SUPERHUMAN

 

Superhuman 

    2020 will go down as a year of epiphanies. My own included. While many are not worth the mention, others I will stow away for future essays, and some I will only ever repeat to myself. But one-likely the most revelatory of them all—reverberates above the rest. I watched Lizzo’s interview with David Letterman on Netflix in the middle of the week in early October. I. LOVE. THAT. WOMAN! During her talk, Lizzo discussed a line from her song Truth Hurts: Why men great til’ they gotta be great? Sure, the line lacks a proper verb and may bear repeating until it registers. Still, the song's savvy ebonics add gravitas and make the message more robust and precise. Men, as in the patriarchy, want us to see them as heroic figures as if they can and will conquer every feat and destroy every dragon that enters their path. But often when the battle occurs, and the dragons descend to breathe fire, and we call upon our men to be dauntless, they back away into the bush, tail between their legs, shouting "no fair" to any and all that held them in such high, Herculean regard.

    Why men great ‘til they gotta be great? Because society loves a myth. Myths deem man (used in the broader inclusive sense) superhuman, and superhumans are unshakeable. Who doesn’t want that? I thought of my father. Long deceased, my father was a man that granted me unconditional love and the steely protection one might expect of a worshipper or a saint or, say... a superhero. In the six short years we shared, my father built for me an imperishable pedestal so sturdy and close to the sky fear never entered the frame. Though he had no such foundation and eventually succumbed, my father had created a welcoming space of permanence where I felt safe and worried little about anything worth worrying about and lived a serene life amongst the clouds. That space was my sanctuary life without my father turned grim. There, dreaming became my superpower, while the moon, the stars, and all the illuminated areas in between became the glowing friends I would someday analogize in a book. Never had I a reason to abandon the pedestal my father built or consider it in any other way. Until years after he died, another kind of “love,” a brutal, unrelenting possessive “love,” weakened its legs with grand gestures and false promises.

     I was fifteen when a guy, resembling my father in skin tone and stature but nothing else, convinced me that the hole he was about to bury me in was as, if not more, obliging than the pedestal I existed on. Until one day, he said, “Cut your hair like Anita Baker, you look a mess, and another day told me, “Lose some weight, you’re fat!” (I was 5’7" and 100lbs) “You could never be Ms.Teen America. You’re not perfect.” (To this day I regret not trying anyway) “Look at the ground when you walk next to me! I don’t want other guys seeing your face.” Because that guy lived his life constantly on guard, a rival of his own making, a victim of what and who surrounded him, I believed I was grotesque, unworthy, unloveable. Insistent, I pulled my head out of the clouds and closer to the ground; he chipped away at my legs until they were all but rotted and destroyed. But not until all the remaining shattered and splintered pieces of the pedestal my father built disintegrated into dust, not until I became smaller, less shiny, granular like rough and muddied sand, did that guy chipping cease. That kind of love, his attachment style, needed me to be visible enough so he could stare at me wantonly whenever the mood arose, yet invisible to everyone else, so no one else did the same, including me. I disappeared in the wake of him. Like slavery, capitalism, imperialism, or any divisive structure, his love needed to render me powerless to feel on top of the world. And before I saw my sixteenth birthday, that kind of love sent me crashing to earth like a fallen angel. For the longest while, I scraped my knuckles against the dirt, hoping to unearth the relic that was me. But it is a wiser, more reflective mind that understands because I had a father, a man, a superman, who loved me indelibly; the fear of anyone deeming me unlovable gave that guy power over my mind and body. That guy simply took the vestige and ran.

    Living amongst the clouds is one thing. Living in the clouds is another. 

    Although it took some time, I did the work of a thousand therapists and picked my face and heart up from the ground. And with the newly constructed podium I built, I gained confidence and agency over my life. However, the expectations of what another person, a partner, a lover, a loved one, or a friend should be were about to exceed what any normal human being could ever achieve. Because after creating something out of nothing, I became the steely protection I often required, the safe place to go and dream amongst the clouds, the superhuman I knew I had to be. 

    So as one relationship ended, two others began. The one I have with myself and the one I have with the man I would marry eight years later. The same man who ghosted me the entire week leading up to our wedding, which of course, I called off. After all, I had done the work. Right? I loved myself beyond what I thought possible, so I was unwilling to give another person permission to deem me invisible. I had put my heart and soul into planning a life together, but it was time to walk away. But then the reverend who married us, Reverend Britton--may she rest in peace--called me the night before the wedding was to take place and said, “Trust your heart. When you wake up in the morning, you’ll know.” 

    The following day, I woke up and knew he was still the man I wished to marry. So I showed up and sauntered down the aisle in a glistening white dress. Divine light reflected off my face and his as we exchanged vows and said, "I will," like married couples do in the movies. Reverend Britton introduced us as man and wife as he and I kissed to rousing applause. But I recall his lips tasted like brown liquor. Rum? Whiskey? I wasn’t sure. Either way, he and I hadn’t toasted to anything yet, but it was clear he had. Where and with whom are questions I banked for later that night.

    Outside a historic cathedral on the upper west side, on an unseasonably warm Saturday in November, three hundred and fifty people showered us in flower petals. An hour's drive along the Hudson later, at a waterfront ballroom in Westchester, my husband and I and our surfeit of wedding guests danced and drank and partied like it was 1999 because it was. When it was all said and done, tradition loomed. As newlyweds, we were expected to consummate our union and make love in the night's stir. However, before that could happen, I had to know whether the man I had just married was the superman I thought he was. “Where were you all week? I asked. “Why did you smell like alcohol at the cathedral?” I could see myself about to drown under his impending response.

    “I didn’t beg to marry me. It was your choice to show up,” he replied.

  Worse than I imagined, there it was again. That ugly, controlling, degrading kind of love I thought I had escaped in my previous relationship. And yet, I refused to accept that I had married a mere mortal, a regular human being incapable of being… well, super. Super! Either way, my husband was correct. He didn’t beg me to marry him, but he did ask, and I said yes. I said yes to a man I believed had created a space where I would always feel protected. A man I thought wanted to sit at the top of the world alongside me, not with me beneath his feet.

I didn’t have to show up then, but I did. I've been showing up for twenty-one years. Even when he sought not to defend me after his best friend’s wife cut my face, even when his brother’s former girlfriend disrespected me inside my own home and, instead of putting her in her place, told me I was the problem. Not once, but more than once, my husband showed me I mattered less than so many benign people and things. Throughout the years, his actions/inactions made it clear that our love did not exist amongst the clouds like that of my father and his daughter. For instance, at a gala I stewarded back in 2015, my husband waited in a long line just to congratulate a beautiful performer but not once had he congratulated me. The memory of watching him stay and gawk at her in awe stung. Not to mention the time he did little to censure his mother after she condemned me for being myself. But the most painful moment of all occurred three years ago. As my mother lay in her hospital bed, dying of cancer, my family threw daggers at me as if I were some thread-worn dartboard there to absorb the stabs. Already heartbroken, the constant disregard my family showed me as my mother’s health proxy/executor/only daughter compounded my grief. It seemed they couldn’t understand that I was about to lose a person I loved like them. My first ever love, my mother. And though it pains me to admit this, my husband delivered the mightiest blow. “This is not about you!“ he insisted just as I had arrived at my breaking point. He appeared to have taken the enemy's side. It felt like he had chosen another side and willfully ignored my pain. I know better now.

   I only wish that, at the moment, he understood that it was about me, too. My mother was on her deathbed; it was me that my family threatened and disrespected. My husband's job was to support me, keep my tears from dropping below my cheeks, keep my heart and head from hitting the ground, and build a fort around me so secure that no one could get close enough to taste my pain. In the end, the support my husband provided me at my mother's funeral and beyond proved more than worthy. He's shown me that he's my person, my rock, the man I thought I married. But therein lies my epiphany: to believe that even the person who loves you, the person closest to you, the person that promises you the world and hands it to you--most of the time--is going to rush in to catch you just before you fall, save you from monsters and tsunamis, show you the utmost compassion every single day and every single time is to believe in superheroes. And superheroes don’t exist. 

“Why men great til they gotta be great?” 

Truth hurts because man is not great. 

Superheroes are great. Superhumans are great.

Men are not superheroes; men are human. My husband is human, and I know now that's enough.

    After listening to Truth Hurts on repeat, I realized that neither my husband nor that guy I dated back when I was fifteen could have built what my father made or what I fashioned for myself. No matter what they did, I always held them to the impossible. Not just the impossible men purport to want to be, but to my father, a superman who died a superhero. Be they five or fifty, my father would have chopped off a finger before letting another person touch or attempt to chip away at my foundation. Never had he the chance to disappoint me; never a time where I called his name, and he didn’t rush to my side; never a time where I cried and a tear dropped beyond my cheek; never a time when harm encroached, and he hesitated to protect me. 

    "Forgive them for they know not what they are doing," Jesus said in Luke 23:34. And so, I forgive, and I forgave. But most of all, I let go of my ridiculously high expectations. People are flawed, afraid, perishable, and everything in between.

    Later that week, I apologized to my husband for doing what men already do to themselves, strapping him with unrealistic ideals. "Thank you," he said. "I appreciate you saying that." At that moment, it appeared a weight had lifted from his shoulders as tears straddled the rims of his eyes. I couldn't help but be touched. Real or faux, superhero capes are as heavy to wear as I imagine pride is for a man. After repeating the line from Lizzo’s song and sharing where my epiphany started, my husband and I talked for hours. During our conversation, he confessed that while I admitted my father died the superman no other man will ever be, he hoped I wouldn't lower my expectations to the point I stopped believing in him. I’m not sure my answer gave him the comfort he was looking for. I am sure, however, that if 2020 has taught me nothing, we are all works in progress. More to the point, I finally let myself off the hook. To live amongst the clouds does not mean I am happy and strong all of the time. Sometimes I am triggered. Sometimes I am angry. Sometimes I am sad, and sometimes I am weak. But it behooves me to say that being born a woman already makes me superhuman. I will never require the fit of a taut cape lined with mythological piping or some stratified structure that places regular men beneath my feet to feel on top of the world. I am a woman. And women are naturally incomparable.