Tissue Issue

I was sitting in my living room recently, futzing on the computer, replying to emails and such when I felt a little twitch in my nose. As I reached over to grab a tissue, a familiar anxiety over an old compulsion surfaced: I only wanted to pull one tissue, but something made me feel compelled to pull two. An image of the mother of my two friends from church when I was 11 years old flashed in my mind. Her daughters were near my age, but she was much older than my mother. She had black and grey bushy eyebrows peeking out over her black and silver eyeglass frames. Even though her dark, silver-streaked hair was always twisted into a tight knot on top of her head, she was constantly capturing non-existent wisps of hair and tucking the imagined culprits back up into the bun. She crocheted collars on all her sweater sets and paired them with long accordion pleated skirts and boxy, tan lace-up shoes. Her thick nylons folded in rings around her ankles. But mostly, I’ll never forget that permanent, stretched smile she wore on her face.

Seeing this vision of her in my mind caused an uncomfortable sensation to spread across the nape of my neck, and I sat there with one tissue dangling from my fingers with a second in mid-pull. I have been on the lookout for possible body sensations as gateways to awareness, so this time, instead of brushing the thoughts and sensations aside, I let go of the tissue, inhaled through my nose, letting out a longer, slower exhale through my mouth. After repeating this breath pattern a couple more times, I felt calm enough to continue my inquiry.

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Right on cue, another scene with my friends’ mom unraveled in my mind. I was on a playdate at their house, and after a couple hours of talking, playing boardgames and listening to music with the sisters, I excused myself to use the restroom down the hall. When I was finished, I opened the door and their mother was standing in the doorway as if she had been waiting for me. Her unexpected presence made the skin from my neck to my ears tighten uncomfortably. She asked me to come back into the bathroom with her. I followed, wondering what I had done wrong. She seized the pink and white crochet-covered tissue box sitting on the back of the toilet tank and held it up near my face.

“Now Dawn, when you take a tissue, did you know there are actually two?” I moved my head back and forth to indicate my ignorance of this little factoid, still scanning recent events in my mind prompting this lecture. “So, when you pull one, you need to split it apart like this.” As if performing a very complicated magic trick, she grabbed a tissue from the box, teased one of the corners with two long bare fingernails, and very slowly pulled the tissue apart into two extremely thin sheets.

I watched in silence, which seemed to annoy her. “Do you see what I am doing?” I nodded in the affirmative this time. “So, when you take a tissue, just pull one.” I was confused; I couldn’t even recall using a tissue while I had been there but didn’t want to upset her anymore, so I replied, “Ok.”

“Now go play and do your best to be more conscientious.” I ran off down the hall to find the sisters, that big word knocking about in my head, untethered to any understanding. One of the girls asked me several times why I was being so quiet. I shrugged as if I didn’t know and for the next hour thought only of when my mom would be picking me up.

After this initial interaction with their mother, I decided for future visits I would do everything in my power to be good and not upset her, but no amount of my careful attention to this objective ever worked. She was irritated with me from the moment I walked into her house, like I was a germ invading her just-sterilized space. When food was involved in our playdates, she made comments about how much I put on my plate, how wasteful I was if I didn’t eat every single bite, or admonished me to remember to clean up my place setting even before I was finished. One time she decided to teach me how to chew without making any noise. I don’t remember what food I was eating for that little tutorial, but I very clearly remember the feeling of my stomach churning.

On one occasion, the sisters asked their mother if she would braid our hair for church later that afternoon. She reluctantly agreed, and when it was my turn, instead of one beautiful French braid down the back of my head like she did for both her girls, she braided my hair into a crown, starting from behind one ear, working in a circular path around my entire head. This meant for nearly 15 minutes, I had to squirm my way through hard-to-hold positions, sitting but also leaning all the way to the side, forward with my head down between my knees, all the way to the other side, and then backward looking up at the ceiling. My hair session felt more like an intense ab workout for muscles I didn’t yet possess at that age.

I was admiring her work in the mirror when she said through that plastered-on smile, “I would tell you how pretty it looks, but I don’t want it to go to your head.” My shoulders fastened in place up near my ears, and I felt stuck between feeling pretty with my new hairdo and feeling horrible for wanting to look pretty. I was still frozen in a panic about what to do next when she said, “You know, it’s appropriate to say ‘thank you’ when someone spends a lot of time doing something nice for you.”

Now I had to add ungrateful to the list, ugh. I squeaked out a “thank you” and hurried off to finish getting ready for church with the girls. For the rest of the day, the braid on my head felt more like a crown of thorns, each tightly twisted section of hair pulling at my scalp and reminding me what a horrible kid I was.

Another time I was at their house, the three of us girls were in the den hanging out and talking with two other boys from our church while the adults visited in the family room, separated by a large glass window. Even though I knew their mother would be watching me like a hawk, I got a little carried away while showing my friends a new dance I learned at school. The loud knock on the window froze my body in a mid-arm swing. Two more hard, rapid knocks on the glass made my body do an about-face. Their mother pointed her finger in my direction and then slowly yanked it back toward her smiling face and tight eyes. My body slumped and the other kids’ eyes got wide.

My legs felt like I was walking through a swamp as I made my way toward the room with the adults, but the mother met me midway in a dimly lit hallway out of sight from everyone else. She stared at me without saying anything for what felt like forever, her face making small twitchy movements like she was thinking hard. Finally, through gritted teeth she spit out words like slow, intentional bullets, “Dawn. What are you doing?” Before I even finished my one-word reply “dancing,” she whisper-barked, “That is not appropriate behavior!”

The tension throughout my body felt painful, and apparently, my ears stopped processing external information because she said, “Did you hear me?” I was still stiff all over but managed to lower my eyes in shame, which seemed to be the right move. “Now, you may return to the group but only if you can act like an appropriate young lady. I’ll be watching you.”

Again, my body felt hard and wooden, and I walked back with slow, stunted steps as if I were walking through a room with no light on. No one asked me what their mother said to me or why I was quiet for the rest of the night.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Now here I sat, a grown adult in my own home and the simple act of resisting the urge to pull two tissues conjured up those same bodily responses I felt as a young person! I sat still for a moment, letting the mixture of emotions and physical sensations swirl. Shame and fear burned the sides of my cheeks and then moved down into my tightened shoulders.

Not sure how I knew I needed support, but I before I realized it, I spoke out loud into the room, “How weird is this? Just as I was pulling a second tissue out of the box, I thought of my friends’ mom from church when I was 11.” My husband was on the other end of the couch, typing a work email but paused, looked at me, and said, “Huh?”

I recounted my interactions with my friends’ mother and finished with, “So I think for the last 40+ years, that is why when I go to pull a tissue out of a box, I feel a weird struggle with only taking one!” My husband had wide eyes like he was right there with me trying to piece the puzzle together. So, I continued to speculate, “It must be a part of me pushing back against what feels more and more like an injustice, like an unfair judgement I can see clearly only now and feel compelled to address in some way.”

We continued pondering this new discovery of mine, marveling at how the nervous system keeps records and how emotional remnants of past experiences can literally surface through our movements. This new awareness felt like a chance to edit a deeply ingrained yet patently false narrative, lurking under the surface of my being, ready to sabotage me with unaccounted-for feelings of inadequacy and dread. This shared pocket of space for my experiences combined with my husband generously recounting an experience of his own where a body sensation seemed to connect to an old narrative spread a fair amount of holding and compassion for both our wounds.

Now when I reach for a tissue, I still feel that familiar anxiety over whether I will pull a second. But I also see it as an opportunity to bring a breath, a pause, and then a feeling of love for that younger version of myself. I imagine pulling her into a warm side hug, nestling the top of her head with my cheek, and telling her she’s lovely and perfect just the way she is. This imaginal but somatically grounded action relaxes my shoulders, deepens my breath, and heals my heart every time.