I ran away twice when I was a teenager. Looking back I can't remember if the impetus was to make a statement or a break for freedom. Perhaps, as with most things, it wasn't all or nothing, but rather portions of both needs which hoisted my body out the window and up the hill on foot. I didn't get far. The station wagon was suffocating with screams and it seemed as if the move had been a grave mistake. The end would be far worse than the beginning. The ungrateful child prophecy was fulfilled, and there was something comforting about finally having that score settled. If you can't measure up, at least you can measure down.
So it was with these memories in tow that I ran away once more. Close to fifty years old and I packed my car haphazardly with the minimalists survival tools: clothes, shampoo, cans of beans, and an old journal written the year before my marriage...before me, the self that is now pervasive. I went out the front door and set out in my car with tears echoing in my ears and draining from my eyes. I marveled that I could do such a thing...rip a heart from it's chest and leave it lying there on the stained carpet, fish mouthed and airless. Truth was I wasn't running away so much as running up...to a point high enough that I could get a clear, unobstructed view of the road I was on, where it forked, and where the multiple paths led.
Each path began with my own fault and was littered with mile markers of cowardice and unworthiness. I felt guilt like a necklace of mortar shells...could barely lift my head with the weight of it, but forged on with an absolute need to know. Through the fog of my own apology I heard another, a statement not unlike my own, but louder still, and I realized I was not on this lookout alone. There was another surveying the road. He turned and spoke...
"I can see where you have worked this relationship with no reward. I can see that I have put you on the defensive for the last 27 years. I can see that I loved you the way I wanted to be loved, not the way you needed to be loved. I can see how you've set it before me time and again and I was too blind to see. I see now. I see you. I hear you. I am so sorry. Forgive me."
I felt redeemed. I know no other word for the relief of finding that all that broke was not entirely my own doing, nor would it be my own fixing. The blame between two can never be laid at the door of one, but admission is the first step towards a new beginning.
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Wow - what a powerful post. I clicked on here just because I liked the name of your blog, and found unexpected treasure! I really like your combination of words and images too - and am following now.
ReplyDeleteDeborah - Thank you! So excited to have you join us 'round the campfire :) We're making popcorn and telling tales, so make yourself at home.
ReplyDeleteWoulda been nice. I managed to mess up my 1st marriage beyond all hope and repair and like a bird with one wing I flapped and jumped off the cliff and turned slow bird-circles flapping that one wing as hard as I could until SPLAT on the rocks below and wash it on out to sea.
ReplyDeleteNot even sure I was flapping. I may have just been twitching my tail feathers.
I never can tell what's fact and fiction with you, little girl. I hope the inspiration for this post was a happy thing with a happy ending.
- Eric
fuck. this hit me hard. perhaps it's the running, fish-mouthed, that we all do when really the finish line is the acknowledgment. that someone sees us.
ReplyDeletefuck. i'm too hormonal and pregnant to read this again. but it sticks to my skin.
you are such a treat.
Eric - All true. We are not ended. We continue. We work. We strive not for an ending, but for a better continuing. Never done. Never achieved. But being. Being better. You wrote such a vivid picture of your flight. It will stay with me awhile....a lesson in using both wings...mouth and heart (for me).
ReplyDeleteKrista - As are you! We are both battling hormones from different sharp shooters! I NEVER thought my 40's would be this hard. Thought it was all wives tales...another hardship women create when their birth stories run stale. Ha! Starting lines and finish lines are the most visible. The race is long and much of it unwitnessed. Being seen at the finish is not necessarily an ending, but an alarm that glaringly blares, demanding to be attended.
Wow! You amaze me more and more each day.
ReplyDeleteI wish II had such a connection to my emotions and inner-self.
It is a gift, and at times might feel like a curse.
I wish you both all you need. For me that drive happened over and over until it stopped. We stopped.
ReplyDeleteIntense, yet soberly conveyed. A decision acted on -- rare and rare. This has a tang of the deeply real, yet a filmic aura surrounds its telling in words.
ReplyDeleteUnderpar - You're working on it. I see you. I hear you :) Yes, there is the curse side...the no filter part.
ReplyDeleteAmy - Can't imagine repeats of this pain. I'm sorry.
Tim - Decision/Acted. Rare/Rare. Yes...especially for me. I've made most decisions based mainly on the needs of others. This is perhaps the first based on my need alone. Scary that. To be selfish is frightening. And yet, it..."this" serves us both in living authentically with each other.
I sense the same art direction coming from your pieces. Can almost hear the soundtrack.
I can relate to this feeling more than I am able to put into simple words. I ended my marriage after three years and am just now finding myself again. And that self is different than the person I was before, and the person I was during that time. This feels much like the guilt I struggled with. But sometimes we must go. We must run. For ourselves and for them.
ReplyDeleteI'm very moved by what you write. Sometimes you just have to assert your freedom. When our choices become accepted as a kind of natural law, we have to remind others, we're actively choosing not just giving in. I think, I guess.
ReplyDeleteWhat you write is very beautiful.
Eva - Oh yes...Guilt certainly a huge factor in all my life decisions. Now I give it a compartment, not the whole train. We change. There is no helping that. Can we change with together? And so we circle around each other and peer across the question as newly different selves.
ReplyDeleteMatt - Gawd I think this is VERY important...to know that we are each actively choosing. It was not a one day choice with signatures on a paper line. How hard will we work at love when it is no longer new...when the "in-love" tingling, titillating experience has ended (as it always does). How to give enough to be what the other needs without losing self? It is so difficult...like sorting grains of sand by size, requiring a God sized lense for me. You think. You guess. It hits me as solid truth.
“Beginning Again”, You express so much, such an honest assessment. I think of similar escapes in my life, and how to express them as they really were. I wondered if I was running away, escaping, being selfish, or finally giving up and finding my own way. It is especially hard admitting how much of each escape was my own fault. Wonderful post.
ReplyDeleteWonderful. Naked and thought-provoking.
ReplyDeletevery powerful, moving piece. that pain you express is so spot on, alone in the car bottoming out. yes, yes.
ReplyDelete"The end would be far worse than the beginning"
ReplyDelete"If you can't measure up, at least you can measure down."
"I marveled that I could do such a thing...rip a heart from it's chest and leave it lying there on the stained carpet, fish mouthed and airless."
Powerful
Anthony - Somehow we each find our own way. Amazing when we consider how we muck up the compass...how true north somehow changes as our magnets warp. But yes, somehow, we find our own way.
ReplyDeleteEvelyn - Naked scares the hell out of me. It's good to be scared.
Ed - So good to hear from you Shutter-Bug! Your book is wonderful. Next time we are in So-Cal I hope to hit you up for an autograph :) Ah yes...bottoming out so familiar of late.
Ayon - Sometimes we realize our power only in failure...in our small words, strung together like pearls.