I think we all think we are more different and alien than we are. We think that maybe noone can understand us. Maybe it is because we don't understand ourselves. Or maybe I just think too much about it...Likely...I think regardless of our individual experiences, the human in us is and longs to be connected to everyone else. And I have found that when we let go of our agendas, prejudices, fears, to do lists, self doubts, and all the other noise that clouds our souls - then we are all much more alike than different.
For me, I was born with a need to understand, to know people, to know myself, to figure out what makes us all tick, what moves or motivates us, opens us up and alternately what shuts us down. What makes us feel like we belong and what makes us feel like we don't. I think we are all hard wired to want to belong to something or someone.
My earliest childhood memory is one that I always thought was a dream, or a nightmare for the longest time. I think I was about 2 or 3 years old in the dream. I had just walked into the kitchen because I could hear my mother and my father shouting at each other and I wanted to help them. I don't remember the words, not at all. I just remember the anger and the fear. My mother had just started mopping the kitchen. We had one of those old formica tables with the vinyl covered chairs. She used to turn the chairs upside down so the seats rested on the table so she could sweep and mop the area under the table. As I walked in, my dad saw me and instantly picked me up and dropped me in between the bars of one of those upside down chairs. I was terrified. I thought I would fall and couldn't do anything but shake. My dad just kept yelling and gesturing at my mom. Like I said, I don't remember the words...I just remember the energy - the fear - the pain - the danger. He hit her. She fell to the floor. She was hysterical. He was still shouting. I thought my world had ended. I thought he was going to kill her and then kill me. I think they divorced shortly after that.
When I was in college, I had a conversation with my dad on the phone. We didn't spend much time together, ever really. His choice. He told me that he had lived with this one big regret and shame all of his life since this thing happened. He told me the story that I just told you. Almost verbatim. I was shocked. To me, it had been a recurring nightmare that I had almost nightly all my life...until my dad told me this story. It wasn't a dream. It happened. I was there. I never had the dream again. Ever. I gained some understanding in its place.
I understood why I wanted to be from another planet. Because that was so much more agreeable than believing that I was supposed to belong to these people. If I was from another planet, then there was still a chance someone would come and rescue me someday, right? Isn't that how all the movies and fictional stories end? Well, as real life goes - noone ever rescued me. But I did learn to rescue myself.
Sound romantic and noble and like something to hang your hat on? Trust me, it isn't. But it's mine. And I have learned to own it and embrace it and to be grateful for the intellect that saved me from the path that many of my brothers and cousins chose. You see, my family's dysfunction wasn't limited to my parents.
Each has their own story which isn't mine to tell since I really don't know what is inside their hearts or what has driven their choices. Suffice it to say there were and are drug addictions, prostitution, drug dealing, petty and not so petty theft. Everyone escaping and coping in their own way. My escape was more literal. It was actual escape. And a search for something better. Something beautiful. Theirs, more metaphorical, personally and socially harmful.
My youngest brother was a multiple time convicted felon by the time he was 14. I remember spending one Christmas visiting him in juvenile jail. I spent the next couple of decades trying to save him and his older (my other younger) brother. I did not succeed. I felt enormous guilt for this for the longest time. Until I realized, their lives weren't mine to save. I could only save myself.
I pretty much abandonded them both when they were 4 and 7 to go away to college and escape to make a new life for myself. The youngest, now almost thirty, still can't get a good job because of his criminal record and he seems to lack belief in himself. I wish I could help him see that the choice is his to make a better world for himself. The oldest, mid-thirties now, has never had a relationship that we know of...he manages to have a job, but doesn't have a drivers license. His dad, my step dad still drives him to work every day. And he still lives at home, as does the youngest brother.
The day I left them, I left to save my own life...I was 17. I did. I saved my life. But I didn't save theirs. I don't think I could have, I don't really know. It was the hardest thing I ever did and I've only in the past couple of years or so been able to let go of that guilt.
I only knew I had to get out, to do something more with my life and to find people who were looking for truth and beauty and who burned for something. I am still looking for that to this day. And finding it. And loving it. Those are the people I find and I attract. The people whose very existence has enriched my life and who I could go a day or twenty years without speaking to, and know we could pick right up where we left off and remain connected.
I've discovered that while I wouldn't recommend that my parent's write a "how to" book on raising children, that I am really glad they had me. Because I can't tell you how happy I am to be here. I've come to believe that the fantasy of being from another planet was my tiny old soul telling me that I was better and could do anything I wanted and could create a life that was entirely different than that which I was brought up in. And I have. Mind you, I haven't cured cancer or developed safe alternative energy sources or even contributed that much to society. But my life IS different and it is good.
Along the way, I have witnessed the way choice manifests itself in my life and in others lives. We can choose to let the pain go. To recognize it and to even befriend it. To say hello to it and to put it gently away in an unlocked box...no need for locks. No shame. No fault. Just pain we learn from and can choose to be a prisoner of and lock ourselves up with it, or to let it go.
I finally realized I had been successful when I realized I could simply choose to be better. In time, it just became a way of life. With letting go comes forgiveness.
My father reads my blog. He still doesn't know how to relate to me, doesn't want to see me in person and wonders where the hell I came from, but he reaches out to me in his own way through email from time to time. I think he loves me the way he knows how. If he is still reading this far, he may be feeling shame. He may be angry with me for telling the story. I don't know the details or why it happened or if it happened daily or if it was a one time thing. That's their story. My story is forgiveness. And gratitude. Because I am happy. And I am at peace. And I still have hope - for myself, for love, for mankind, for possibilities. And because I still have a lot of living, learning, loving and discovering to do.
So, if you are still reading, Daddy, here's the deal...you and my mother created and gave birth to a spirit who is curious and passionate and although often misunderstood, is wildly in love with life. Who sees things deeper than many and consequently also feels things a little too deeply sometimes, but who is resilient and who knows life wasn't easy for you either and you did the best you were able to do. Thank you for having me. I'm delighted, truly, to be here. And even if you can't forgive yourself, I forgive you. You've opened up your soul to me a little. I've noticed.
And for the rest of you, parents already or someday parents to be, I'll close with a quote (because you all know how much I love quotes...)
"Sometimes we forget that children have just arrived on the earth. They are a little like aliens, coming into beings as bundles of energy and pure potential, here on some exploratory mission and they are just trying to learn what it means to be human." (from the movie "Martian Child")
Treat them with honor, love, responsibility and wonder. Don't forget the discipline. It's your job to teach them how to be human. How to be men. How to be women. How to be students, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, friends, members of society. Right. Wrong. Consequences. Forgiveness. Love yourselves, people. And you will in turn teach your children to love themselves. That love is what connects us all and can heal a universe.
Oh, and forgive yourselves. For anything. For everything. Stop dwelling on whatever it is and just do better next time. This is your life. Really LIVE it. You're worth it.
That was really beautiful and well said
ReplyDeleteWe all have our nightmares
Miss you girl