Dear Sweetness,
We are over the halfway point in our summer visit. As hard as I try to be grateful for what we still have and to make the days go by slower, I find myself slipping away more and more, worrying about the future, which steals me away from what we have left.
I know I will have the opportunity once you leave to figure out what comes next. Which I really don’t want to think about until you are gone. It’s at my therapist’s urging. She believes I am far enough away from the trauma of you moving away, that I finally have the space for it. But I wasn’t aware that this was a thing I had to do. I have been caught up in years of survival, a lifetime honestly. I never worried about what was next other than fearing the other shoe dropping. I have never given myself space to plan the future rather than just survive it.
Yesterday I talked to a good friend of mine who has known me since we were children. She asked me what my goal had been this past year. I answered, “To make it through.” She pointed out that I have done just that. Goal achieved. She asked if I had a new goal and I told her I don’t. Not yet. I am not ready to fabricate what my intentions should be. I am burned out on making it. I want to mine down until I hit boredom, trusting that I will not languish there. That I will find a nugget of something to build on. I have this intense longing to do nothing and I don’t believe it comes from depression.
You and I were cleaning the upstairs bathroom last week when you told me how much you like to clean but how much you hate to organize. You went on to say that because I love to organize but don’t love the cleaning part, that we should start a business together when you are in college and need to make money to pay off your student loans. It was shocking to me to all of a sudden be written into this fantasy of your future. Only a few days later to hear an entirely different version of your distant life where you are a nomad, working remotely driving a truck pulling an Airstream Trailer, traveling the country with your dog. How easily I am folded in and out of your story like a finicky editor who can’t decide if I am a character worth saving or not. If I am essential to the storyline or a superfluous piece of background noise.
I was just happy you could dream up a version of the future with an “us” at all. One where you and I had the freedom to talk, to see each other based on our own volition and not restricted by the insecurities of others. The future is what I try very hard not to think about, not to rely on as something to save me from the pain of losing you and your brother. I remind myself daily that there are no guarantees. Yet there we were doing a mundane task and a whole life opened up for us in your imagination. A world where my life was a part of yours. When in reality for the past ten years I have never been able to count on that as being true.
After reading to your little brother that same night, trying not to fall asleep in his bed, I was looking into his eyes thinking how much I love him. At this age. At all the ages he's ever been. I saw the upside of stopping here. My life would end not knowing how it all plays out. Not just for him but for all three of you. It wasn’t a suicidal thought but there is peace in not having to worry about where I fit into these imaginary futures with all of you.
I know where I stand now. I would know that this love, this sweetness your little brother has within him, would be frozen in time. Unaltered in my brain as the last thing I would experience with him. How I know you and your brother want me in your daily lives but it just didn’t work out that way. I realize how selfish and morbid a thought it is. I sometimes wonder if the trauma of our situation has pushed me beyond the typical thought patterns of mothers. Or if typical mothers just know to not talk about what they are really thinking.
The friend I was talking to about what comes next also talked to me about trauma. She has had quite a bit of it herself, climbing entire mountain ranges to get to where she is now. She said, knowing who I am, one who sees things in all or nothing amounts sometimes, I might want to try not being in my trauma for short periods of time. For instance, what would happen if I didn’t think about the trauma, process it, and analyze the why with every waking hour of my day. She wasn’t saying anyone would take the trauma I seem to be so attached to, but that I just try out some other things for a small portion of my life. The trauma gets to stay and the new stuff gets added on.
She suggested I find someone I wanted to be as a kid, a character in a book or a movie, or someone in real life who inspired me, and try on some of their characteristics. To find more of the child-like me I always wished I could manifest. She reminded me that no one is watching us live our lives. That we will both die. It is a guarantee. Knowing that, why not live the life we want to live without the pressure of living it trauma free. What if that wasn’t the goal?
So here’s what I want to ask you my dear. You and I have loads of trauma. No one can take it from us. But what are we going to do with it? What will come from it? What will we manifest despite it? That’s what I went to sleep thinking about last night. The issue is, growing up, I never wanted to be anybody else. I just wanted the environment and safety to be myself. To accept myself. To be my full weirdo. I searched my brain for people I thought were cool, or people I would dress up as. People on posters hanging on my walls. I got nothing.
In the books I read as a kid or even the ones I read to your little brother now, I always gravitate towards the stories where kids come from big families who learn to accept their weirdness. Or stories like the “Boxcar Children” where children run off together and build their own world out of nothing. I can’t latch myself onto something to aspire to be. Is it possible I have been so bogged down with trauma I don’t know how to conjure up anything else?
That’s my new mission. Resting to gather the strength for what’s next and searching for some inspiration for what that looks like. I have seen you do it again and again. You say that where you live you don’t feel as connected to the people. So instead of having two close friends, you have fifteen less close ones. You play the sports you are required to play but then you also fight to play the ones you want to as well. Your hair is different and so are your clothes. And although I expected you to be washed away and replaced by a new version of you, you are still you. I can still see you are fully intact by the look in your eyes and the words that you speak.
You are resilient, you make the best of what is in front of you. You seem to know what is you and what is them and clearly see the difference. You know where all the lines are.I imagine if I asked you to you could draw a map of what is your territory and what is theirs. I am envious of the way you don’t make yourself small in the face of all we have been through, while my tendency is to hide under a rock or fantasize about moving to a remote island. If it was achievable to disappear, I would do it. But not you, you shine in spite of it. Maybe appearing a little altered on the outside but remaining resolute about who you are on the inside.
My friend also reminded me that leaving the judgment aside would be a nice bonus. In my all or nothing mentality I tend to think I am a failure every time I make a misstep. Knowing that I have lived in my trauma for most of my existence there are going to be a lot of missteps. If I want to live another way, dropping the judgment would change everything for me. How I talk to myself. How I spiral after the slightest criticism. How I am lost without my armor to walk me through life unscathed. Which isn't even true.
In this exercise to try on new things while leaving the armor in place, I have to be my own sidekick and it would help if that sidekick wasn’t talking shit about me the whole time. I don’t think my inner parts are going to make this an easy task. The last two nights I have not been able to sleep again, the anxiety nagging away at me for what I perceive as no reason. Just the mere discussion of new things or that a shift could occur has my hackles up. Who knew that this tough person I want everyone to believe I am is just really a jiggly bowl of jelly underneath. Trying to keep things orderly on the surface so that when the next wave hits I am prepared. And once the damage has been assessed and I remain standing, I do it all over again.
I am always on alert. Always seeking out what could go wrong. Assessing who could hurt me. Scanning for how I am failing. Alert alert alert. It doesn’t leave much room for love or fun. There is no freedom in this constant assessing and analyzing. I have survived your other parent’s assaults on me more times than I can count. I have proved I am strong enough to take the blows and come back for more. But when you look at what I have had to do to myself to keep that going, what is left? What makes up me now is just the amount of energy and focus I can muster to be ready for the next wave, the next blow, the next assault.
Life cannot be entirely about that. I cannot be living just to be prepared for battle. And yet sadly, it’s my whole identity. So no, I do not want to discard who I am or the trauma I have survived to get here. I would however like to live a life made up of something other than react, survive, rebuild. Wash, rinse, repeat. So what’s next? I have no fucking clue. I am literally (your fav word) anxious to find out.