Nowhere to be seen

If you haven't read the recent critical post about me, the following will make no sense to you.  If you have, please know that any continued post I write about it, such as this one, is written not to add a shred of pain to the issue, for anyone involved.  But this one sentence has kept me awake for large sections of three nights now, and needs to come up and out.

"Catherine Ryan Hyde was nowhere to be seen."

Leslie reports coming home and having a terrible encounter with our father.  And the last line of the report is, "Catherine Ryan Hyde was nowhere to be seen." 

Words are so powerful.  They paint such evocative pictures.

What does that sentence evoke to you?  That's not a rhetorical question.  I'm really hoping a few people will tell me.  Because I don't want to fall into that trap of acting like I know what the other party intended.  I just know it feels like a subtle indictment.  Where was I? it asks.  Saying I couldn't be seen (rather than saying I wasn't there), almost makes it sound as though I was hiding.  But that's only my reaction to it.  Others might interpret it differently.

Anyway, the point of this post is to answer the indictment.

I had already moved away from home.

I had "accelerated" through high school.  I don't know if anyone will know what that means, because I don't even know if you're allowed to do it anymore.  Basically it means I completed four years of high school in three years.  I graduated less than two months after my 17th birthday.  And I moved away.

I was somewhere to be seen.  I was just not in Buffalo.  I was living in the Bronx, sharing with a roommate, doing daily business reports for Avis Rent-a-Car in Manhattan.  They thought I was eighteen.  Why they didn't check, I don't know. 

Many months later, when I had moved to L.A. and was sharing an apartment with my sister Christie, she told me that Leslie had come back while I was away.  And that was the first I had heard of it.

Now hopefully you see why I've been so haunted by that sentence.  Catherine Ryan Hyde was nowhere to be seen.  I, too, left.  

Here's an exercise for anyone who cares to try it.  Some won't.  Some will never change their mind, and, knowing this, I won't try.  But others I know are listening.  Try remembering the worst misunderstanding you ever had within your family of origin.  The time you felt most misunderstood by a family member.  Now picture it playing out publicly, their version of you being told to countless strangers, who know nothing of you at all. How quick do you hope people will to be to judge?

Comments

[Marian]

I think you missed her point: she was pointing out that you publicly claimed that you knew about the pain transgendered people suffer because you grew up with a transgendered sibling. She was pointing out that it is unlikely that you could have learned much about her experience precisely because you were not present in those moments most seminal to that experience, and to her experience. Now, it's true that you may have seen the fallout of some of these moments, but you can never know--anymore than I can--what those moments meant to her. It is clear that she does not feel and may never have felt safe in sharing with you how she did feel in those moments--I'm exceptionally close to my siblings and I can't claim to even begin to understand how my bisexual sister feels about her sexual identity, or how my mentally ill sister feels about her struggles. Certainly, my sisters, both creative writers, would never try to tell people that they understand what it's like to be someone with body dysphoria simply because they shared a home with me for a dozen years. Often, it is the part of us that other people define us by that we least want to divulge our own feeling about. It's not a failure on your part or hers that you can't understand her experience--that's just one of the limitations of the human experience.

Perhaps you didn't mean to claim you could. Perhaps you meant that you saw what your parents did to her, what other people did to her, and that's where you based your authority--in what they did TO her, not what SHE experienced, felt, and cried over. But that's, at best, half the story. I hope that, as her sister, you will respect her wishes. If you saw how she was victimized growing up, perhaps you can understand her desire to be left in peace. And that doesn't just mean not calling or visiting: it means not using her experience to establish your authority on a subject. It is what she wants and needs. Give your sister the gift of silence on her and her life.

[Catherine]

Marian, your post is thoughtfully worded, and I thank you for that. But it still starts with the basic premise that the book is about Leslie's experience, and that I said I had authority to speak of such. Neither of those is the case.

You've touched on what many people have pointed out is the greatest irony in all of this: that there was no connection between Leslie and this book until Leslie very publicly established one. I really don't think it's fair to suggest I say nothing, at least initially, to reflect the huge "other side" that readers would not find in Leslie's post. That said, I agree with your final point, which is why I did my best to write these follow-up posts mainly from a perspective of more about me and my life.

[Marian]

Actually, Catherine, at no point did I say that the book was about her experience--because I don't believe there's ANY evidence that it is. If anything, it's going to, de facto, be more about your experience with transgendered people. What I said was is that you were writing about "the pain transgendered people suffer," which you in part based on your experiences with your sister or at least your observation of her mistreatment (which seemed to be what you had implied in the interview). You took exception to her saying that you weren't there at a particular moment and defended yourself by saying that you too had moved out. My point was that it doesn't even matter whether you were there or not--solely because even if you had been there, all you would have witnessed is what was said or done--not what it meant to her.

You know, as a writer, that how a character FEELS about what is happening is often the most important thing that a writer imparts to her audience--it can entirely change the meaning of a scene. And for you to have truly understood what these moments meant to her would have required you to have either been her or to have had some very lengthy and incredibly personal talks with her, which obviously was not part of your relationship with her then or now. Now, I would never say that a writer cannot write about a group they are not a member of. Of course, an account of an experience one has personally had will almost always seem more authentic, but certainly literature would never progress if people only wrote what they had had happened to them personally.

But this is a bit beside the point. I was not responding to the initial claim which implied that you understood the pain because you had a transgendered sister. What I was trying to address is that your defense to her saying that "Catherine Ryan Hyde was nowhere to be seen" was to explain why you weren't there. I was pointing out that why you were not there was immaterial precisely because you could have been in the room and it still would not have given you the most important piece of what that experience meant to the transgendered person who was living it--which again, is not a failure on your part. It's just the limitations of this human condition at work. Moreover, while you might not have been there for that particular moment, I don't doubt that there were other horrific moments that you witnessed. And while you cannot speak AS a transgendered person, you certainly have every right to describe, based on your own experiences, things you know that transgendered people suffer. You are even free to imagine how you would feel in such siutations and write that into your characters. That's an essential part of writing any character. But whether you were there or not in a particular moment really didn't matter--and I say that to both you AND your sister.

What I was also trying to say, and perhaps I should have been more direct, was that at this point, picking out pieces of what she wrote and taking the time to write a defense of your actions does not serve you well, and continues, in your sister's eyes, your family's victimization of her. If you saw what they did to her, if you've seen your friend's pain, then you should know that they don't need one more person piling on. I don't think you intended anything negative. But reading what she wrote, it's obvious that her feelings are raw, and given her experiences, legitimate. And when you cut to the core of her blog post about it, it really came down not to any particular moment or any particular event, but decades of feeling abandoned and rejected by your family, only to be trotted out because it was of (perceived) benefit to them. I don't think that's what you intended, but it's easy to see why she feels that way--it's precisely because of the pain that transgendered people experience because of how the culture and even their how families treat them, the pain you were indirectly talking about combatting.

Thus, in the end, what I am really saying, as a sister, a writer, and someone who--like you--has friends who are transgendered, is that you have the opportunity to help make up for some of the pain your family has caused her, your sister and a transgendered person. I also know, specifically as a sister, how terrible it is to have a sibling tell you that they never want to talk to you again. It's got to be painful for you. But if you care for her, and those like her, give her what she says she needs. Let it go. You've made it clear that you did not wish to victimize her or use her to benefit yourself. The only thing left to do is to wish her well, love her from afar, and make it clear you're there if she ever changes her mind. It may not feel like an act of love, and it may be hard, but it's what she says she needs and you can give it to her. I hope for both of you that you can bring yourself to do just that. There's even the chance that she will see it as a singluar act of love, even if she never expresses it. But either way, YOU will always know what you did and why.

I wish both of you peace.

Marian

[Catherine]

Thank you for clarifying, Marian. Apparently I had misunderstood you. Your comment is gentle, helpful and well received. I'm sure you've noticed that no new posts have been added for several days, and that I closed out the comments on my original blog post. I too feel that enough has been said.