That is an understatement.
I wasn’t suicidal. That wasn’t enough.
I didn’t want to destroy myself. I wanted to destroy everything.
I wanted to rip up the sky, and light everything on fire, and watch it all burn to the ground.
Now, at the end of that, six months later, I’m back in my ob-gyn’s office. My husband, Jonathan, is with me, and she delivers the great news. “Guess what? It’s great. You’re cleared. You’re good to go.”
And then she says, “So you guys can try again.”
And we are just sitting in silence, shocked silence, so much so that she goes, “Well, don’t you want to try to have kids again?”
So interesting. First of all, we never tried to begin with. Second of all, we were just trying to get to a place where I felt normal and in control of my body again.
And, man, I have been asked if I want to have kids thousands of times in my life, and I usually just responded with a bit of a joke, to be honest.
I would say, “Sure I do, but who’s going to raise them?”
Or, “Yes, of course, but I live in New York. Where am I going to put ’em?”
But this time I looked her right in her eyes, and I said, “It’s too late. I’m too old.”
She reminded me that she had many patients of an advanced maternal age, and she suggested that I go get an egg-count test, a blood test.
She ended the appointment saying, “Why don’t we just see what happens?”
Now, if anything seemed routine and normal to me, it was giving blood. So I went into Quest Diagnostics, one of the most casual medication facilities on the planet. I mean, it’s hard to believe that that exists.
You walk in, and there’s a woman faxing forms, and you say, “Hey, I’m here to give some blood,” and she puts down the toner and snaps on gloves. She fishes out a syringe from a pencil case, and there are no diplomas on the walls—there are just lockup instructions.
But she took my blood, and then a few days later I got an e-mail from my ob-gyn with a weird number and a one-line note, and it just said, “An encouraging number for someone your age.”
And I cried, because it was the nicest thing anyone in the medical community had said to me for years. I looked at the calendar, and I thought, Maybe I’ll see if Jonathan wants to try.
I told him about the results of the test over breakfast. I said, “Oh, the omelet you made me reminded me that…” and I was like, “Encouraging number…My age…Encouraging eggs.”
Jonathan nodded, and he looked very pensive, and he said, “While I can imagine us having a life with kids, I can also imagine us not having a life with kids, and we’d be okay. We’d be okay together, you know. We’d travel, and we’d do nice things. We’d have a nice life, just the two of us.”
I knew he was being honest, but I also felt he was trying to protect me. He didn’t want me going through anything more. He didn’t want me to be put in another medical situation or have something—another physical thing—happen to me.
And I got it. I was equally terrified. I wanted nothing more than to feel like nothing could ever get to me again.
But later that day, weirdly, I found myself writing him an e-mail, my own husband.
I wrote, “I think we should try, because we can’t guarantee that we’re going to have a kid. We can just try and see what happens. But if we don’t try just because we’re scared, then the fear has won, and I can’t live in that world.”
And he responded, “Great. Let’s do it.”
So I will admit, though, that after month one, when I got my period, I wasn’t all like, “We can’t guarantee it. We’ll just try and see what happens.”
I swore at my period. I swore at my body.
I was like, “What’s going on, encouraging eggs?”
I was so mad, and I felt this primal urge in me. I was like, I have to have a baby, and it has to happen now.
And then the second month when I didn’t get my period, I was just silently terrified.
Now, through all of this, people kept telling me, “You need to think positively.”
And I would just go, “What are you talking about? How can I look at myself in the mirror and lie to myself?”
Because I know what it’s like when things don’t work out the way you want them to.
But now I understand what that’s about, because it really doesn’t matter if you think positive or negative. It has zero influence on the outcome, but it certainly changes how you experience the moment.
I’m lucky. I have a one-year-old baby boy at home right now. His name is Lucas. His crib is taking over the room that was supposed to be my dream office. He’s learning how to walk, and he’s always tripping over the wine fridge. And he’s sweet. He smiles all the time for no reason.
And I’m still full of fear. Oh, my God, so many question marks loom in the future, but I try to challenge myself.
I try asking myself, Okay, if everything fell apart, if everything went to hell the worst way possible, would I think to myself, I am so glad I did not let myself experience joy or enthusiasm in the good moments because it really protected me from the future?
No. Life doesn’t work like that. Nothing protects you.
So I practice enjoying.
And now my goal is sort of like my mom’s joke about kids ruining my life. My goal is that me, Jonathan, and Lucas, we all get to ruin our lives together.
* * *
OPHIRA EISENBERG is a comedian, a writer, and the host of NPR’s Ask Me Another. She has appeared on HBO’s Girls, on Comedy Central, Gotham Live, The Late Late Show, the Today show, and on VH-1. She was selected as New York magazine’s Top 10 Comics That Funny People Find Funny and was featured in the New York Times as a skilled comedian and storyteller with a “bleakly stylish” sense of humor. Her debut memoir, Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy, was optioned for a feature film with Zucker Productions. Her recent comedy special, also called Inside Joke, is available on iTunes and Amazon.
This story was told November 3, 2016, at The Great Hall of The Cooper Union in New York City. The theme of the evening was Fever Pitch. Director: Maggie Cino.
It’s February 2015, and I’m in Boston on the T, heading home after Sunday brunch. The T is what we in Boston call the subway.
So I’m on the T, doing what I assume everybody else does, which is daydream and contemplate my own existence, when a screw pops off the panel right in front of me and falls down on the seat. Being the Good Samaritan that I am, I pick it up and put it back in place with my fingers.
I go back to contemplating my own existence when my contemplation is broken a second time, this time by a man yelling from behind me.
Now, it takes me a while to realize he’s yelling at me, but then I get up and I look at him.
He puts his finger in my face and says, “I saw what you just did there.”
I’m not sure what he’s talking about, and I don’t know how to respond.
And then he goes, “I saw you plant a bomb on the T.”
My heart sinks. I don’t know what to say, because I’ve never heard what he’s just said, directed at me. Before I can formulate a response, the T comes to a halt, two stops away from my apartment.
A lot of people hear the word “bomb” and the yelling and decide to leave, but I’m frozen in place. The man runs to the front of the train and quickly comes back with the conductor.
He points me out and says, “I saw that man plant a bomb on the T.”
A couple of guys stood up, and they said that I didn’t do anything. The conductor considered the situation. It was literally impossible for me to plant a bomb the way he said I did. I would have had to put it right on the seat, which clearly I hadn’t.
So the conductor decides everyone can sit down. I can come to the front of the train, sit right behind him, and when we get to my stop, I can leav
e.
I was a little bit relieved, and I thought, This was dealt with properly.
So I went to the front of the train with the conductor, but the man who accused me didn’t feel the same way. He was still upset, so he dialed 911.
Now, apparently dialing 911 activates some sort of transport-authority protocol. I’m not allowed to sit anymore. I have to stand next to the conductor as he puts one arm on me and steers the train with the other hand.
We go another stop, one stop away from my apartment. And that’s when the train is taken out of service. Everyone is asked to leave the train; the train is sent back to the station. Another train comes, and everyone’s allowed back on—with the exception of me, the man who accused me, and a female officer who was waiting at the stop.
This was one of the outdoor stops Boston has, and we were standing outside in February, during one of the coldest winters Boston had seen in over a decade. We were told to wait for the police.
My mind began to race. I’m here on a visa. I don’t know what this means. I don’t know if I’ll get searched, if I’ll get hauled to the station, if they’ll check my apartment, if my visa could be terminated and I could be sent back home. I don’t know what comes next.
I panic, and I unzip my jacket, and I throw it on the ground. I run up to the female officer, and I ask her to frisk me. I tell her to check my pockets—I have nothing on me. She tells me to calm down, put my jacket back on, and keep waiting.
So I do. We wait outside in the cold for thirty minutes.
I look at the man, and he starts to hesitate.
I think maybe we have a connection now, and he says, “I’m sorry.”
For the first time, I get a human moment from him.
Then he brushes it off, and says, “No, but I saw what I saw, and you did it.”
Now I am angry, and I want to yell. I want to tell him that he is ignorant and wrong. But I don’t. I calm myself down. I tell him I understand why he did what he did, but he just got the wrong guy.
He doesn’t like that answer. He gets close to me, and immediately the officer separates us. She puts him on the next train, tells him that they’ll call him later to come in and make a statement, and then she and I continue waiting for the police.
We wait for another half an hour outside in the cold. Then she gets a phone call. The police say that they’ve shown up to the wrong Harvard Avenue station and it would be hours before they got to this one.
So she decides if I leave my address and number with her, I can go home. Later that night they’d call me and I’d go into the station to give my full statement. I tell her that’s okay. I give her my information. She asks me if I want to get back on the T, but we’re one stop away from my apartment and I’m not quite ready yet, so I tell her I’ll walk. And I do.
My mind begins to race on my walk home. I’m from Saudi Arabia. It’s a conservative country, but I was a liberal-minded kid, so I didn’t always feel like I belonged. Everyone wanted to talk about traditional family values, and I wanted to know who would win in a fight, Batman or Superman.
So when it came time to pick colleges, I knew immediately that I wanted to come to the States, and I picked Boston. I was looking for my people, and it took me a second, but then I found them in the comic-book lovers, the Dungeons & Dragons players, and the video gamers.
It turns out that my people are what you guys call nerds.
The nerds and I got along great, and it was awesome until close to the end of our senior year. We were all about to graduate, and everyone would go back home after that. I’d have to go back home, too, unless I was able to find a job, and it didn’t look like anyone was hiring.
I had been anxious and afraid, and now I was dealing with a much bigger issue, race. I mean, I’m not a stranger to racial slurs, racial comments—being detained at the airport. I’ve been “randomly selected” more times than random would allow.
But this was different. This was an accusation. It was immediate, and I didn’t know what it meant.
I get to my apartment that night, and I am angry and frustrated and afraid. If I don’t belong back home, and I don’t belong here, then what comes next?
I pick up my phone, and I call my friend Jackie. She was one of the few people who was thinking about staying in Boston, so I clung to her like a life raft. She immediately reaffirmed my situation. She told me how messed up everything was. I got a little calmer.
She then reminded me that that day, February 1, 2015, was the day of the Super Bowl. Our New England Patriots were set to play the Seattle Seahawks, and I was invited to a party at her place.
I told her that I didn’t care about football and I didn’t want to go to a party. But it was really me being afraid of the phone call I knew was going to come.
Jackie doesn’t take no for an answer, so I cave like I always do, and I tell her I’ll go.
Before I walk out, I take my phone and I put my ringer on the loudest setting so I can hear the call when it comes.
I headed outside. I could have taken the T fifteen minutes to her place, but I didn’t know if I was allowed, so I walked forty minutes in the cold until I got there.
As soon as I walked into the hallway, I could hear the loud sports-party sounds and excitement. I calmed myself, and I opened the door.
Immediately everyone went silent. I saw a couple of friends, but it was mostly friends of friends and loose acquaintances. Apparently Jackie had told everyone what just happened to me.
I got hugs from my friends, and a couple of people told me they were sorry that this had to happen and that they were there for me. I appreciated it, but a party is a party, and pretty quickly everyone went back to the game.
Every once in a while, though, someone would sit next to me and tell me how messed up it was that that happened. I knew they were being genuine, but I couldn’t connect just yet. I was so intensely focused on this phone call that I wasn’t there. I would constantly pull out my phone and check if it had rung.
And then it did.
I look across the room at Jackie, and she signals for me to take the phone call outside because it was quieter, so I did. I pick up the phone, and the man on the other end of the line introduces himself as Jim. Just Jim.
And Jim had dialed the wrong number.
I kindly let Jim know, and I hung up. I picked myself up from my breakdown again, and I allowed myself to go back into the room.
This time, though, everyone was up and putting jackets on. I was confused.
I asked them what was going on, and they told me, “Oh, we’re coming with you.”
Apparently in their minds I was going to walk into the police station with an army of nerds in Patriots jerseys who would one by one proclaim my innocence.
I told them that it wasn’t necessary, but I appreciated it, and I was really thankful.
We ended up winning the game that night, and everyone stormed outside into the same cold from earlier, but this time celebrating and partying and yelling. It was amazing.
I didn’t end up getting that phone call, though. Not that night, not the next—or ever.
Every once in a while, I wonder if the phone call could still come. When I’m at airports, I get a little bit nervous that they’ll bring it up. I don’t know if it’s on record somewhere or if it will ever lead to anything.
But out there in the cold, I realized something. It took one man to alienate me and make me feel like I completely didn’t belong.
But then seventeen amazing nerds let me know that I did.
And I knew right there that these were my people, Boston was my city, and I wasn’t leaving the US anytime soon.
* * *
ALI AL ABDULLATIF was born and raised in Saudi Arabia. He received his BA in psychology and neuroscience in 2015 from Boston University. Most recently he was a researcher at the Laboratory of Neurodegenerative Disorders at Boston University,
working on ALS, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s. He is currently living in Baltimore working on a master’s degree in biomedical engineering. Ali also writes comedic short films and hosts a podcast titled We Have the Facts on iTunes. He also hosts a taco night every Tuesday.
This story was told on April 13, 2017, at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara, California. The theme of the evening was Great Escapes. Director: Maggie Cino.
It was Christmastime 1974. I was ten years old, but I was not looking forward to Christmas that year.
The previous spring my mother and the man who was to become my stepfather—when all the divorces were finalized and he and my mother could marry—had moved our family from rural central Alabama to sunny Southern California. My little brother, Todd, and I were leaving behind our father and all our extended family.
This would be my first Christmas away from Alabama.
My beautiful and elegant mother took to California like a swan to a royal lake. My soon-to-be stepfather was a California native. My athletic little brother reveled in a temperate climate that allowed him to be outdoors eleven months of the year.
I, however, was a fat, awkward child with a high-pitched voice and a heavy southern accent. I was having extreme difficulty with the transition to a West Coast lifestyle.
There are few things more harrowing than changing schools midterm. My first day at my new school, I went to the front of my fourth-grade class to introduce myself.
All I said was my name and where I was from, and the class erupted in laughter, with jeers of “He talks funny” and “He has a weird accent.”
It took the teacher two minutes to restore order, and she was angry at me for having caused a disruption.
I was so disillusioned after that first day that instead of walking home after school, I went to a nearby gas station and used the phone booth there to try and place a collect call to Granny Smith, my paternal grandmother.
Granny Smith was my biggest ally. I was going to ask her if I could return to Alabama and live with her and if she would send me the money for a bus ticket home. But the line was busy, and despite several attempts I didn’t get through.
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