I always kind of hated that song in school. It came out when I was in 5th or 6th grade, details lost; but it seemed such a squirmingly bad song, that took no songwriting skill and was almost embarrassing to listen to. All the popular kids sang along at the top of their lungs, adding to my distaste (even then, I rebelled against the tide.) I hadn’t thought about that song for long on at least 20+ years, until this morning, on my run, a remix called “I was Jack, You were Diane” made it’s way onto my Spotify radio. I was surprised at how those forgotten chords fell right into a groove I didn’t even know existed; and the response those grooves bore.
This last few months of my life signified some sobering and defining changes: my last child, my son, graduated from high school. My ‘official’ career as a mother raising kids was ended. I also filed for divorce with my husband two days later. I have always tried my best to retain my sense of self outside of motherhood; I feel fairly successful at that, but there’s a poignant heartbreak in seeing what is really the end of an era come. No more school lunches or tabs; checking homework, back to school shopping; the ritual of Mon-Friday wake ups; the Christmas and Spring Vacations. The ‘family’ as one school unit had officially ended with Hallie’s graduation from high school in 2014, but now, I could say my kids were ‘grown’. Free and able to move wherever they fancied, free to decide their own lives (if I can say that with the caveat that even young children have some freedom in this, but parents do have the official capacity to ground kids, to yay or nay some decisions), suffer their own consequences, reap their own rewards. In short, we were ‘done’. In retrospect, watching my son’s DVD we made for his graduation party, I feel like it was just yesterday he started kindergarten. Everyone says that, but now I know what they mean. I’m proud of my children, they have empathetic hearts; strong backbones; deep consciences. But I’m no longer guaranteed to hang out with them on a wintry December night, or a hot July day in Montana. Never again will I bend over their bed to plant a kiss on their sweet forehead, and tuck their bear more snuggly in their arms. I find myself remembering their bathtimes, the holiday traditions, those everyday moments we often take for granted, like watching them walk down the driveway from the bus stop. It’s also reminded me of my own high school graduation, and the plans and visions I had for my own life. When most people are just accepting the end of their children’s ‘at home years’, I’m trying to accept the end of my life as I knew it, of my home, and my marriage. The life I’d built up to that point.
It’s funny, how we really are the same people we were even then. Oh I don’t dress anything like I used to, I don’t have my nose pierced anymore, my diet is completely different, my political views have broadened and become much more complex. But I still love 19th century British ghost story anthologies, at any time of year but particularly in the heat of summer; I still listen to the same kinds of music; still love to watch Alfred Hitchcock on a sultry summer night with a good thunderstorm, I’m still running. But my life looks very different from what I had envisioned as an exuberant 19 year old. It looks very different from even two years ago. Sometimes, wrapped up in the cocoon of a tight family life, we lose sight of the fact that one unrelenting constant about life is the reality of change. Life is, in essence, about nothing else. 28 years ago, I thought I would change the world in some way, that life would reveal it’s meaning once I had accomplished something. But I found myself on different paths than I’d anticipated. I thought I was navigating those well. Then suddenly, you break out of the forest into a place you hadn’t seen coming. The German phrase, Einmal ist Keinmal boiled down means “Once is never”. What happens but once might as well as never have happened at all. When I was in high school, I read the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I struggled with the concept of being so pessimistic as to not being able to see the meaning in life, in anyone’s footsteps and the mark they leave. But after the events of the last couple years, particularly of late, I struggle to NOT understand what Tomas felt. Emotional trauma can have varying levels, just as physical trauma. There are some injuries that require much more time, and work, and recovery to heal. It’s easy to rationally look outwardly and feel that the surface is healed, but it’s under the skin; it’s the muscles; the tendons; the joints, that are still not.
When my daughter left rehab towards the end of February after only 10 days, I went on a solo backpacking trip to the Rincon Mountains outside of Tuscon AZ. My normally reticent and worried mother unexpectedly gave me the strength and boost I needed to put myself first, realize there was nothing here I could do, and go. It was only a couple days, but physically, I was still on restriction after my shoulder surgery on October 6th. I hadn’t been officially cleared for any activity, but I couldn’t stand it any longer. That had been my longest stretch of physical inactivity for…well, I don’t even know. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t lift, I couldn’t hike. I could barely walk the neighborhood. The elevation was high, the trail steep and long and my shoulder was untested. But it worked. It started the healing, both physically and mentally. My daughter stayed sober, slowly I began to feel a bit like myself. She delivered the news in May that she was pregnant, and I was conflicted. To have a child is committing your life to another, as long as you both shall live. The saying “You’re only as happy as your unhappiest child” is the truest truth ever spoken. For me, at least. I felt a bit of PTSD, as I thought about how my life suddenly changed direction when I found out I was pregnant 23 years ago, at exactly the same time she did (although I was a couple years older). I thought of the sacrifices I had made that now seemed to be a gamble lost; and how I wanted so much more for her. How I wanted her to be able to fully realize herself, to become centered in who she was and what she wanted, to be on that road; but it’s not up to us when our children decide to become, or not become, parents. It’s not up to us what they become, or don’t become, period. And somewhere inside me, a little pilot light of hope ignited. She is deeply committed to children, has her early childhood certification, and maybe, this would help guide her out of the darkness of addiction. Of course, addiction is a disease for good reason: it can flare at any time, and the risks now were tenfold. Without going into too much, I was suddenly faced with the emotions of feeling trapped, of worrying even more now, of immense responsibility in case she stumbled. But I realized, that risk is there anyway. As time has passed, she has done well, stayed clean, in treatment, found employment, is focusing on her recovery and her pregnancy.
So I should be healing right? I ‘should’ be moving forward. My filing isn’t exactly unexpected; my husband and I have been separated for a year, we went together to the court house, no lawyers, just us, clutching each other and holding hands, while we shed tears on the paperwork. It certainly could be worse. People begin to expect some happiness again, you’re fine, it’s been some time now, you’re ‘over the worst’. Instead, I find myself realizing that this just isn’t a hole I have to climb up and out of to continue on the meadowy grassy path in sunshine. This is a rugged terrain, part of a valley much, much bigger than I’d dared to imagine. Realizing that as I struggle up this rocky, loose path, crumbling underneath me and I sometimes slide backwards on, and crest a ridge, there is still a long climb ahead. To find the meaning again, to remake my dreams and my life, to accept what I want to accept about myself and find compassion in that. I find myself experiencing a deep sense of failure at what I thought my life would look like. Of comparing my life to others. A side of myself I really dislike, but that I own, because it’s true. Trying to rationally remember that my life is worthy, regardless of whether it looks like someone else’s. Precisely because it doesn’t look like someone else’s, it’s my own. And I’ve done the best I could at the time. Of course hindsight shows my mistakes, but what is a life without mistakes? One without risk, certainly, and even then, highly unlikely. I know this in my head, but the heart is taking longer. Our own lives do have meaning, they intersect with so many others, but yet they are solitary endeavors, that we must each tackle at our own pace and intensity. Some wounds are deeper than others, some paths are hard while others are easier, but in the end what is easy to one may be hard to someone else. And no one will see it exactly as you, because they are not on the same trail as you. I’m finding small periods of joy, in the moments the sun comes out. If I need to stop and take a longer ‘rest break’, I’m letting myself. I’m practicing and getting better at just, being. Just realizing we have only today. Today is enough for me most of the time, frankly, it’s all I can handle most days. I am not focused on the future, I’m focused on today. That agonizing, intangible, unbearable lightness of being.
