heartier fare (a poem)

Will I ever believe the things other people see in me?
A published article compares me to a Hindu goddess,
because, according to the journalist, Wonder Woman
just doesn’t have enough dimensions to her.
My doctor says she bragged about me, over the holidays,
to her son’s girlfriend, (who goes to Harvard Med),
that she told her I’m like one of those people
from high school or college, who has so many accomplishments,
except that I’ve continued on, after school is long done…
My first thought, as I listened and blushed, was:
how can so many bright people be so deluded?
But I respect her so much, so instead, I said,
“That’s an interesting perspective; thank you.”

When will I stop feeling like the failure my father says I am?
He told his sister I should have been CEO of a Fortune 500,
and confided, over 12-year-old scotch on the rocks,
that he’d never get over the disappointment
of my living in Ohio, painting walls, mothering three kids.
I fake-laughed when my aunt repeated this, and said
“Whoever would expect that of me never knew me at all!”
At 23, when I found the courage to declare myself an artist,
my mother screamed “why did we send you to Harvard?”
“So that I could have the courage to become myself,
so the world could be opened to me in all its possibilities.”
I said this to myself, after she’d hung up the phone in a rage,
leaving me alone again, to nurse the hurt of her disapproval.

How is it they could come to my son’s bar mitzvah, but not speak
either to him or me, nor to my husband, choosing instead
to congratulate their former son-in-law, whom they once so despised?
Everything designed to hurt me, even my father’s words at the bar.
(He knew his sister would pass them along, do the wounding for him.)
Admired by friends, adored by three sons and a devoted husband,
I am asked to serve on boards, teach people’s kids, be a role model…
I perform, hold forth, teach, advise, share my opinion,
but deep down, I fear I’m not enough, less than I might have been...
I was set up to fulfill so many other people’s dreams,
but I only wanted to seek and discover my own destiny.
What was I meant to do, to become and who would I find
to love me for who I really am, who I was born to be?

Set adrift at sixteen, I feel lost, scared and undeserving…
I chase elegant, arrogant, pretty boys, suffer their nonchalance,
let their indifference pierce my heart as it confirms, over and again,
that I am lacking, or too much, or somehow, just not quite right,
unworthy of being loved for a reason I can neither define nor deny.
Too tall, too Jewish, too Long Island, too smart, too loud, too confident, ha!
If they only knew how empty, how needy, how starved for acceptance,
how hard I have worked to fashion the intimidating façade they see,
how terrified, yet how desperate I am, to let someone see how vulnerable,
how soft and still unformed I am inside my tough, pretty shell.
Don’t tell me I am not good enough to be loved just as I am.
Someday I will know you were wrong, and you will suffer for your cruelty.
I will snap my Mama shell tight to protect my children and you will be shut out.