The Give Back Project

You wake up one day and decide you want things to be different - you want to be different. Stuck in a rut, craving change, you drive by the Blood Donor Centre on your daily commute. That’s it! You will give blood every week for a year. Come to find out, you can’t give blood every week, but if you are a woman, you can give blood every eighty-four days. Suddenly desperate to push beyond yourself, you commit to give back in some way in-between all the blood donations. A catalyst to thrust you from your daily grind. You can even write about this Giving Back each week, prove you are the writer you claim to be. By the end of the year, you will have written a whole book. And you will be someone different.  

You find yourself in the parking lot, walking toward the door, opening it. You swallow the lump in your throat, sweat dripping down your armpits as you hold your arms out so sweat stains don’t show while you approach the booking coordinator at the Blood Bank.    

“We have space right now, darlin’,” says the woman in scrubs with a toothy smile. Ever cautious, your face freezes as fresh sweat erupts from your glands.  She seems to sense your hesitation. “Or...you can book for later?”  

You book for one month later - a line in the sand. Time to let your shoulders move away from your ears and to address the block of failure that you carry around in your belly like an extra organ.  

Dear Cindy,

You died twenty-six years ago, and yet I am still that seventeen-year-old girl grieving.  Life had made a mistake, taken the wrong girl of our duo. I couldn’t forgive Life for that. You had confidence and a clear purpose, but me, I was just a lost cause. It should have been me. I should have been the one that died.

Luv ya,

the second weirdo of the two weirdos

A month whizzes by, and you are back in the Blood Centre, this time, with your sleeve rolled up. You avert your eyes as the nurse takes the cap off the needle. She palpates your vein. You attempt to breathe deeply but sound like a hound dog panting in the hot summer sun. The needle plunges in. Your throat closes, and you crane your neck to open it back up, to create enough saliva to swallow.  

The machine starts to beep at a steady, high pitch. You wonder what you’ve done wrong. The nurse hands you a tied up blue latex glove of warm water to help expel the blood more quickly. “Squeeze this,” she says. But the machine continues its incessant beep. Your body seems to be rejecting the process. “Squeeze harder!” she demands.  Your body does not want to let go.  

Dear Cindy,

I failed you on the day of your death.  I thought the doctors were wrong about your diagnosis.  After all, they had been wrong about my brain tumor. I thought I still had time. Time to tell you everything.

My parents lent me the car that Tuesday in September, an unheard of likelihood, so I could drive myself to my piano lesson. When the lesson was over, I had a choice - drive to your house and risk getting in trouble for driving somewhere other than piano, or drive myself back home to call my boyfriend, Brian. He and I were brand new, still fumbling around at our first “you hang up, no you hang up” love.

I drove back home. You died that night.  

Forever Regretful,

the second weirdo of the two weirdos

You flounder through this Giving Back, this paying it forward with random acts of gratitude and kindness. Volunteering in each of your kid’s classrooms. Mopping up spilled soup, cutting plasticine, kids sneezing around you as you hold your breath from their multiplying germs. You fly one thousand five hundred sixty-one miles to attempt to connect with your parents (epic fail), and upon your return home, your seventeen-year-old cat, Smudge, lies on your bedroom floor dying. He looks up at you with a vomit-stained mouth and meows. You rush him to the Veterinary ER, but he gets worse before your eyes.  You book a room to say goodbye and give the kids a chance to be there. The oldest looks away, the youngest doesn’t quite understand, the third cries raindrop tears, even though he never showed much interest in the cat; the second is stoic, but digs his fingernails into your arm, squeezing like clamps in your heart.

You say goodbye as the needle plunges into Smudge’s back leg and his eyes go lifeless. Guilt surges through your body, collecting and hardening until you feel as if you will never move again.

You pet Smudge, his short black hair coming off in your fingers. You tell him you love him and were so glad he was the firstborn in the family. You recall him playing fetch with toy mice, diving each and every way and batting the life out of those plastic rodents until their insides fell out. You long for Smudge to crawl up onto your shoulder and demand bum pats, the way he used to (even while you were breastfeeding a child!), just one more time.   

Dear Cindy,

The night of your wake was like every other night at my family’s house.  My father sat at the head of the table watching the six o’clock news, followed by Wheel of Fortune. I sat to his right, my mother and sister to the left. Chicken, rice, and broccoli.  I had forgotten how to chew, the meat stuck in my cheeks.  

“We have to go,” I said. Only the sound of the meteorologist telling us that it would be a partly sunny sky tomorrow. “We have to go,” urgency to my shaky voice. “I need to go now.”  

“It’s too early,” my father said, never taking his eyes off the screen revealing that rain would come later in the week.

“I have to go now though, I have to go!” my voice got louder.

“She’s dead! You’ll get over it!” my father said, slamming his palm on the table. 

I didn’t want to fail you again, Cindy.    

I love you,

the second weirdo of the two weirdos

You organize a fundraising Talent Show for the kids’ school, you Climb a Mountain for Alzheimer’s research, you Give Back-bomb with the kids, handing out flowers and gift cards to strangers and picking up trash around the neighborhood. You panic that you will run out of ways to give back. You give blood for the third time, and while you recline on the chair holding gauze to your arm where the needle had just been, you know you are going to pass out.  You call out with a shallow voice to the nurses, who jump into action, cinching the feet of the chair higher above your head and grabbing the ice cart to surround you with cold to keep your blood pressure from plummeting even further.  

You manage to stay conscious.

Dear Cindy,

Am I worthy? Am I valid? Do I have a right to be here? Is this Give Back project I’m doing just a waste of time? Is Life just a big waste of time? What am I trying to prove?

What’s wrong with me?

I miss you,

the second weirdo of the two weirdos

You give blood a fourth time and your blood gushes out of your veins in record time, not a single woozy symptom. You donate your hair to make wigs for kids with cancer.  And since you’ve never dyed your hair before, you decide to become a redhead instead of a brunette. The red washes off in the shower, great rivulets of blood splattering the tiles. You look in the mirror one day and realize with the bleached out hair that you look exactly like your blonde mother now, her side of your family staring into your soul.  

You go to the nearest barber to demand they shave it all off. In the mirror, you are now a cancer patient, a navy seal, a monk. You have cut off all of your baggage that you didn’t realize was there. You think you might even be able to fly, you are so light.  

Dear Cindy,

Nine months after you died, I decided I didn’t want to be myself anymore. So I became someone else. The kind of person who walked across the street without looking, the kind of person who pictured herself careening into that tree while driving, but couldn’t quite make herself do it. I ended up in a boy’s car, with him climbing on top of me and hiking up my shirt, sucking on my nipples and reaching down for my waistband. The revulsion that shot through my body for myself made me retch; I shoved him off of me, insisted he take me home.  

I stayed up all night, the mantra repeating in my head - You are a failure, you are a failure.  

I dozed off for an hour while the sun rose and woke up clear. I had one thing to do that day and then I would be done. 

I grabbed the miniature black and gold cloisonné jar on my shelf, the one that got diligently dusted weekly by my mother, who never said a word. The contents plink against the jar - the sound of butterfly wings, wind through red maple leaves in fall, the sound of freedom.  

I pour the myriad pills of every color and shape into my palm, into my mouth and swallow, making a forget-me stew in the pit of my stomach.  

Bottoms Up,

the second weirdo of the two weirdos

Your Giving Back has become a habit. It’s just something you do, like brushing your teeth. You see chances for Giving Back everywhere you go. Your car’s check tire light is on one morning, and the guys who fix it in a cold garage with cracked hands are so nice that you come back with a Give Back Gratitude letter and chocolates. Two months later, you find yourself back at the mechanic after running over a nail. You notice your letter has been taped up, on an almost bare wall. You get hot, blush, feel your sweat glands turning on, then you feel tickled, thankful that you took the time to express your gratitude.    

You feel a warmth in your belly and it radiates outward in your life. You are smiling more, taking deeper breaths, your shoulders have returned to shoulder height.  

Dear Cindy, 

I was in the back of the ambulance strapped down to a gurney, furious and embarrassed.  

“What did you take?” shouted the paramedic while we bumped around corners, the siren blaring.  

“I don’t know. Just a bunch of pills. Why don’t you go and save someone worth saving? Don’t waste your time on me!” I yelled. The paramedic rolled his eyes. Here I was, a girl from the affluent suburbs who hated her well-tended life. He doesn’t know anything about me, I thought, as I closed my eyes, not wanting to look at him.

But it was too late. My words rang in my ears – Don’t waste your time on me. I’m not worth saving. I didn’t really want to die. I just wanted someone to help me, guide me through this despairing path, but no one around me was able to do that: not my friends, not my parents, not my teachers, no one.  

It was up to me to save myself. I was the only one who could do it. I could either stay stuck or try to move forward in whatever way I could. By the time I got to the hospital, everything had changed. First I had to get through this, then…I didn’t know what then, but anywhere would be better than where I was at the moment.

I was moved to a hospital bed where the doctor asked what I had taken.

“About forty different pills, handfuls from whatever bottles I could find.”

“This is gonna hurt,” he said, “We have to put this tube down your throat. We’ll do our best not to scratch your esophagus, but we need to act fast before any of the pills dissolve.”  

“Will you just suck the stuff out?” I asked.  

“No,” he said, and he went on to tell me the process. They would pump a black liquid of charcoal to neutralize the pills, then pump everything out to make sure they got it all.

I nodded. I understood. This was the first day of the rest of my life. I was in the before, and after this stomach pumping, I would be in the after. They turned me onto my side and inserted the tube. My gag reflex engaged and I retched, feeling my throat surround the tube.  

“It’s ok,” the nurse said, “Just a little farther.”  She held my hand and I squeezed it.  This was the bottom. I had found rock bottom. There was only one way to go from here. I looked up to the ceiling and saw the black charcoal being pumped in through the tube, feeling my stomach expand. I closed my eyes, ready to move on. 

We will always be the two weirdos,

the second weirdo of the two weirdos

You go to your fifth and final blood donation after over sixty Give Backs throughout the year. Your mind meanders over all of those projects while your blood is pumped into a half liter plastic bag. You yearn for a big bang movie ending where the heroine scales the peak and utters words of epiphany while the music cascades into a moment of pure majesty. Where you can see a montage of all the people who have received your blood donations now at their jobs, dancing, accomplishing their wildest or simplest dreams: living. 

The machine beeps softly and a nurse comes to detach your line. She gives you a band-aid, as she carries your bag of blood to the refrigerator and shepherds you off to the refreshment station. As you fill your cup with mango juice, it comes to you, a lightning bolt - When you Give Back to others, you are also Giving Back to yourself.  

Dear Cindy,

I’ve started going to the gym, a sort of strength meditation. The workout today is one hundred pull-ups for time, a long slog. I am at eighty reps and starting to fade, a black tunnel in my mind as I stare at the wall with my shoulders cramping into boulders.  The music is blaring and the song changes to George Michael’s “Faith.” Time to pick my heart up off the floor…’Cause I gotta have faith. I am immediately transported to the summer of 1988.  

We knew every video from that album and incorporated all of the dance moves to create a choreographed dance just for “Faith.” How many times did we end up sprawled on the floor in fits of laughter as we rehearsed our duo dance, attempting to get the jutting hip movements synchronized with the shoulder shimmies and arm gestures?

We spent months trying to convince both our parents that we could handle the 3 hour concert on our own at Alpine Valley Music Theatre in Troy, Wisconsin and then we spent another month trying to persuade one of them to drive us the hour trip there and back. Your dad finally relented. 

Stepping onto the grass, while the sun set in the distance, a hush went over the crowd as the lights on the stage amplified. Notes reverberated through the outdoor arena and you turned to me, a gleam in your eye, both of us wearing our white concert T-shirts glowing in the darkness, making us look like twins with our dark brown shoulder length hair. It was “Faith.” We both knew it. The band was lengthening the intro, drawing it out, sending the crowd into a frenzy. We were calm. Wordless, we separated from the crowd, finding an empty spot on the top of the grassy hill. We stood shoulder to shoulder, our knees bopping to the rhythm, the opening beats to the song releasing our movements. 

We were in sync, every hand flick and hair toss right on beat. Well, I need someone to hold me, but I’ll wait for somethin’ more/I got to have faith, faith, faith. We danced through the whole song, perfecting every twist and turn. My heart swelled as the song came to an end – the moment drawing into timelessness. While the rest of the masses were swept up into the next song, we were still locked in that moment, that moment that never ends. 

Baby, I know you’re askin’ me to stay/Say Please, please, please don’t go away. Rep eighty-one, eighty-two, eighty-three.  I am smiling now, misty-eyed as I manage to keep pulling myself up, my chin clearing the bar. When my shoulders need a break, I jump to the ground; my hands inadvertently begin to circle in and out, creating a flourish of movement. Our dance. My knees bop to the beat as I jump back up to the bar, fiercely determined. Rep ninety-two, ninety-three, ninety-four.  

The coach comes over with one eyebrow raised, “Are you doing ok?” he asks, sounding perplexed.

“Fantastic,” I reply mid pull-up, “One hundred. Time.”  

He tells me my time and gives me a fist bump. I fall to the floor, exhausted and grinning. I guzzle some water before gathering my things to head home, time enough to shower and change before fetching the kids from school. “See you tomorrow,” I nod toward the coach and head out the door.  

See you later, weirdo.

-E.C. Tang

E.C. Tang is an emerging Asian American creative writer and artist, mother of 4 children and resident of Vancouver, B.C. After working in marketing in New York City for many years, she traveled with her husband around the world for a year, collecting Buddha statues, believing that finding the perfect Buddha might help her attain enlightenment. E.C. Tang’s personal essays on parenting, birthing and exercise (or lack thereof) have been published in online publications such as Birthing from Within and Crossfit Empower.