The present of presence
It may not surprise regular readers to hear that I have problems with family and connection, that it’s easier for me to remain self-sufficient than to ask for help even from those closest to me, and that even though I have a small family of my own, it has been difficult for me to be present with them. This is something that has come up in various therapy work, how to feel like I am a part of things, how not to stay separate, how groupings of three are threatening, especially for those who have generally been excluded in such groupings (child, parent, parent; child, parent, parent’s love interest).
And you know what? It’s gotten better. Not perfect, but better. There is a thread of connection between us. I’m less absent (again, not perfect, but so much better) when we’re together. I didn’t want to run away from home on my birthday, though I thought about it a lot the week before. We have had times when all three of us could sit quietly in a room, comfortable in our separateness, connected, too, without fraught, silent history hanging over our heads. This was the first year that my husband and I coordinated on the boy’s Christmas and also worked out a Christmas Eve misunderstanding without me exploding (tough, especially when the house is full of people and I am tense with the requirements of it all).
I worry about my parenting and the worry gets in the way of figuring out what is good for me. Sometimes I imagine going up in a poof of smoke, the midnight disappearance, the running off to another town, just to be free of the potential pain that connection brings – the threat of loss (it is inevitable, no matter what), the future break between child and parents, the wrenching ache of death and abandonment. I’ve created a life of total submission to child and home, which only makes the stakes higher and the center of my life more fragile, which ramps up the anxiety, the feeling that the walls in my small room are closing in on me.
I’m figuring it out. I focus on the future, on the grad school path, while keeping an open mind. No matter the path to external happiness, to contentment, to self-sufficiency, I will not lose the connection. I will be present.
So this is Christmas … a holiday I don’t totally care for, one that takes over, all macho with its Christian origins and its focus on consumerism. Today I focus on the rest of it, the boy, the greenery, the lights, the feeling of gratefulness for my wavering yet strengthening ability to be here, and for my friends, those of you I’ve known for years and those of you with whom I’ve developed a friendship across the mysterious Internet ether. I am so lucky to know you.
I am grateful for family, too, for the spark of connection, the elusive silver thread. It's not a trap. No matter how things change and shift for me – how I make them change and shift – the connection will be there, the history, the shared, ineffable love.
Merry Holidays!
Image of the boy playing at the park yesterday.
Obviously, I was able to carve out an hour or two for writing -- it's one of the benefits of waking up at 4:30 in the morning!
Chiaroscuro
Look. I’m all out of words. They started drifting away from me this morning, when I woke up with the boy at six a.m. As the day continued – conversation with the visitors, trudging off to music class, trudging back, stopping at the store, fixing lunch for the visitors, making conversation with the visitors, entertaining my son, taking care of our various animals, fixing dinner, putting the exhausted child to bed, making more conversation with the visitors – the words just left.
I say I was making conversation with the visitors, but the truth is that by the end of the day I was mainly nodding and sighing sympathetically. It was all I had left. So here I am, bereft of creativity, my mind swimming with stories of thyroid nodules and nerves like tangled spiders’ webs, of early deaths and shattered psyches. What’s in store for me? Should I be so smug about my flexible back and thin, muscular legs? Should I be grateful that my mother taught me the proper way to eat? Or that I inherited her frame and general good health? Maybe I will fulfill my genetic heritage some day soon: develop an autoimmune disease, succumb to the rot of debilitating depression, start to feel my legs tingle and fret as if they were plugged into the wall.
Part II: Resonance
OK, OK, OK, Part I was the result yet another prompt, from a family visit in September. It was a photo prompt that had nothing to do with the resulting piece. I was going through my old stuff, looking for something, saw this, thought: Aha! That feeling some of us get after too much family time on Thanksgiving. Except I haven't gone home for Thanksgiving in years, and if I did, it would actually be wonderful to be with my mother, though Kevin's absence would still be palpable.
Sometimes I'm afraid that you're getting the wrong impression. Maybe you think that I sit around immersing myself in the past, feeling sorry for myself and penning various memorials to the me who used to be. Or that I prefer to dance with darkness rather than frolic in joy and light.
I write about what resonates and I have a complex relationship with both happiness and the past. The past is always present for me; it informs the present, keeps me grounded. And it provides me with great material. Don't even have to think about it. As for happiness: I am capable of feeling great joy. I'm generally happy, except when I'm not. The hollows, shadowy, cold as falling snow, call to me. Light is meaningless without darkness. I need texture, a rough patch here and there, a little complexity and strife to make it more interesting.
But maybe my next post will be about puppies. More likely about finishing NaNoWriMo. Or my husband wrapping up his dissertation. Or maybe it really will be about puppies, cute little fluffballs, good enough to eat.