The Neck and Her Vulnerability

Trigger warnings for Suicide, Cancer Treatment, Birth, and Labor. This is my piece on how the neck haunts me.

Vulnerability is in severe lack no matter where I look, impenetrable walls have been built around so many people who just wish for solis and protection. I admit, I too am a victim of my high walls and I have become more aware of their effect as I try to navigate through desperate healing. I peer over my walls once in a while and I wait for someone else's gaze to meet mine, but I am afraid to report that I cannot hold them. Once contact is made, I dash below my walls to keep building higher, adding barbed wire and a giant neon sign that says 

STOP

turn back now while you have the chance

Yet, I want to stick my neck out over that wall and offer it up like a prized pig. Here it is, I say, take me and look upon my vulnerability! There is much to be said about the neck, the moments I look back upon in encumbrance or affinity could be told magnificently from the neck without leaving out a single detail. 

My first neck story comes from when I was in sixth grade. This was one of the worst years of my life, but I will save the details of me for now. I, along with many other kids, started to come into young adulthood. I started my period, started kissing boys, and worried about what I looked like all the while succumbing to severe neglect at home. I moved four times in the span of the school year. At the beginning of the year, I moved in with my mother in a tiny town called New Ark, Texas. I went to school with my cousin and met one of my best friends. I would often go to her house in the short time we spent together. Looking back now I realize how fucked up her living situation was. She lived in your typical trap house, and her father was more neglectful than my family which only made me feel more comfortable to visit. I chose to ignore her alarming stories of strange men coming into her room at night, and how she was solely caring for her younger siblings. To be honest, I was following suit of the adults I offered my desperate truths. She was so strong holding all that weight, I never thought to help lift the load.

I moved back in with my stepmom and stepbrothers a few hours away, only a few months into sixth grade. This was strictly on my father’s orders, even with him serving in Iraq, he could weigh in on my whereabouts. He told me my mother had run out of money and could no longer care for me. I don't remember saying goodbye to anyone; I was used to moving often. I returned to the abuse I thought I could finally escape, but shortly after returning, thankfully my father and stepmom divorced, putting me back in New Ark. Though I came back to New Ark, I now lived at my grandparent’s ranch because my mother moved to California in the short time I was gone. As I said before, neglect was nothing short of what I was used to, I was practically raised on it. When I came back to that same middle school, I returned to my cousin and my best friend, or so I thought. It felt like a different place entirely. Friend groups changed, people already forgot about me, and new kids came in as well, but what my best friend went through was almost unimaginable. 

I was sitting with my cousin at lunch on my first day back, keeping silent and looking up to see her sitting alone. I noticed a scarf hanging loose from her neck and my cousin informed me she had attempted to hang herself while I was gone. The table where I sat exploded with gossip and laughter. She looked my way for a moment, likely assuming I was involved in some joke that was her. Not another beat passed before she quickly left the cafeteria, never looking back. We never spoke again, not only did we never speak to each other but we both fell away from everyone. To me, it felt like we were still together in our silence.  

I cannot say I am not ashamed. The image of her neck is forever burned into my skull. You cannot fathom burn marks from a rope, you cannot fathom burn marks from a rope around the neck of someone you deeply cared about until everything you thought you knew was ripped from under your feet and you had no cares left in the world. Two girls with vulnerable necks, two girls with necks truly incapable of sticking out. I do not know how she is doing; I do not know her last name or the color of her eyes, but I remember her neck and how much I loved her from a distance.

The second story is my son’s story and how his neck threw him out into the world. I am going to step back from his account and take away the part of me that is his mother. To preface, my son is a stubborn and headstrong soul. He knows what he wants, and before he was born, he knew he did not want to be born. He wanted to stay in the warm goo and safety of his mother’s womb. But of course, neither of us could survive him living inside of me forever, so alas, I was induced. 

After being in labor for about fourteen hours, sitting in the delivery room with my son's father, my son was making way and I knew I would be pushing soon. The doctor and a few nurses had recently come in to adjust my heart monitor and left, but not even ten minutes later I was swarmed with staff saying my son's heartbeat is fading and I will be going into surgery for an emergency cesarean. In the operating room, my son imagined this was his entire life lived, a little life in the womb and that is all. He had my umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, the source for all his nutrients in the last forty-one weeks now culprit to his potential end all. 

His womb was cut open, the cord carefully removed from his throat, and pulled from the only home he knew. He could not scream because his lungs needed to be pumped immediately after entering my world. I cannot pretend to know the thoughts of my newborn son in these moments of near death, but I can infer he had no fear for the thing around his neck. He could not possibly understand this vulnerable place that needs protection. 

This third and final story is that of my father. The day I found out he had cancer was the day he came with me for my first ultrasound before my son was born. We sat in the waiting room and I could tell something was going on the from moment I saw him, but I knew very well not to pry. We made small talk for a moment while waiting to be called back. He started to fidget with his fingers and then smiled gently at the floor. He told me how he did not want to scare me, but he might have cancer. In truth, I was not worried at all. He had skin cancer before and beat it easily. I could not figure this time would be any different. Not only that but we were able to see my son together for the first time. We laughed at the giant blob on the screen and did not bring up cancer again.

Then, months later I visited him in the hospital after he received three blood transfusions. His skin was paper thin and I remembered him resembling my Uncle Martin the day he died of cancer when I was much younger. I left the hospital thinking I will never see my father again. Somehow, he lived and is still alive and well today. My father had squamous cell carcinoma in his neck. For anyone who knows anything about cancer, you know the neck is the worst spot of all. Unable to eat or drink he got his nutrients from a tube in his belly, like a placenta for the already-born. 

Eventually, he had his left carotid artery removed due to the persistent cancer cells. His neck is now a constant reminder of his potential end-all. My father is lucky to have lived after having his most vulnerable anatomy targeted by cancer. His ultimate vulnerability still causes pain every day in an endless cycle. I strain to think that it is for this reason he still cannot be vulnerable with me, because his vulnerability is at play on constant. I could not imagine him putting out any more effort than displaying his neck forever. 

Through these stories, I attempt to find the construct between necks and vulnerability. I study chakras in my journey to become a yoga instructor and from my courses, I know the throat chakra is the home to our vulnerability. Vishuddha is the Sanskrit word for the throat chakra, and if you break it down it directly translates to ‘pure’. I can only assume that vulnerability is the purest form of humanity, and it hides there in our necks. 

I suspect I do not have the talent to offer you every insight into a neck, but I offer you a precious moment to consider strength in vulnerability. If there was no strength in the equivalent of vulnerability, then these stories of mine would have appalling endings and I likely would not have the ability to share them at all. This stain on the neck, strength, and vulnerability sits in my mind like an old warn picnic bench, many have sat here and had very different conversations, but it is still just a bench.