The Unwinding of the Miracle - Julie Yip-Williams Page 0,35

of course Joel. And then the people who couldn’t resist the allure of seeing themselves on the big screen in Times Square came swarming in, like moths to a flame. The camera zoomed in on me and Josh, and I covered my face in embarrassment. While Josh might look like a politician on camera with his polished wave, I am no politician’s wife, uncomfortable underneath the weight of all that attention.

Cousin N and Joel had orchestrated the whole thing. Joel and his company sell time on the digital billboards in Times Square. N told him what was happening with me, and he was apparently so moved that he insisted on doing something special. I can only imagine how much advertising revenue Joel’s company sacrificed in order to put up an ad about a cancer patient on her last day of chemo. I wrapped my arms around him, and much to my surprise, I wept uncontrollably into his wool coat.

You see, I am not so old that I have forgotten the deeply rooted feelings of being unwanted, and so I still don’t know what to do with kindness. This gesture from my cousin and her friend was moving enough, but the fact that it was a visual gesture, and on such a grand scale, well, that made my knees buckle.

My mother had my siblings go to Chinese school to learn Mandarin Chinese after regular school, but never me. You won’t be able to read the Chinese characters, she told me. Fifth Uncle took my siblings and cousins to see Star Wars: Return of the Jedi in the theater, but not me. “Why don’t I get to go?” I asked my sister. Because you might not be able to see the screen, she said. (Translation: no one wants to waste money on you.) Once when I was nine, Cousins N and C and my sister all got to go to San Francisco to visit Fourth Uncle and I didn’t get to go. Why? I asked my mother. Because you can’t see like everyone else, and no one will take care of you was her response. From a young age, I felt marginalized; I felt defective because I was told through actions and words that I was defective.

So I spent many years proving that I could see well enough to go to the movies, to travel the world on my own, to study Chinese (I lived in China during my junior year in college, and became fluent). I did it all for many reasons, but mostly it was to prove my own worth to myself and my family. I felt as if I had to prove myself into existence every day, because my existence was a proposition that had early on been very much in doubt. At some point, when I had accomplished all that I had dreamed of accomplishing and indeed gotten married and had children and done those things that everyone once said I wouldn’t be able to do, I began to feel self-worth and love from within as well as from without. But to a large degree, I could never let go of those feelings of being unwanted and unloved, so ingrained had they been in me from such a tender age.

I’m pretty sure that feelings of insecurity are nearly universal. I see the insecurity already in my children, even though they have had the benefit of nurturing teachers and (I’d like to think) nurturing parents. I’m always amazed at how the beautiful and intelligent never feel quite beautiful or intelligent enough, how people constantly agonize over not being thin enough or charming enough. And all of these things matter—beauty, intelligence, weight, and hundreds of other criteria by which people judge themselves—because these are the characteristics people select to determine whether they’re indeed desirable and lovable.

Ultimately, we all have a constant need to be accepted and loved in this world, to feel connected to the communities represented by networks of family, friends, colleagues, church, and the other groups that surround us. To belong, to matter to someone, to feel comfort. It’s almost as if the fear of being unloved is part of our genetic makeup, or maybe it is deeper even than that, and is endemic to being born human on a tiny rock floating through infinity. That realization is enough to make even the least self-aware person a little insecure about what it all means, and what our role in this passion play might be. Ironically and