It...has been...
Our week here started with the remainder of a power outage. (A tree fell on Sunday, ripping down the wires.) ***disruptions to "service" do not mix well with regulated-system-dependent-autism.
It included an admission long expected but denied for months now. A shift that takes away my one reprieve in 24/7 caregiving, until the person in question re-attains sobriety, demonstrably.
~~~
And it included two emails...followed up by text. A summoning. A summoning after some 7 months of silence...after the boundary set to protect was met with hostility. Silence in which I continued to try to hold myself to the standard that allows me to sit comfortably with my children, knowing I have the done the right thing and the kind thing. Silence in which the offer of assistance went unanswered. In which birthday, and anniversary, and recognition-days gifts were dropped off in silence...but dropped off nonetheless, because I grew into survival by 'doing the thing', no matter the cost.
There was no reckoning. There was no confrontation. No list of recriminations. No shouted words. No tears. No moment in which the past was laid bare, and the entirety of it held up as evidence. No public display of the scars.
There was...simply...silence...
And behind the silence, a woman of middle-age, grieving for what never was...and doing the impossible, life-altering work of walking beside her inner child...finally confronting the abuses she'd buried in order to survive. (What a curious thing that is. Survival in youth required willfully forgetting and going so numb that nothing could touch...survival this past year *and more, these years since Henri was born and post-partum popped the cork off* has required walking side by side with 'her', and offering up myself as a shield to each remembered blow.)
And all the while, silent. Because the ones who harmed, both willfully and unconsciously would never suffer confrontation. Would never sit in the truth of what they did and would have continued to do. Would never apologize. Silence, because the adult in me refused to let the child sit and have her lived history rewritten in deflection and blame. Silence, because I had finally chosen to love myself enough to protect myself.
There was news. In dribbles. From other corners. But nothing direct. No intentional sharing of important information. My silence of healing was met with the hostility and failed-manipulation of one who would deny any opportunity for reckoning and rebuilding. "This is what you built.", I thought to myself in my silence. "This is what you continue to cement in place."
And so I dug deep into myself and continued the work. (And it has been hard, and filthy work. It has been unfettered rage finally allowed to burn. It has been disbelief and disgust at the depravity. It has been saltwater pouring from eyes unfamiliar with the release of crying. It has been shame and punishment...because that was the program...that was the foundation... It has been a long-extended break-down...in 15 minutes allotments before squaring my shoulders, sipping my coffee, and going about the day of the automaton everyone needs me to be.)
And then the emails came. And the texts.
The summoning.
And so I held her...my...hand once more, and helped her dial the numbers...two phone calls...two very different 'family members'...two relationships never allowed to be realized in my youth, but here...in adulthood a very real part of the healing work and a very real feeling of family...two voices on the other end with honest, informed, loving advice.
1) You do not owe this.
2) You made a clean break, and I'm proud of you.
3) This...NEEDS to be about you. Don't think about anyone else. Do what you...what little she needed.
And my response: I don't see a version in which I don't show up. That's what I do. I show up. I open myself to more. I break off pieces of myself to fit. But I show up. And while I know that is hugely self-destructive, I love that about myself. I love that I choose to show up. I love that I choose to walk bravely into guaranteed pain. I love that I choose to be generous with what little I have...what little is left of me... To be kind and gentle. To ease the ending of a book that has left me riddled with papercuts.
I don't see a version in which I can look my children in the eyes, if I don't hold myself to this standard.
I choose to do this one final thing. I choose to honor the empty title.
I choose to bear witness, so my little-self can break free from her confinement.
And so I did.
I responded.
And I planned. A scheduling of function. Of getting out of the car, at the entrance. Of walking, alone, along the road...breathing crisp fall air and centering myself. Of entering and 'making it past the guard'. Of sitting, and reading the passage chosen by the listener so many years ago now. Of carefully and quietly making my exit. Of walking, once more...alone...until exhaustion would burn it out of me. Of finally getting in the car, and driving home, and bundling both my boys into my arms and telling them "I love you. I always have. I always will. There is nothing you could ever do to change that. You are so worthy of love. You are wanted. You are such miracles. You are mine. I am yours."
I had a plan.
But the paper had gone missing. The cd and paper, carefully tucked away after having been forced awkwardly upon me years ago, was no-where. Gone.
And with it...My Plan. And with it...my strength and my will and my grasp on peace.
I broke down. Me. The girl who doesn't cry. Sobbing. Burning.
My phone rang. One of the two. Comfort, and consolation.
"We can find other words.", she said. "We can find another passage. Those don't matter. 'They' probably don't even remember it. You can read something else. The plan is still the plan."
We both let me sob and rant until the fire was out. Then we looked for new passages. My stipulation? Nothing religious. No biblical verse to be offered up to someone who used the bible as a weapon against me...who created a God of shame and hatred and punishment.
We found a few. And then it was time to prepare. To shower. To dress. To follow the plan.
But that went sideways when the warm water hit my face in the shower and the tears of a little girl who has no good memories...who only ever wanted to be loved...poured out of me. And when she was done, she whispered in my mind that others' words would never do. She said to me "You write. You are the writer. You have always been the one who writes the words. You must do that now."
And the adult me wept this time, because how do you write with no hook? How do you begin with no glimmer?
I wept, curled up in a sopping wet ball on the floor of the shower.
And I finally remembered One Thing. One recycled conversation we'd had over and again...one statement made countless times. And I thought that is it...that is what I have to work with.
I let the water wash away the tears. I dried. I dressed. And I wrote. Frantically. Because time had run out. Time had finally run out... The breath I have been waiting my whole life for, is waiting now for me.
I typed. I read through. Hit print. Applied mascara. Folded up the paper and tucked it in my purse. And left. Drove. Walked. Sat. Read.
I brought no pain. No tears. No anger. No pleas.
I brought no accusation. I brought no reckoning.
There was no confession. No apology. No bandaid words of too little, too late. There was no exchange of "love". And there was no goodbye.
On Either Side.
There was simply time spent. An offering of conversation. Little tidbits of the joy that is my motherhood.
Here is what I wrote:
We have never been close, you and I. You set the foundation, and I followed suit.
But we have had moments, in amongst the years, where there was a small breath of sharing…of exchanging…of seeing and being seen. Something that I was reminded of today when I sat down to put words to page was the many, many times you shared with me…that had things gone differently…had life been lived differently, you would have spent your elder years in Vermont. At least, I think it was Vermont. Perhaps it was Maine? But that’s no matter. Because in my memory it is Vermont. Of rolling hills and autumnal displays redolent with color. Of skiing and lodges, and cocoa by fires. Of the Blueberry Hill Inn and of car rides through arctic blasts. And nothing makes me think of Vermont more than Robert Frost. Even though he spent his adult life in New Hampshire, it’s Vermont he seems to have captured so well.
It is a shame, I think, that you never saw that dream of silver years in silver-topped ranges. A shame that you didn’t grab it with both hands and pull. I think perhaps there are many things that you might have wished to reach for but didn’t.
The clock is running out. And the light fading even as autumn colors the trees. Perhaps that golden glow of seasons changing is one you yourself will feel…are feeling… One brightening, one softening, one more small breath to whisper the final chapter.
I thought perhaps I could sit here with you and read the words of Robert Frost. And then we both can retreat into those places of imagining where we wished we had been.
"Come In"
As I came to the edge of the woods,
Thrush music — hark!
Now if it was dusk outside,
Inside it was dark.
Too dark in the woods for a bird
By sleight of wing
To better its perch for the night,
Though it still could sing.
The last of the light of the sun
That had died in the west
Still lived for one song more
In a thrush’s breast.
Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went —
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.
But no, I was out for stars;
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked;
And I hadn’t been.
"Now close the windows"
Now close the windows and hush all the fields:
If the trees must, let them silently toss;
No bird is singing now, and if there is,
Be it my loss.
It will be long ere the marshes resume,
I will be long ere the earliest bird:
So close the windows and not hear the wind,
But see all wind-stirred.
~~~
I sat beside. I read. I let the pieces that broke off of me fall to the floor like so many times before. I made my departure. I walked. And walked. And walked.
And finally I came home and hugged my boys. And told them all the words I'd always been denied.
And when I was done, I listened to that little-me again...and I wrote...