To Dr. Blank,
“All of my life, everyone has always told me: ‘You’re a shoe! You’re a shoe, you’re a shoe, you’re a shoe!’ And today I stopped and I said: ‘What if I don’t want to be a shoe? What if I want to be a purse? Or a hat?… No, Daddy, I don’t want you to buy me a hat, I am saying that I am a hat… it’s a metaphor, Daddy!” (Rachel Green, Friends, season 1, episode 1).
I chose to start this greeting with this quote for several reasons:
First, of course, because the quote is taken from the amazing show Friends, and there’s no way I do not include a reference to it.
The second, and a bit deeper, reason is that you had a huge part in my success in becoming who I wanted to be, rather than remaining as society defined me.
There is a short story titled “The Rose’s Secret” (written by Shlomit Cohen Assif). The story describes a rose that looks different from the others because it does not have thorns.
Learned scholars came to examine the rose, and after seeing that the rose was different from the other roses, they decided it was not a rose and tried to find a new name for it.
The learned scholars did not speak with the rose on equal terms but “above its head”. They did not think it understood them.
It was precisely the simple gardener who managed to reach the rose and connect with it. In contrast to the learned scholars, the gardener spoke at eye level, a fact that helped the rose open up and talk to the gardener.
The rose told the gardener that it actually had thorns, but that they were simply turned towards its inner side and thus were not visible. Instead of the thorns scratching and hurting others, the rose hurt itself.
The rose had gotten used to the pain of the thorns. However, the way people examined it and treated it differently did hurt it.
The thorns did not bother the rose, but the different treatment it got because of them did upset it.
When I compare the story to my own life, I think about the less good periods I went through. Many experts came to observe me. Every one of them diagnosed me with something different. They wanted to find me names and diagnoses, there was almost nothing they did not say. The experts looked at me from above and talked to me above my head.
Throughout this entire time, I had lots to say. But just like the rose, my words, like its thorns, were turned to the inside and caused me injuries. Instead of speaking, I did not say the things that bothered me. I lost faith in people. I became introverted and did not give anyone a chance to enter my world.
And yes, in my case also, just like in that of the rose, the thing that helped me was that rather than searching for diagnoses for me, people looked at who I was the way I was, and treated me like a human being.
And here you enter the picture.
Once I entered the boarding school, I was suddenly treated like a human being. People spoke to me and not over my head. They really saw me, Mika, and not only my diagnoses or the doctors’ conclusions.
They gave me boundaries and did not yield or give up on me. They did not let me give up on myself (and there were more than a few moments when I badly wanted to do so).
I think I said enough about the whole process at the graduation party, so I just want to say thanks once again. I think that even a thousand thanks will not be enough to express all my feelings, but thanks anyway.
I would like to end with a nice quote from the book The Little Prince: “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
With great appreciation,
Mika Kam
Bnei Arazim 2021–2023
