Tetzaveh: For dignity and splendor
by Om Green
Content warning: medical trauma and gaslighting by medical providers
I was disabled long before anyone knew I was disabled.
Before my present reality of supportive friends, pain intervention, walkers, canes, MRI’s, and open agony, I spent years perfecting the craft of hiding my pain in plain sight. I avoided the discomfort of visible truth and stowed away my suffering. I was sparing my friends and family the embarrassment of me, while sparing myself the indignity of needing them. A rush surgery to address the spinal injury I was hiding from ushered in an unexpectedly grueling period of honesty. It was there that I found divine otherness.
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In Parshat Tetzaveh, G-d commands Moses in otherness. She informs Moses to create a visible distinction in the environment of the mishkan, in Aaron, and the priests. Aaron, who already coped with serving as Moses’ translator. Aaron, who sacrificed immensely for decades- now - must undergo an extensive consecration period and adopt vestments so resplendent that he could never again be mistaken for common.
“You must make sacred vestments for your brother Aaron, for dignity and splendor”. Shemot 27:2.
After G-d’s demands were delivered to Aaron, he sat with a choice as he watched his adornments being prepared. He could run away and live what was left of his life in a quiet normalcy, or, he could comply - and fully become the next iteration of himself.
God knows Aaron cannot fully be what Aaron is becoming if he is able to hide away. G-d’s demands are so detailed and require ceaseless compliance for what seems pedantic and superficial, ensuring no one will ever mistake Her divine stewards for common people. No one will ever enter the tabernacle and wonder where they are. Normalcy and splendor cannot exist in tandem, splendor requires distinction of the truth.
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I spent 5 years pursuing help from specialists, each time receiving a similar diagnosis: anxious female. Of the legion of doctors I sat in front of, not one bothered to properly image my back, preferring instead to ascribe ailments only I could fix, absolving themselves of responsibility. I was too sedentary, too active, too heavy, too serious, even too single (yes, single). Only one physician felt compelled to physically examine me, digging the sharp end of a reflex hammer into my lumbar spine and dryly asking “that hurts?” as I screamed through gritted teeth. He told me to lose weight. My diagnosis was updated: Fat anxious female. My copay was $75.
After receiving the same diagnosis over and over, I lost my conviction. I simmered down and accepted that I was a hypochondriac. To atone for my lies, I dedicated myself to eradiating normalcy. I ran 5 miles every morning, pulverizing my back until my legs were numb. I volunteered, planted gardens, went on business trips, and never mentioned my pain. When I found myself too debilitated to work I used my kids, food poisoning, or car trouble as scapegoats. I hid in plain sight from my family, stoically sitting in hardback chairs during meals, convincingly social and happy. Dismissing myself to the bathroom, where I would prostrate on dirty floors to relieve the pressure. I subdued any concerned looks or inquiries with hollow assurances.
Most people welcome a lie that sustains harmony, and it became an unspoken agreement that if I prioritized harmony most of the time, I could complain sometimes - when things were unbearably bad. I would give my complaints a structure and context that took away the chronic nature of my suffering. “I was gardening” “I hiked with my son” “I slept on it wrong”. For most people, that was enough to be comfortable, but not for my sister. She believed determination cures everything, and viewed my pain as the symptom of a feeble mind. I supplicated in the form of self-deprecating jokes, designed to soften her repulsion. I took her resentment on the chin, laughing with her at my failure. But, her accusation of me as languorous imbued a perverse satisfaction in my soul. She validated my belief that I could free myself from affliction, simply by wanting to. Clearly, I didn’t want to. I devoured her odium, a dark sticky nectar, and it fed my denial. I needed it badly.
As my condition deteriorated, I compensated for my physical shortcomings through professional success. No longer able to run, I dove into high-pressure corporate environments where I camouflaged physical pain with stress. I excelled. The public deception was easy, but privately I berated and humiliated myself into disassociating from my body until I no longer felt crippling pain, but rather crippling anxiety, guilt and inadequacy. I was eager to take full responsibility for my pain, to avoid humiliating myself asking for help.
Four months after my youngest was born, I couldn’t hide anymore. One night, I tried to lift my baby from her bassinet and my back seized in pain. Her small body fell back into the bassinet as I hit the floor on my knees. Unable to stand, I cooed tenderly to my daughter through the violent waves of pain and nausea, while I crawled to the recliner, pulling myself up from the floor. I cleaved her to my chest and sobbed through her entire feeding. I was failing to fix myself, and now I was failing to care for my children. The next day, I confessed through tears to my husband that I could no longer safely carry her. It was time to ask for help.
At my first appointment, an x-ray was taken, and I was shown to a room with a wall mounted TV displaying a grayscale spine that was bent and twisted with sharp jutting corners. I averted my eyes, trying to avoid violating a stranger’s privacy. I would be in trouble for accessing confidential information, or, perhaps, the Doctor was planning to say “Look, this is what suffering is. This is how bad spines can get, and you’re here wasting my time with your nonsense!”
Instead, he entered the room slowly, letting his eyes linger on mine for a few quiet seconds before handing me a grim diagnosis, followed by the statement “I don’t know how you're able to stand here talking to me, you must be in so much pain”.
“No. That's not my x-ray. I just have bad spasms”.
He offered a silent and solicitous turn of his head in reply. I was disgusted.. My deepest hidden secret was public now. What was supposed to stay buried inside of me had been seen, there was no going back.
After surgery, 3 weeks after my initial appointment, a cheery physical therapist came to my room carrying a bedside commode, a walker, a quad cane, a grabber, and a veritable treasure chest of smaller assistive devices. Politely, I humored them, allowing them to show me each device, explaining its function. Pumped full of courage and enough morphine to sedate a horse, I finally interrupted and sweetly informed the physical therapist I didn’t need any of those items, those were aids for disabled people, and I was not disabled. They left the room, but the solemn devices remained against the far wall of the room, glowering at me.
The mobility aids followed me home, mocking my resolve of strength from the backseat of our minivan. Their sterile gray colorway violated my artist’s aesthetic, which is resplendent with paintings, books, plants, and color. I refused to allow friends to visit, because I couldn’t stomach the thought of being seen with these objects that belonged to disabled people. I chose to defer company until I could pretend this was all a nightmare. Any day now.
The first days of my post operative life were spent spitting fire at the people I love the most. If we were sailors, I would have had my husband keelhauled, and thrown both of our mothers overboard with him. There was nothing so traitorous as trying to help me, and the three of them were conspirators. Each gesture of loving kindness revolted me. Every tender glance was a heretical accusation. I made sure they understood in no uncertain terms- I was not disabled.
Throughout the day, my husband would assert my walker with the confidence of a hiker suddenly cornered by a ravenous bear, mustering courage to absolutely insist I use it. I would growl and gnash my teeth, and remind him in the rudest way possible - I was not disabled. When no one was looking, I pulled myself up onto my walker, both hands white knuckled and clutching the railing as I dragged my body across the floor repeating my mantra “I don’t need this, I’m making it up”. I mercilessly beat my mind and body demanding they stop hurting. .
A week or two passed and I awoke to the realization of the damage I was doing to my body, my marriage, my family, and my sanity. It would all soon be irreversible if I couldn’t allow myself to be vulnerable and honest. I truly believed my worth only came with enduring suffering and complete self-sufficiency. I was a masochist. How could I believe I would still have worth in a dilapidated and crippled state? My first act of contrition was asking my husband to bring my walker to me, as I was stranded in the middle of our kitchen. I felt small and weak, but also flooded immediately with the warm release of honest truth.
Like Aaron, I wasn’t going to become better alone. G-d tells Moses how to choose the people who will help Aaron be different. “You must speak to everyone who is wise of heart, in whom I have invested a spirit of wisdom, and they must make Aaron’s vestments.” Shemot 28:3 G-d doesn’t command Moses to find the most skilled, popular, or richest craftspeople. Her only requirement is innate wisdom of heart, to understand where Aaron is going, and why She has chosen him for this distinguished vestment. Anyone else would have mocked him, and he may have chosen not to comply.
To become disabled, I had to allow myself to be consecrated by the people who were wisest of heart. I had to be honest, and stop indulging the vitriolic lies I was creating and perpetuating. I had to state what I needed, just as explicitly as G-d stated Her intricate instructions to Moses. I needed the same people Aaron needed. People who understood me, my vitality, and why it was crucial that I be this new iteration of myself. Each day, I had to wake up and choose to allow myself to be adorned, supported, and revered.
My husband and our mothers were patient with me. My best friend whispered the machinations of strength and courage that I needed to offset the vulnerability. I intentionally surrounded myself with people who knew me well enough to know that what I had to give the world was only going to be amplified by my new reality. I was no longer desperate to return to a past that was only ever an illusion, realizing the suffering I was so defined by was only ever a path to estrangement and isolation. By the end of my consecration, I felt like Aaron: undeniably and splendidly othered.
As humans we often find our identity and function shifting from setting to setting. We curate versions of ourselves that best fulfill the needs of those who need us, and neatly tuck away the aspects of ourselves that don’t serve us in those roles. But hiding can become a dangerous temptation into isolation and vanity when we believe our truth is an uncomfortable blight, and not an adornment. Disability comes with struggle, with exhaustion, with pain, and if offered the opportunity to rid myself of it, I would. But the truth of my disability, the vulnerability, the bravery, the realness of my need- those are my vestments of dignity and splendor, that once established - cannot be ignored. Like Aaron, I chose divine otherness.
Om Green believes that we are always in the making and never made. She is a Jewish creative from the Southeastern USA, who focuses her essays and poems on wanting as an act of rebellion. She is also disabled.
