I’ve been reading my book outside in the cold spring air. The sun is shining and I’m not moody or anxious. I can breathe out here. My book is about a mother telling her three adult daughters how, when you’re older, you don’t care to go to the carnival anymore…you don’t believe in Santa or the Easter Bunny. The magic of life is drained away and you have to deal with reality. You hold all sides of life – the boring, the mundane, the evils, the triumphs, and the beauty. She was trying to explain to them that loving their stable, boring father was infinitely better than loving her famous actor boyfriend in her 20’s. They couldn’t believe her.
It hit me with a hard dose of reality. I can remember being young, naive, and in love. My husband, then boyfriend, was only good. We went to carnivals, on bike rides, to parties, to ice cream shops, bought Easter baskets, and had fun at bowling alleys. We knew life had hardships because our parents were killed when they were young, but we were young enough to compartmentalize the evil because the high of young love was so great.
I have tears slowly streaming down my face at the nostalgia of it all.
This makes his hand on the small of my back the other day 10 times more special.
Being in a romantic relationship with someone for 16 years, I’ve experienced the magic falling away. It’s hard to connect with, or even remember, the highs of the honeymoon phase because it’s not our normal anymore. We’ve been through financial hardships, affairs, therapy, family wars, substance misuse, and career changes. We became adults, when we used to be kids. Love used to be our only job and we did it so well. Our rose colored glasses faded to clear lenses. We see life for what it really is – impossibly hard and innately beautiful. We appreciate the hardships because the calluses make our bond stronger everyday. We have a silent underlying fear of losing one another because our lives have become one. How could one exist without the other? We are each other’s home.
As I have been housebound for four months, I have become an expert at watching tv. After my surgery, we binged Breaking Bad. It was horrific. The season finale made me want to vomit. Seeing Walt abandon his family and leave them in financial and emotional ruin brought up all of the demons from my distant past…the dark house, the absent parent hardened by immense grief, the broken teenager, the new normal of fantasizing about the warm past. I cried so many tears. We picked Young Sheldon after it because it was lighthearted and funny. This was our second rewatch. I used to love it and laugh at it, but knowing George dies in the end taints every season. I didn’t want to see their comfortable living and small world problems anymore, knowing that soon enough they would be struck with insurmountable grief. I can’t unsee the last season and feel the full joy of the previous seasons. They’re tainted. I want to yell through the screen, “Savor this! Stop fighting about stupid stuff because George won’t be there soon!!”
I remember my therapist telling me that she had to censor what her oldest child watches because she was deeply affected by emotionally charged shows. I thought it was ridiculous, but now I understand because it happens to me too. My life is rich with deeply felt emotions. While I sob at people dying, others watch it dry eyed. They can’t connect to something they haven’t experienced. My past washes over me as the scenes nail every emotion I’ve tried to forget. I have catalogued every emotion under the sun.
I’m bitter that my past has controlled my present and future. I hate that my glasses were only rose colored for the first four years of my life, while others have them into their 40’s. I didn’t bring kids into this world based on my own experience. I projected my trauma onto my unborn. They never materialized because I was doing the most heroic thing a mother can ever do – protect her kids from evil. I prevented the heartache of being bullied, the high statistical possibility of sexual abuse, financial ruin, of losing a parent to an untimely death, their first heartbreak, prejudice, and failing health. I took the bullet for them. They never asked for the gift of a hard life…they never asked for life at all.
But is that fair? Is my lack of an easy, beautiful, rich life their fault? Is my inability to immerse myself, and believe, in the innate good of the world their problem?
Maybe I missed the point of life entirely. Instead of striving to provide the perfect life for them, I should have accepted the reality of a nuanced life. Maybe a child’s love could have healed my broken heart enough to make me a good enough mother. Maybe the bond with my child, my own flesh and blood, could have given me the chance of redemption…a path to a beautiful life for the both of us. I could try with all my might to keep their world rosy long enough to withstand the certainty of an unfair world. I could give them the gift of a safe, warm, stable childhood that could soothe their broken adult hearts. I could lay a path so stable that my own insecurities would never bleed into theirs. I could fail again and again as a mother, yet still be humble enough to accept their ultimate forgiveness that they would be equipped to give because I modeled it enough times. I could be the definition of unconditional love that they could always reference. I could be their safe space to land, even after death.
Lessons From Nature 