In Star Trek: The Next Generation, a species called the Borg is united by a collective consciousness. Each humanoid is identified by their place in the collective: “seven of nine,” say, or “two of ten.” Growing up in my family, as the fourth child, I was “six of eight.” We were the proverbial “all for one and one for all” family. There was great comfort in growing up absorbed in this collective. We laughed alike, prayed alike, thought alike, and eventually we would be expected to vote alike.
Catholicism was infused into our clan. Our faith defined us as a unit and was integral to our family’s identity. Our social circle was centered around the church and our Catholic grade school. Mom and Dad’s faith guided their decisions about how we served our community and helped others. We were so close, it was like we were different aspects of one being.
Mom and Dad had six children in eight years. Although we were tightly knit, each of my siblings had a distinct quality that distinguished them as a unique thread. The eldest, Maureen, had a sharp mind; Mary Beth, who came next, was the musically talented one; Kevin, the eldest boy, was Dad’s constant companion on fishing and hunting trips. I was convinced he was Dad’s favorite. Then there was me—every family has one—nondescript, vague, nothing special. This is how I had always seen myself and how I assumed everyone else saw me, too. Matthew and David, the two youngest boys, were like two peas in a pod: they were loud, funny, obnoxious, and endearing. I desperately looked to my siblings to see who I was, but the reflection was vague. I saw I was a Haggerty, I was Democrat, and I was supposed to be funny and kind; but I could never see the specifics of who I was.
I was thirteen years old when Dad died. All six of us children banded around my mother in support like white blood cells enveloping an infection, for she appeared to be the one most deeply affected. Her pain was our pain. We selflessly gave up social events to stay home and keep her company. We ensured her birthday, their wedding anniversary, and all major holidays were as happy as possible. We made homemade gifts oozing with meaning and sentimentality. And during those first grief-filled years, we each learned empathy skills and became highly sensitive to others’ pain. While on the outside it looked as though our collective had dwindled, we held to Dad’s spirit and memory so tightly that he retained a place in the whole.
But in the midst of that loss, I still felt as dull as the winter skies of my native Washington. I’d wanted to stand out, to peek through the clouds and sparkle some of my uniqueness to my family and to the world, but I figured that wasn’t my fate. God’s plan for me was to be plain. I knew my place; I knew what part I played in our collective. I was the shy one. I was the baby girl. I was the wallflower. No one seemed to expect much from me other than to show up and be kind.
In those earlier years before high school, I only had one friend, Patty. I would look at her when we were together and try to see who I was in her eyes, but again, the vision was cloudy. What Patty reflected was my sweetness, my quietness, and my occasional daring spirit. She and I got along so well I never had a chance to understand how to be in a relationship with another person while exposing and accepting the differences between two people.
Because of the closeness of my family and my relationship with Patty, I reached adolescence confused about where I ended and other people began. After my accident, I couldn’t have been more different from other people—or more separate from them. My amputation catapulted me into a distant universe, and yet here I was, still living on Earth. The only evidence I had that I was still here was my body—my now-deformed and ugly body. Though my family was a great source of comfort to me, they were also my most frequent reminder that I was now alienated, cut out from their normality. When we were young, Mom and Dad demonstrated the waltz and the Lindy to us, and we would sometimes spontaneously get up from the dinner table and dance. After my accident, when the urge to dance first hit my family, I froze. How do I do this? How do I even try without looking like a moron? If there was a safe place to put on my gimpy dancing shoes, it should have been with my family. If there were people who could make me feel proud of myself for trying, it would have been my clan. And if there were men who could get me to twirl with glee under their strong, capable arms, they were my brothers. But I knew I was no longer like them.
I experienced the way people looked at me in the real world. The looks of admiration and pity. The look that, even though I couldn’t name it yet, said, “Wow, you’re so brave. I admire you, but I wouldn’t want to be you.” I could tolerate that from outsiders, but I couldn’t risk seeing those pitying looks on the faces of my family members.
The longer I lived as an amputee and the more being one-legged became my new normal, the more the compliments bothered me because they marked me as insufficient. These comments told me that people saw something to be compensated for in the fact that I was an amputee. More to the point, the praises of strangers let me know that I was being seen not for who I was, but for what I was missing.
No one in my world knew my internal experience, my secret world, my spirit world, the tender, quiet, child part of me that was impacted by my amputation. And their questions and accolades couldn’t and didn’t touch this part. This sacred, hidden part was difficult to articulate, name, or even understand. Every day I was drowning in a deeper chasm of insecurity and doubt, and I was desperate for some form of relief.
That summer I told Rob, “I want to start smoking.” I was surprised to hear the words come out of my mouth, but once they did, they rang true. I needed something to help me calm down.
“Well then, go ahead,” he said. I was taken aback. Rob had strong opinions about a lot of things, and he made it clear he didn’t like cigarettes. Rob was my world, and his go-ahead was all I needed.
Turning to cigarettes was the only way I knew how to deal with the feelings I was stuffing into the depths of my heart. By the time I confessed to Rob that I wanted to start smoking, I was on the verge of bursting. My feelings were a jumbled mess of sadness, anger, resentment, rage, and fear. Adapting to my prosthetic leg slowed down the physical pace in my life, but everything else was swirling past me at warp speed. Losing my leg tore my world apart, and I felt like my life had been put back together with clapboard; there was no solid foundation to me anymore.
When I sat alone with a cigarette, I could slow down and think. As the smoke swirled around me, I was enveloped in my own little world. I escaped, if only for a few minutes, the unspoken expectations from everyone else that I be happy and positive. It was my time to numb out.