A Leg to Stand On

by Colleen Haggerty

  “I do believe it,” I said.

  Luann reached out and put her hands on mine. “Colleen, whose life is this? It’s yours, isn’t it? And who else knows the big picture of everything you’re dealing with?”

  “No one,” I replied, dabbing at my tears.

  “Well, if you can’t trust you to make a decision for you, I don’t know who else you’re going to trust the rest of your life.”

  Why those simple words hit me so hard, I don’t really know. But what I did know was that she was right. It was time I figured out how to be responsible for my choices, and to think through my options based on what made sense for me rather than on who would judge me. Even God couldn’t live my life for me. It was all on me.

  I got up, dried my face with my sleeve, and hugged Luann good-bye.

  Luann didn’t tell me what to do. In fact, she did something even more powerful. She convinced me I could make the right decision for myself.

  That night I went to bed alone, puzzling about what to do. I woke up the next morning with a start. My eyes snapped open, and I heard the words: “You can’t have this baby.” I looked around, scared, but no one else was in my room. My heart was racing as I lay my head back down on my pillow. And then I remembered a dream I’d had the night before: I was eight months pregnant and in the grocery store. I was so big I was unrecognizable to myself. I couldn’t fit into my prosthetic leg anymore, so I was using crutches. My pregnant belly stuck out so far, I couldn’t reach the handle of the grocery cart. I was looking around for someone to help me, but everyone was ignoring the huge, one-legged pregnant lady. I started screaming for help, but no one would help me. I was all alone and completely incapable of taking care of myself.

  I got out of bed and knew what I had to do. I walked to the phone, looked up a clinic, and made the call.

  “Yes, I’d like to make an appointment to terminate my pregnancy.”

  Eric drove me to the appointment and waited in the lobby. I had to do this one alone since it was my decision. The procedure hadn’t changed: Undress, put on the gown, stick my feet in the stirrups, and do what the mechanical voice of the doctor said. Whisper “I’m sorry” over and over while this precious new life is being sucked into oblivion. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Please come back to me when I’m ready. I’m not saying I don’t want you; I just don’t want you right now. I’m so sorry.” Allow the tears to flow. Feel the gentle pat of the nurse’s hand on my shoulder. Try to listen to the post-procedure instructions … but hear only the blood rushing through my head. Nod in understanding, even though I really don’t understand.

  I was left alone in the exam room to get dressed. My hands were shaking so much I could barely adhere the Kotex pad to my underwear to catch the leftover blood. My legs could hardly hold me up. I slowly walked out into the lobby, using the wall to steady myself, and I spotted Eric. When he saw me, he put down the Field & Stream magazine and quickly walked up to me.

  “How ya doing, Red?”

  “Not so good. Just get me home.”

  He held me up by taking my arm and guided me to the car and gently put me in it.

  “Well, that didn’t take long.”

  Yeah, it’s amazing how quickly one can snuff out a life.

  “Shut up,” I said. “Just shut the fuck up. I don’t want to hear any kind of relief in your voice right now. I just did the hardest thing in my life, and I need you to just shut up. When we get home, I need you to lie down next to me, hold me, and let me cry until I’m done. Okay? Can you do that?” I asked, ending with a plea.

  “Yeah. I can do that.”

  I cried quietly all the way home. I cried silently as he walked me into the house. I cried as he took off my jacket and shoes and tucked me into bed. I cried as he spooned me, holding me tight. The pain was so deep, the reality of what I’d done so raw, all I could do was groan through the tears. And then I heard him let out a little cry, too, which made me feel a tiny bit better.

  I cried until I finally fell asleep. When I woke up, the early winter darkness had descended, mirroring the darkness in my heart. During my sleep, I could tell my layer of armor had thickened once again. My sadness was too huge to let out; I had to contain it. I smelled the stir-fry Eric was cooking. I tried to eat, but the food tasted like cardboard. Eric looked at me, uncharacteristically serious. He took my hand, and said very quietly, “Thank you.” I wanted to slap him again. I wanted to shove him down a flight of stairs. I hated his gratefulness for what I’d done. I hated that I was probably just as relieved as he was. He just had the balls to own up to it. And even though I’d been the one to make this decision for myself, it wasn’t any easier this time through. I was as embroiled in guilt and remorse as ever.

  I knew I had to do something before my insides rotted away with the ugliness I carried there.

  13

  BABY BUNDLES

  Eric and I broke up when I went to Minnesota for my internship a month after the abortion. I finished college the following year. The summer after graduation, I took a month-long sea-kayaking course taught by the National Outdoor Leadership School in Alaska. I had been toying with the idea of starting my own therapeutic recreation business and I wanted to see firsthand how I fared as a leader in that environment. In all my outdoor pursuits thus far I had felt confident, but I always needed help in one way or another because of my leg. Could I be a leader and help others without needing help myself? Unfortunately, halfway through the kayak trip, my peg leg broke and my guide had to help me jerry-rig it back together. Perhaps I sold myself short, perhaps I gave up too early, but that experience, for as awe-inspiring as it was to kayak in Alaska for a month, solidified the notion that I didn’t have what it took to be an outdoor leader.

  After that summer, I started my career working as camp director at a summer camp for people with developmental disabilities in Idaho. I no longer felt stigmatized to be associated with developmentally disabled folks like I had on the Skiforall bus so many years ago. In fact, I felt honored to be able to provide a place for them to feel included, something I had been searching for since my accident. Though I’d struggled to find connections in my own life, it turned out I was good at creating them for others who sought them out.

  Over the years, all but one of my siblings had gotten married and started families. A new niece or nephew came along every year or two. Each time I visited a new baby, my grief was reignited. Each time, I swallowed the lump of regret in my throat. Each time, I reminded myself I made the choice to have an abortion so that I could live my life, my active life. I continued to ski in the winter and backpack and kayak in the summer.

  After two summers at camp, I moved back to Seattle to work with adults with developmental disabilities, supporting them to live independently. Suppressing my grief—for the loss of my leg and my two abortions—was second nature to me by then. I continued to search for activities that brought joy and meaning to my life. I joined a dojo that taught Aikido, a martial art that focused on nonresistance. This practice nurtured my spiritual cravings as well as my physical ones. My sensei, or teacher, accommodated my needs well; I learned how to fall and roll alongside the other students. I went to class twice a week. With each move the sensei taught, she tied it to one of the principles of Aikido: see things from another’s perspective, help others see things from your perspective, and strive for harmony.

  The summer of my thirty-first year, my suppressed grief was catching up with me. Driving to work became increasingly difficult. When a car started merging into my lane, I panicked. All I could see was that white bread truck from fourteen years ago merging into our lane. I played out the scenario of my accident over and over. And I created new scenarios in my mind of getting hit present day. I sobbed as I relived the memories and thought about the possibility of getting hurt again. There were instances when I was so scared or I was crying so hard that I had to pull over and collect myself. Friends asked me to go with them to a Bonnie Raitt concert that was a four-hour drive away and I sa
id no, not because I didn’t want to go—I did—but because I knew I couldn’t be in a car on the freeway for that long. I’d be a crumpled mess by the time we arrived.

  No one really knows why trauma symptoms emerge or worsen many years after the inciting incident, but emerge they did for me. At the dojo on a sunny Sunday morning, we were practicing a new move. The sensei talked about compassion and patience, nonresistance and harmony. My partner threw me to the mat in a way I had been thrown many times during the previous year. But that time when I landed on my back, I suddenly felt like I was back on the highway, lying next to our car, waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Everything I was resisting in my emotional life came crashing down on me. I gasped and felt as if I was falling into a black hole. I slapped my hands on the mat to bring me back into the room. I had stuffed my sadness this many years; I wasn’t about to let my grief spill out here on the dojo mat, but internally I was a mess. I got up, scrambled over to the shoes, grabbed mine, and left the dojo as fast as my legs could carry me. I started sobbing, just as I had when I left Father Dempsey’s office, trying desperately to keep myself together. What happened that Sunday at the dojo was terrifying, and I wasn’t willing to let that happen again. So I never went back.

  Though I couldn’t put these words to it then, my world was becoming small. I started living with fear—of getting hit by another car, of my grief, of my future that was looking more and more like I was going to be on my own.

  I knew my emotions were bottled up and unresolved, but that was the only way I knew how to be. I didn’t know how to grieve. Instead of going back to the dojo, I went to see a therapist, Lynn. When I first met her, I told her that I was there to “get over my accident” and I wanted to wrap this up in six months. Lynn suppressed a laugh and told me it might take a little longer than that.

  I didn’t know a lot about post-traumatic stress disorder, but Lynn did. She created a nurturing, warm environment. Sitting in her office was like being in a cocoon of comfort. During one of our first visits, I was explaining to her how the accident happened. I had learned to talk about this moment of my life with the practiced authority of an orator. I spoke with little emotion, a master at hiding my feelings. As I was explaining why it took so long for the ambulance to arrive on the scene of the accident, a siren started wailing outside Lynn’s window. My voice cracked, but I continued my narrative. Lynn gently asked me to stop talking.

  “Listen to that siren, Colleen.” The siren howled louder. “How does that make you feel?” Ever since the accident, the sound of an ambulance sent my heart racing, which made me feel foolish and weak, not strong like I had convinced myself I needed to be. Sitting there with Lynn, in that warm room, I allowed myself to give in to the anguish. I couldn’t respond to her. I could only sob.

  Lynn told me about the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and explained that people go there to grieve. On purpose. There is no shame in the tears that fall at the Wailing Wall. There is no expectation to be stoic. I was aware that though I had cried a lot over the years, I had stifled my deepest grief, but Lynn’s permission to express it was the first time I felt safe doing so. She loaned me a piece of the Wailing Wall, about the size of a small stone, which someone had brought her from Jerusalem. I tucked it into a leather pouch and wore it around my neck every day for months. Here was a construct for healing that was far removed from my Catholic upbringing—no shame required. I rubbed the rock whenever I heard sirens, whenever my leg hurt, whenever I felt sad. I learned how to allow the sadness to bubble to the surface instead of constantly shoving it down.

  Lynn likened the process of grieving to that of peeling an onion. When I peeled an onion later at home, the first papery layer was hard to remove because it was clinging to the onion. After I peeled it off, I noticed how transparent it was. I wondered if the emotions sitting on the surface of my heart were going to be equally difficult to peel away. I wondered if they were just a mirror of what lay beneath. Lynn worked with me on how to appropriately express emotions, how to ask for help, how to be vulnerable.

  As I grieved for my accident, I also allowed myself to process my feelings about my abortions. Lynn asked if doing a ritual would bring closure to those experiences. I liked that idea. On a Saturday morning I made two small figures, each about two inches long. I took scraps of fabric and made crude bundles resembling swaddled babies, one purple and one green. With colorful beads from my craft cupboard, I decorated the bundles by sewing spirals and stars on the fabric. Intuitively I knew one was a boy and one was a girl. I carried the baby bundles around delicately in my pockets for four days—four representing the four seasons of the year, the seasons they did not live through because of my decision to terminate their lives. On the fourth day I then took them to an old-growth park near my home and buried them under the largest cedar tree I could find. The cedar felt protective and wise. I wanted to give my little beings a proper burial. With my bare hands, I dug a shallow grave in the soft ground under the cedar and set the two bundles inside, resting them side by side. I sang a Native American chant I had learned from a medicine woman I’d studied with a few years earlier. After I covered the bundles with the earth, I sat down and leaned against the tree and meditated. I envisioned these two little souls soaring into the heavens, free and happy.

  The process of burying these bundles helped me exhume my grief. I felt lighter after the ritual, having brought closure, as much as I could at that point, to the decisions I made. When I buried those bundles, I made the decision to let go of the regret and self-recrimination that I had held on to for so many years. I forgave the unforgivable.

  14

  FORGIVING THE UNFORGIVABLE

  Every year in early January I fell into the depths of contemplation and depression as I neared the anniversary of the accident. It was on the fifteenth anniversary, when I was thirty-two years old, that something snapped as I sat in my living room waiting for a phone call I didn’t know I was waiting for. Like an unexpected punch to the gut, I realized that Harvey had never contacted me to be sure I was okay.

  After the trial, he never wrote a nice note of apology for ruining my life. He never drove down to see me to make sure that I was real and not the recurring nightmare I hoped I was to him at night. I was suddenly consumed with a rage, pure and direct.

  I decided to call him. Right then. I’d show him what a nightmare was like. There was no stopping me.

  As the dark outside turned darker on January 3, 1993, I got off my sofa and walked decidedly to the phone sitting on my desk. I called directory assistance to get his number in Victoria, BC, where I knew he lived. They only had his mother’s number, so I called her. Simple as that. I didn’t know if she was aware that her son had ripped away a young women’s leg, so I just left my name and number and asked her to have him contact me. I went to bed feeling relieved that I had finally figured out where to target my anger.

  At work the next day, I wondered: Will he call? Does he remember my name? Does he even know what yesterday was? I was afraid I would have to embarrass myself by explaining what he’d done to me before I yelled at him for having done it. Would he call me, or ignore my message, afraid of what I might say to him? By the time I got home from work, I was a nervous wreck. As I waited for his call, I paced and smoked, smoked and paced. And then the phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  His slight Canadian accent responded, “Hello Colleen, this is Harvey.”

  “Do you remember who I am?” I screamed, bracing myself against my desk. The sound of his voice was like a gust of strong wind, threatening to knock me over.

  Through his own grave sobs, he responded, “Oh, yes.”

  “Do you know what yesterday was?” I demanded, surprised that he was emotional, too, but not willing to give up my rehearsed series of questions.

  “Oh, yes,” he cried. “I think of you every year. I think of you all the time.”

  What was he doing, crying like that? How could I be angry at him now? How could I make my case? Soon h
e was saying, “I’m sorry,” over and over again on the other end of the line. This wasn’t going the way I wanted. His willingness to apologize got me off track. I wasn’t sure which way to go.

  We ended the call when Harvey offered to meet with me. I put the receiver back in its cradle and sat down on the floor near the phone, my breathing shallow. What had just happened?

  Meeting with the man who had changed the direction of my life felt risky and bold, but I decided I had to do it. I had waited a very long time to face this down—to face him down. We agreed to meet in Victoria. He still hadn’t traveled south on the road on which the accident had happened. He said that coming to Seattle would be too difficult for him—could I come to Canada?

  Too difficult?

  Because I’d gone to college near the accident site, I had traveled that road countless times. Each time I drove past the place where I’d lost my leg, the metallic taste of shock saturated my mouth. Sometimes I cried. Sometimes I continued my conversation with the person I was driving with, and pretended it was just any other piece of roadway. Sometimes I hid my feelings by lighting up another cigarette. Too difficult? He didn’t know what difficult was. But, true to character, I decided to take care of his needs more than my own and drive up to see him.

  In preparation for our meeting, I spent five sessions with Lynn, preparing my list of all the reasons I was so angry. My anger at what happened had never been this consciously directed before. It was a relief to finally target my anger where it belonged: at Harvey.