You've Been So Lucky Already: A Memoir

by Alethea Black

“Honey,” he says, flashing his big postman grin, “when it ain’t your time, you can’t make it happen. And when it is your time, you can’t stop it.”

Look. You’d discovered the thing that makes you you. You had taken the truth of your heart and put it on a piece of paper and put a stamp on it. You had found your dream, and you were chasing after it with both hands. That was your time; you just didn’t see it. It’s always our time. That’s the miracle.

She was twenty-six, and this, her first experience with childbirth, was not easy. There were multiple attempts with forceps involved, and my skull has always been mildly misshapen as a result. It was as if the baby inside her was not quite ready to come out.

I cried like it was my duty to announce the apocalypse,

Apparently, during a visit to my father’s parents in Tampa, I’d thrown up orange on their white carpet so often that by the time we left the whole place looked like a giraffe.

“Hi, Mom.” When I ask how she’s doing, she tells me that the neighbors have done something new to redirect their rainwater onto her land, and she wants to redo the kitchen, but there are other things she has to do first that are preventing her from beginning, and her heart arrhythmia is somewhat improved but still not great.

“There’s some schizophrenia, on your father’s side,” I hear her say, no doubt with greater alacrity than if the mental illness were matrilineal.

SNP is shorthand for single nucleotide polymorphism, which is a mouthful way of saying a small genetic defect that can impair your health at the core level—in your cells.

From where they sit, it seems as if every week, I have a new illness—first it was mold sickness, then parasites, now this. My sisters and I are close in a lot of ways, but my illness has only underscored the separateness of our journeys.

“If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.”

I become accustomed to buying foods whose labels repeat the word free: gluten-free, grain-free, dairy-free, GMO-free, and soy-free. I find spaghetti made of quinoa, cookies made of almond flour, cereal made of amaranth. Even just standing by my cart in line, I feel virtuous.

In the months that follow, I discover the truth isn’t delivered all at once, like a cosmic scoop of mashed potatoes slopped on your plate. More often it arrives piecemeal, bit by bit, one french fry at a time.

“why don’t you go see a functional-medicine doctor?” When I don’t understand the concept of functional medicine, she explains it to me. They look for the root cause of things. When you go to the doctor with a tack in your foot, the mainstream approach is to give you a drug to erase the pain of the tack. The other approach—the one favored by functional medicine—is to find the tack and remove it.

An oxalate is a highly reactive crystal found in many plants that can muck up your metabolism.

oxalates are found in lots of things, but they’re especially high in beets, spinach, Swiss chard, carrots, sweet potatoes, mustard greens, almonds, chia seeds, berries, rice bran, figs, and tea.

as an experiment, I go back to eating turkey and rice and cheese and cauliflower and pork and chicken and yogurt and ice cream and other very low-oxalate things.

“Yes,” he says, nodding. “Something else is amiss.” But it’s like any good mystery; the resolution doesn’t come with the reveal of a single culprit. There are means, motive, and opportunity to explore. The truth doesn’t just materialize; this doctor needs time to unravel it.

When she tests me for hereditary hemochromatosis—a genetic condition that causes the body to absorb too much iron—I’ve inherited one of the genes.

“When she tests me for hereditary hemochromatosis—a genetic condition that causes the body to absorb too much iron—I’ve inherited one of the genes. Hereditary hemochromatosis was on my radar months ago, but when I had blood tests for the iron markers—ferritin, percent saturation, TIBC—that usually tip people off to hemochromatosis, my levels were consistently within range. But my manganese RBC was low. “Maybe it’s not the iron per se that matters,” I suggest to the nutritionist. “Maybe it’s the iron to manganese ratio.””

She explains that we’ve been adding iron to the food supply in the United States—all grains and pasta are iron “enriched”—since World War II, and some people, like me, have a tendency to absorb it. Meanwhile, the pesticide glyphosate—found in nonorganic food—depletes manganese.

“Because the solution involves mineral rebalancing, and minerals are unpatentable and cheap.” She picks up the bottle of zinc, which costs ten dollars. “There’s no money in it for drug companies, so no double-blind studies and no education and no PR.”

When I lost my home and everything I owned, it didn’t kill me. They brought a dumpster to my front lawn, and as every book and every photograph and every item of clothing I’d ever owned went into it, I was not sad. All I wanted was to feel okay again, and if feeling okay meant losing everything—if it meant I had to experience a miniature death in order to spring back to life, so be it. Take it, I felt my body saying, as my past went into the bin. Take it all.

Driving has always been a contemplative act for me; something about it seems to get the mental gears rolling.

I haven’t forgotten all the people on the health boards, all those souls who are still sick.

“I haven’t forgotten all the people on the health boards, all those souls who are still sick. It’s as if we were in this unfathomable hell together, and somehow I got out. Sometimes I feel sorry that I’m escaping to my new life and leaving them behind. I want to help them, but I don’t know how yet. So for now, I just carry them with me.”

The sun melts into the Massachusetts hills. I keep the radio off. I keep on driving.

I write: Punishment is a useless weapon in the struggle for people’s minds, just to mess with people.

I remember the year we kept the Christmas tree up for so long that first we discussed decorating it with valentines, then shamrocks, then Easter eggs.

I remember my nana looking at herself in the mirror one day and telling me that when you grow old, on the outside, you look different, but on the inside, you feel exactly the same.

I don’t recall Jack Kerouac ever addressing the issue of personal hygiene in On the Road. And yet, on any lengthy journey, there are times when the issue of personal hygiene does come up.

“I don’t recall Jack Kerouac ever addressing the issue of personal hygiene in On the Road. And yet, on any lengthy journey, there are times when the issue of personal hygiene does come up.” Reference Black, Alethea (2018, Oct. 1). “You've Been So Lucky Already: A Memoir.” Kindle Edition. When Your Struggle Becomes Your Song, p. 181 of 192, 95%.

I chose it via a mix of inspiration, research, and gut feeling, and I hope that if I can just prove my mettle by making it to the Golden State, the rest of my dharma will reveal itself.

“I chose it via a mix of inspiration, research, and gut feeling, and I hope that if I can just prove my mettle by making it to the Golden State, the rest of my dharma will reveal itself.” Reference Black, Alethea (2018, Oct. 1). “You've Been So Lucky Already: A Memoir.” Kindle Edition. When Your Struggle Becomes Your Song, p. 182 of 192, 96%.

I remember almost nothing about On the Road, which I read many moons ago, but there is one thing Jack Kerouac said that I’ll never forget: “Accept loss forever. Be submissive to everything, open, listening.”

“I remember almost nothing about On the Road, which I read many moons ago, but there is one thing Jack Kerouac said that I’ll never forget: “Accept loss forever. Be submissive to everything, open, listening.”” Reference Black, Alethea (2018, Oct. 1). “You've Been So Lucky Already: A Memoir.” Kindle Edition. When Your Struggle Becomes Your Song, p. 184 of 192, 97%.

As much as anything, it’s our sufferings that shape us and make us who we are.

The sun’s so bright it’s as if the particles of light are breaking through the windshield and into my plasma, until the blue in me merges with the blue in the sky and the faraway sea, and I’m weightless and free, I’m not even sure I need to go to California anymore, maybe I’ll stay like this forever, maybe I’ll just keep on driving.