before I was in the midst of having every hair below my waist ripped from my body, that I had a condition my allergist called “dermographism.” My highly sensitive skin welted up under the slightest scratching or pressure, to the degree that you could literally write on me with just the firm brush of a fingernail.

  I glanced down at my leg. A swarm of mutant killer mosquitoes would have left less damage.

  I winced but reassured Rebekah this was no problem. My dermographism didn’t generally pose much of a issue. Neither did all my allergies, thanks to a simple routine of a daily anti-histamine pill, two nightly spurts of nasal spray, and biweekly immunotherapy shots—which gradually pumped me full of everything that hated my immune system. In exact controlled doses, what doesn’t kill you apparently does make you stronger.

  The wax Rebekah was using, she noted, was composed primarily of pine oil. “You’re not allergic to that, are you?”

  Pine? I pondered this. My host of allergies includes dogs and cats (thank goodness I only had a total of five of those at home), dust, mold, weeds, and grasses.

  And most trees.

  I shrugged. What the hell.

  “I have an EpiPen in my purse,” I told her. “Just jab it into my thigh if my throat swells shut and I stop breathing.”

  Strangely, this did not put her mind at ease. Yet, we carried on. After all, I had a new item to check off my 52/52 list. Death by waxing could be a new experience for both of us.

  Neither an allergic reaction nor any ungodly pain from the leg waxing proved lethal. Not that having every hair ripped from my legs wasn’t painful. The worst part was the waxing of my shins, where the thin skin was more sensitive. For a single moment in my life, I wished my thick ankles were even fatter.

  But then came the experience I had dreaded most—the waxing of my “Cupid’s Cupboard.” This seemingly sweet woman began yanking sections of tiny hairs from my most delicate body region. Oh, sweet Jesus, did it burn!

  Call the Ohio Forestry Division! We had a major bush fire down in the valley!

  I cringed and whimpered, but the most painful aspect proved to be the mental anguish. While I lay naked and spread-eagle in front of this stranger, who squinted and frowned as she scrutinized territory that had remained unexplored and untamed for far too long, my dignity suffered most.

  If someone tells you that lying naked with your legs hiked over your head (while a salon technician studies your nether regions) may not be the most humiliating thing you could ever endure, don’t believe it.

  “Spread your legs a little wider,” she said. I complied. And I died a bit more.

  While she studied my “vajay” for over half an hour, I tried to focus on other, more pleasant thoughts. As Rebekah ripped off strip after strip of hair, I clenched my teeth and contemplated what I might make for dinner. Maybe a grilled steak or broiled salmon. I cringed. No, fish was definitely out of the question.

  Rebekah tried to put me at ease by making small talk. I was stunned by her story about a client who, after years of this process, had grown so desensitized to the sting of both physical pain and humiliation that she fell asleep during it. Clearly, one brave—or sick—woman.

  As Rebekah inched her way through the remainder of my Brazilian, she said I had a couple options for properly finishing up the “back” region. One was to roll over and get on all fours, in a crawling position, upon the table. The other was to continue lying on my back and then hold both legs in the air, as if positioned for a backward somersault.

  These were my options? It was a lose-lose situation. I flipped a mental coin and chose the backward approach. I grabbed my ass and hiked my legs into the air.

  And while I found myself in this most humiliating of positions, she told me the story of another client who drove in for her regular appointments from an hour away. This woman told Rebekah she wouldn’t get her hoo-ha waxed in her own hometown because she wanted to ensure she was never forced to make eye contact with someone who had viewed her this particular way.

  Good point. Rebekah was pleasant and professional, but after this encounter, I prayed I’d never meet up with her in my local supermarket’s produce aisle.

  She paused. “Are you OK?”

  “Uh-huh. Great. Almost finished?”
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  “Almost done waxing,” she said. “But I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I’ll want to go back and see if I’ve missed any stragglers. And then I’ll tweeze them.”

  If the thought of a Brazilian wax caused me any amount of unease, the idea of a Brazilian tweeze—a hair-by-hair pubic plucking—prompted me to nearly jump off the table and run out the door, my skivvies in hand. But before I could flee, Rebekah commenced yanking. Holy hell. I would never again look at a pair of tweezers without recoiling.

  I left the salon, smooth as silk, except for the lingering welts over the lower half of my body.

  This experience left me wondering why women would put themselves through this ordeal, willingly, on a regular basis. Were there any true benefits?

  Sure, it might make wearing a bikini more aesthetically pleasing. As a couple of my younger readers noted, there might be some erotic motives, too. Given my current celibate life, however, those were left only to my imagination.

  My Brazilian wax escapade—my first and most likely my last—didn’t end up being the most frightening of my year’s new experiences. It would, however, win out as one of the most uncomfortable and mortifying ones.

  At least by a hair.

  Chapter 12:

  JUST SHOOT ME

  While taking on an unbucket list, it’s important to learn to roll with the punches. While most of my experiences were planned challenges, I hadn’t expected to be hit in one of my most vulnerable points—shot with a camera lens.

  I despised the camera. And, from all physical evidence, the camera didn’t seem fond of me. Fortunately, as my family’s primary photographer, I’d been comfortably absent from a couple decades of family photos.

  There was no hiding behind the camera for this one though. When a newspaper interview asked for a professional photo, I was forced to add “enduring my first-ever author photo shoot” to my list. I was obliged to be the solo, over-weight, middle-aged model with thinning eyebrows.