Friday, April 13, 2018

Of Surrender and Certainty...





“Were you happy?”

I hear that, said in Claire Danes’ voice, every day inside my head.

(It’s in her voice because she was Angela Chase, and she said it, choking back a cry, in one of the final episodes of My So-Called Life, when Rayanne and Angela’s friendship has all but ended and they are in a production of Our Town and it’s layered with meaning, and like all things about me, I carry that choke in her voice with me for no real reason other than it struck a chord with me when I was sixteen years old.)

There are so many parts of this new life that I truly love- falling all apart and piecing yourself back together is a fascinating process, and it makes you approach life from a different angle. From a kinder angle-kinder to other people, yes, but kinder to myself. I don’t know what I’m doing-the world can see that-and it frees me a bit of any expectation that people might think I do.

BUT.

Untangling yourself from someone is hard and messy and frankly, unfair. There are days that you just long for that person that you used to be, that person who didn’t question every little thing, who trusted easily and openly, that person who knew where on earth life was going.

There are many parts of being a single mom that are hard-I’m the only person to make all the decisions, to budget the money, to say no to things that I really, really want to say yes to.

I hate that my mom misses the old me. I hate that I can’t bring that girl back, if only for her sake, once in a while. But I can’t. It’s like something snapped inside of me. I know that it seems ridiculous-it’s a divorce, not war or death or anything-but I genuinely believe that it is a trauma that fissured my life. There is the before and there is the after.

“Were you happy?”

Yes, I was so happy in the before. I honestly thought that I had it all. I didn’t think that life could get any better than it was.

But the truth is, life is so much better in the after. It’s hard to remember sometimes, at the end of a long day, trying to make ends meet, just aiming to keep us all alive and fed for one more day. Sometimes it seems incredible to me, that once I had a human in my life who I did such monotonous things with- washing dishes, doing laundry-and I never once thought it unusual or special.

So, yes, life isn’t all roses in the after. I have to remind myself that where I am going is worth the sacrifice of where I had been. (The Israelites begged Moses to go back to Egypt. They would rather be slaves to what they knew than to keep going toward the Promised Land. Those Israelites keep me going on the days I want to give up. It is just human nature to want what we know. It is the brave thing to keep going, not knowing what lies ahead, stumbling and falling and getting hurt, blindsided even, but to keep going.)

Who knows? Maybe Brian Krakow has been here all along, and I was just too taken with Jordan Catalano to notice.

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