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Behind the Mask

Surviving Life’s Ups and Downs

By Harmony KentPublished 3 years ago Updated 3 years ago 13 min read
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Behind the Mask
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

“May you live in interesting times.” … commonly cited as originating from an old Chinese curse.

It would be easy, looking back, to wish that my life had been a teensy bit less interesting. When faced with the question “what’s the crux of your life story so far”?, my first response was, “OMG! Where do I start?!” Because … sad but true … I have more than one life-changing moment to choose from.

There was the childhood bullying, which culminated in my taking a huge risk.

There was the total lack of self-esteem due to the continual put-downs of family.

There were the 13 years living in a Zen Buddhist Temple … ordained for just under 10 of those years.

There was the life-changing injury after a surgical error, which almost killed me.

Three years after that, I had my leg amputated and went into respiratory arrest after the hospital overdosed me on morphine.

Finally, I found myself, and life began at 40.

Then my twin sister tried to destroy my life and livelihood.

Like I said … interesting times! Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up.

Maybe the best thing to do is to start at the beginning …

I should have been a boy born in September. Instead, Mum and Dad got twin girls born 6 weeks early in July. Worse still, the ambulance crew drove Mum-in-labour all the way to Catterick instead of to the Leeds Infirmary. Apparently, there had been some mix-up due to her and Dad living in married army quarters at Catterick Garrison and Mum visiting her parents in jolly old Leeds. Twice, the ambulance had to pull over and prepare for a roadside birth. Had we come then, I wouldn’t be here telling you my mad tale.

We spent 6 weeks in incubators. I weighed 2 lbs 3 oz, and my sister spot on 2 lbs. Tiny enough to lie in the palm of a hand. My ears were so thin and see-through that the nurses nicknamed me “cloth ears”. The hospital priest christened us within the hour as we weren’t expected to pull through. Tech in 1972 was primitive compared to now. To make things more difficult for everyone concerned, I also came along with a cleft palette. The surgeons waited 2 years until I grew big enough for them to operate on me.

I don’t recall much from those early years except that times were hard and life grim. Four years later, Mum and Dad got their boy in September. Everything changed. One of my earliest memories is asking Mum for a cuddle. Yes, it had reached the point where I had to ask instead of simply climbing onto her lap. My brother held permanent residence there. The woman whose love and affection I craved looked down at me and demanded, “Why? What are you after?” I felt crushed.

Fast-forward to school. The golden years—Not.

Being a “Twinny” meant always standing out in the crowd. Especially being identical, which Mum exacerbated by insisting we dress exactly the same. No matter how different our preferences became as we grew up. At birthdays and Christmases we always knew what the presents were once our other half opened theirs because they were the same too. Worse still, dear sis had an attitude and was master of “The Look”—A certain glare that got us both into trouble frequently.

Not surprisingly, I found myself the victim of relentless bullying for years. My kneecaps kept coming out of joint and floating around my knees, which gave me a pronounced limp most of the time. Also, at age 11, I developed asthma, and a bit later, panic attacks. Oh and I had varicose veins from age 7. None of which helped. Eventually, in the second-to-last year of high school (age 14), I decided enough was enough. Unfortunately, the girl I fought back against was the “cock” of the school. She towered so high over me that my fist on the end of a fully extended arm barely grazed her chin. She had me cornered in a foot-deep door recess. I ended up receiving a beating and having an asthma attack. From the nurse’s office, I went home in shame and embarrassment. I’d tried and failed. Or so I thought.

About 4 weeks later, upon returning to the dreaded school, I discovered I’d become something of a hero and minor celebrity. Nobody could believe I’d punched the biggest bully in the whole school, not just our year. I learned, then, the value of standing up for myself instead of cowering in a corner. Boy, how I wished I’d done that much sooner. It was worth the black eye and bloody nose.

At age 15, I left school and started a Youth Training Scheme (YTS) program that paid £28 a week. I finished my GCSE’s via day release. Eventually I got placed at a delivery depot for a national brewery, where I met Tim, a kind manager who became a sudo father figure. Quickly, he sussed out that my home life wasn’t great. The final straw came one evening when I worked late and missed dinner. Mum stood in the kitchen, ironing. I tried to walk past with my head down, intending to make a couple of slices of toast. To this day, I don’t know what set Mum off, or quite what happened. All I can remember is being pinned against the wall with the hot iron inches from my face and trying to avoid the spurts of steam.

Tim, to whom I remain ever grateful, found me a room at a local charity’s teen home. They had a few houses on site, one for the very young, and others that took teens up to age 18 (21 in special circumstances). They discounted my rent massively until the brewery gave me a fully paid job, which my manager pushed for on my behalf. Once I started earning properly, the home increased my rent but it was still easily manageable. The house “mother” worked hard to keep us all safe. I tried to find her years later to thank her, but unfortunately she had died in her fifties from a heart attack. One of my life’s regrets is that I didn’t seek her out sooner.

It wasn’t all great in the home. The relief warden, who worked weekends, wasn’t a nice guy, and suffice it to say, he made advances to vulnerable young women from a position of authority. It took decades for me to report him to the police, but with the lack of other willing witnesses, they declined to take the case seriously. Social Services, however, discovered the man in a significant lie and removed a teenage girl from his home whom he’d fostered. So, at least some good came of that.

At age 17, the council awarded me a flat, and the loveliest elderly couple lived below. I always felt so bad at the noise I must have made clomping around on uncarpeted wooden floors. This saw me enter the years of young adulthood and a massive deficit in self-esteem. Eventually, I left the brewery office job and trained as a nurse. I specialised in child psychiatry. Despite making it to “F” Grade (deputy ward manager), buying a home (mid-terrace on a full mortgage), and being in a long-term relationship, I felt as though my life had a great gaping hole in it. No matter what I did or achieved, it wasn’t enough. There was something fundamental missing.

Enter my monastic years from age 27 to 40. For a black-robed postulant, then a shaven-headed black-robed novice, the days were long and hard and the life arduous. I found myself face-to-face with my deepest fears and shames. No longer could I run away. The meditation and self-reflection, as well as the piercing insights of my priest teacher, all forced me to confront my demons and clean out my closet.

Tough as those times were, they transformed my life. After about four or five years I experienced an awakening. Suddenly, life became easy and full of wonder. The scales fell from my eyes, and the lead weights from my shoulders. I learned not only to accept who I was but to love myself too. Happy, content, and confident, I breezed through life, and my meditation blossomed.

At the six year point, the universe decided I could handle more. A lot more.

Routine varicose vein surgery went drastically wrong. The surgeon, it turned out, wasn’t even qualified for that kind of operation. Instead of stripping a long vein, he stripped my artery. This left me with zero arterial flow below the knee on my right leg. I spent 10 weeks in hospital, 6 or 7 of those bed-bound with the cot sides up and in need of all care. They drew blood from me every day for testing, as well as sending me for chest x-rays daily, and I needed a lot of blood transfusions. Central lines delivered myriad medications, and my calf muscle drowned in blood. In short, I got quite poorly.

Then came the rehab. The ability to live in the moment and avoid the “what if” game saved my sanity. It was a good thing I didn’t know what lay in store for me. Often, to take things one at a time and minute by minute tested my resolve to the utmost. No way could I have coped with looking ahead and dealing with it all in one chunk.

After 8 weeks, the hospital gave me permission to go on weekend leave in a wheelchair. The temple wasn’t accessible at all, so while escaping from the ward was fantastic, the reprieve brought its own issues. Add to that all the heavy medication, and temple time became ever more challenging. It wasn’t acceptable to slur my words or fall asleep in the middle of community time, for example. Also, I could no longer adopt the full lotus, or any position, on the floor for meditation. A wonderful lay trainee built me a special meditation platform, which helped immensely. I remain ever moved and grateful for his generosity and time.

After 10 weeks, the hospital sent me home, and my rehab moved to outpatient status. The next three years brought one struggle after another. The trauma affected my general health and immune system, and weight gain bloomed from my lack of mobility.

After three years, I realised my lower limb was failing. The nerve damage only grew more significant and impaired. At that point, my Doctor and I made the decision to amputate. Due to complications, I underwent the amputation awake with a spinal nerve blocker. Once again, my years of meditation came to the rescue. I knew enough not to name the many sounds and sensations. “Bone saw” isn’t something I wanted to identify at the time!

And so, life went on—as it has a habit of doing, ready or not. The below knee amputation wasn’t the success I’d hoped for, and I became less able. Hindsight shows that an immediate above or through knee amputation would have been more successful than the below knee three years after the initial injury. The small temple I lived in at the time failed to provide me with non-physical work to occupy my time. Also, I could no longer cope physically with joining the formal meditation in the Zendo. As a result, I spent much time alone and on the outside of things.

A legal compensation claim ensued, which took 7 years to settle. My chief priest moved me into rented accommodation as he believed incurring living expenses would bolster my claim. Within 6 months of my solitary hermitage lifestyle, I asked to be allowed to rejoin the temple. He said no. I believe that financial considerations clouded judgement at that time. Since then, after I’d given notice of my intention to return to lay life, my teacher did offer an apology. Hopefully, future monastic students have fared better.

At age 40, disabled and alone, I returned to the world. Ever since I could hold a crayon, I’d made up stories and had a passion for writing. Finally, I had the confidence and the time to make my dreams reality. My first book was born, and I had a reason and passion for living. I moved to Cornwall in the southwest of England, and it was the best move I’d made. Lots of friends and happiness followed.

Except for my evil twin, that is. With my newly received compensation for the surgical error, I found myself taken advantage of by the one person in the world I ought to have been able to trust. In looking back, I now understand that her manipulation and lies began even while I remained ordained. It took years before I realised how much money Kim and Stan had conned me out of. Even more desperate and despicable was that they used a legal loophole to attempt to steal my home from me.

Forgiving myself for being so foolish is one of the most difficult things I’ve had to learn. As well as one of the most vital. In such self-forgiveness, I take away their power to hurt or manipulate me further. I take back ownership of my life.

Thankfully, just when things hit rock bottom, I met the man who became my husband. My soulmate. My best friend. He helped me through this toughest of times and taught me two things: not to be so naive and how to trust again. Sounds like a dichotomy, doesn’t it? The trick is to trust wisely rather than indiscriminately. I’ve learned not to take people at face value anymore. In many ways, this is heart rending and sad. By nature, I’m a giver and an empath. To hold back goes against my every instinct. However, my Buddhist training had taught me not to be a doormat and to value my self-worth. Coupled with the betrayal of my identical twin and the loving counsel of my husband, I’ve found new ways of being in this world. My biggest lesson: careful with whom you surround yourself. Your companions in life should build you up, not tear you down.

Somehow, through it all, I’ve kept my sense of humour. And what a special gift that is. I remember a home economics class in middle school. The teacher was dictating to the class, and we had to write down what she said. The lesson was on the effects of alcoholism on unborn children. The teacher paused after the words, “ Babies of alcoholic mothers are born …”

I’d intended a whisper, but the whole class heard my words, “… legless!”

Even our stern teacher had a hard time hiding her mirth. At least it showed I understood the lesson! Now, as an amputee, I get to have lots of fun making such “legless” jokes. Also, I often chase dear hubby around the kitchen island while in my wheelchair when taking a break from a painful prosthesis. Oh, the fun we have!

Life can hit hard at times. I’ve learned that I have a choice how much extra suffering I pile on top, or not. Yes, I suffer horrific pain and debilitation. Yes, I’m steadily getting less able and more unwell. However, I’m still me. I can reject circumstances and bemoan my bad lot, and thus spread my suffering to those around me. Or, I can keep my humour and the essential me and make my life, and other people’s lives, that much better. Of course, I’m only human. I wobble and fall down sometimes. But I work hard to pick myself up and carry on. And a laugh and a smile really does help.

(Author’s note: where names are used, I’ve changed them to avoid identifying those still living. I also write under a pen name, which I hope will further disguise the participants. Otherwise, everything else is true and recalled to the best of my ability. This is the first time I’ve put most of this into words. Thank you for sharing my journey.)

Humanity
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About the Creator

Harmony Kent

The multi-genre author who gets write into your head

I began writing at 40 after a life-changing injury. An avid reader & writer, I love to review & support my fellow authors.

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