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Sorry about all those cheeseburgers I ate last week. I dunno, maybe I was low on iron. And cheese. Sorry for all that smoking I did in high school, too, although that was kind of fun. Remember how cool we looked? No? Me neither. Well, you know I make small talk like this when I get nervous. I am nervous, too, because I don’t talk to you very often, but here goes.
Mostly I’m sorry that I doubted you last summer. I thought you had gotten thoroughly defective and that something was wrong with you, and therefore wrong with us.
Let me explain. My gift is that I make friends so easily. I have friends scattered all over the country, and thanks to blogging and online communities, all over the world. I have close friends and a best friend I can stay up until two a.m. chatting with, even though work has taken her a few states away. I have friends I see once-in-a-while but still have a great time with. I can make new friends in almost every situation. I feel so lucky that I wish I had more time to see my friends, instead of feeling lonely.
What I struggle with is family. I have a father who left when I was a little tiny thing, the age my youngest daughter is now. I see my daughter getting excited about learning to read (she is an early reader, like I was), snuggling in her bed at night with her fierce and protective stuffed panther, and experimenting hilariously with ten-cent words like “apparently” (“Apparently the plate broke itself, Mom.”) and I have to wonder how anyone can walk away from the wonder of three. (I know how you can run away from the tantrum side of three, but that’s another story.) For many years, like kids do, I assumed I was missing something, that I was not good enough to stick around for. His side of the family disappeared with him.
My mother walked in and out of my life for a long time, and for various reasons. I had an assumption that I was going to do something wrong, and that I would be left. When I got bad grades (most of the time) I cut the boarding school ads out of the newspaper. I waited for the other shoe to drop, which it did repeatedly. A couple of years ago I ended the cycle after deciding the pain wasn’t worth it anymore. Shortly afterwards, to my surprise, my relationship with my only sister followed suit. Then, last summer, I ended the four-year romantic relationship I was in. OUCH! Imagine my heart covered in roadrash at this point.
What was wrong with me? I asked myself last summer, as I got lower and lower. Was my heart so cold and unlovable that it drove my blood relations away, and others too? I realized I was effectively, at that moment, an orphan. I could see my daughters’ lives stretched out before them with their future families ahead of them, in what I (futilely?) hope will be an unbroken chain of family love and support. Behind me they will see shadows, nothingness, no real string of generational love. All they will have is pictures and some stories about the way things were.
My friends had mixed reactions. Some told me I couldn’t turn my back on my family no matter what, that it was too important. One person told me that if you still haven’t worked things out with your family by the time you are thirty, then the issue is with you. Others, who had been through similar struggles with their families, supported my decisions and how I was proceeding. They supported the fact that I decided to say “no” to endless loops of pain and loss.
Time and perspective made me realize that each situation, each family loss was different, and that while I may have had a part to play in it, it wasn’t entirely my fault. I wasn’t an unlovable monster. I found my heart again and instead of cursing it for punishing me with the pain of being alone, I thanked it. I remembered the romantic relationships I had ended, and knew those were hard, but the right decision as well.
So, thank you, my heart. You won’t let me settle for close enough. You always tell me when something’s not right, when relationships aren’t a good
