The Hardest Thing You'll Never Understand

“It is the hardest thing you will ever do, yes. But I can tell you this…and you may not understand it now, but I tell you, it is worth it.”

My grandmother, a tiny, firecracker of a woman, sat, I imagine, at the end seat of her kitchen table in the house she has lived in for most of her life and all of mine. Time, which has done its dance on her, is something that she values now almost solely alongside her faith and her family. The second of my parents after my mother, in the absence of my father for all those years, this woman was tough and loving beyond what I now know to be the capability of almost anyone else on Earth. Her patience with us never waned, even for a moment. Amidst fights between my brother and I, my temper tantrums tantamount to tropical storms, tears at goodbye, skinned knees and scraped elbows, she would scoop us up, clap her hands once loudly, and tell us we were precious, and that she could never live without us. She wouldn’t, she says now, even have been alive in our absence. No one has ever loved me more.

The year I was born, her marriage of over thirty years had just ended abruptly. C.J, a miserable, spoiled man, who had mistreated both her and their four sons for all of their lives, ended their family simply with the words, “I don’t love you anymore. You’re a no good wife.” And that was that. He’d been cheating on her for years, so it turns out, and being a God-fearing Catholic, or so the handbook dictated, he would opt not to divorce her, and live on in marital purgatory. Abusive, manipulative, lying and cheating. Loveless. And assuming compliance on her part.

Her options, as she saw them, were suicide or divorce. She preferred suicide, of course, because at least there would be no one to judge her. No excommunication. No Catholic guilt. No sins to repent. No disapproval of her mother. No hatred from her sons, her church, or herself. My mother intervened, pregnant and with a blood pressure under strict watch from her doctor, eventually required the help of my father, and together they pried the bottle of whiskey and the shotgun out of my grandmother’s tiny hands, and brought her back to life. I was born, and she filed for divorce. C.J. retreated to a cabin the family had owned for years, and made it, along with the acres of forest separating it from the rest of humanity, his new refuge and home.

So yesterday, as she grilled me about my boyfriend and our future plans together, I was aghast to hear the words “it’s worth it” escape her mouth. After all, and I love her immensely even despite this, she was in fact the reason I’ve been afraid my entire life. Hers was the story I didn’t ever want to become. It was her shotgun I could never bring myself to accept someday having to wield. Her thirty years, her dreams, her work and her expectations for the future, I was never myself, willing to lose.

I delicately tried, gracefully as anyone could, to draw this line for her in the sand between us. This is where I am, and it is safe. You have warned me always, you see, never to venture to where you are. Warned all of my life, that “people always leave you” and now you expect me to love anyway, and to love without fear and to love without caution? (Refer to the quote from Great Expectations.)

“It’s work,” she said. “It’s work and it can be awful and you make plenty of sacrifices and endure plenty of things. But companionship, honey. Love. Being alone is no better. Yes. I know now that I chose the wrong man. But I have my family because of it. I have you. And I would do it all again. If given the choice, I would do it all again.”

Later, I spoke to my mother, and relayed the contents of this conversation. In the planning stages of her own divorce, thirty years into her own marriage, she was silent for a moment. I thought she might cry or tell me to ignore my grandmother, change the subject, or disagree at the very least. But instead she said, “yes,” and then another notable pause. “I’d do it the same way too.”

I bothered for a little while trying to disagree with them both. (Though in either case, a change of heart would result in my never having been born to begin with, which of course is unacceptable.) I cited the years that were lost, the pain that at one point has brought them to their knees, the choices worth regretting, and the anger, which without wanting it to, entirely replaces the warmth. I asked them why. Neither one could tell me. “Someday you’ll understand,” was mostly what I got. I couldn’t understand.

There are times when the dissolving of your family hits you harder than others. As the adult child of divorce, you’re expected for the most part, to cope with the downfall maturely and carry on in your own life with business as usual. Some days, this is harder than others. I spoke to my mom one morning, one of the hard days, and as she spoke she began to cry. She’d found old letters, cards from my father, memories now more painful than they are sweet. I listened to her quietly, as tears streamed down my face. This is what I’d meant when I spoke to my grandmother. What I’d tried to explain just days earlier to my mom. This did not seem worth its weight in pain. How could she not regret this? How on earth could this be worth anything?

After we hung up, the tears hit me so hard, and so suddenly, that I even surprised myself. I buried my face into my pillow, in shaking, racking sobs. At this point, the man who I have come to love more than I knew I was capable of loving anyone, heard me crying from my computer where he sat. He got to me in less than a second flat. As I lie there, sobbing in his arms, heartbroken for my parents, devastated at their loss, he told me that he loved me. He said that they would be all right. He told me that he understood how hard it must be to watch them cry alone. How he knows the pain of hearing your mother’s tears. He told me this and held me tighter as I sobbed all over his shoulder.

“Do you want me to go?” he said finally, after I’d calmed down. “I don’t ever want you to go,” I said. (Again, surprising even myself.) Why wasn’t I pushing him away from me, if alone was the only safe place? He hugged me again, and flattened my hair and told me he wouldn’t leave then. And I realized I didn’t ever want him to leave again.

And then suddenly…accidentally…I understood.

Against All Odds

Our arrogance allows us to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that we have ultimate control over our direction in life. We tell ourselves that we will choose the jobs which make us happy. We will be good at these jobs and ascend to the heights of success. We will always love our lovers. We will live in exciting places. We will never be our parents. And we will make the right decisions.

It all seems within our jurisdiction. We confidently state things like, "it's too soon," or "it's too late"... things like, "I can't" or "I want to" in the face of apparent options. We are making the choices that will lend themselves to the lives that we expect to lead. "We're getting married," will someday become a family, a burden, a dream. "I'm moving away," will change everything. You will be alone. You will be in love. You will live a different life.

There is no way to see the road, even from here in the driver's seat, making the big decisions. Because along with those choices that you're making every day about words like "marriage" and "school" and "work" exist too, words like "cancer" and "pregnant" and "affair." And then words like, "before" become painful, and words like "now" are the burden. You become forced into decisions, rather than gallantly electing them. You're given the option of bad and worse, good for you but wrong for them, impossible and brave, careless and exciting. And how can you choose between options you'd never expected? How can you love fearlessly when words like "divorce" weigh down? How can you plan a family, when "six months to live" is suddenly the fate of your father? How can you move across the country, when your application, your future is pending approval? When is it safe to give up everything you've chosen to be, for something you can't possibly predict?

The answer, I think, is that it isn't ever safe out here. Safe decisions and the right thing and the right time are optimistic terms contrived to help us sleep at night. To hope that we've done the right thing, that the choices were ours to have made, gives us the peace of mind required to be able to continue making them. Despite our lack of control. Despite our fear. Despite, even, the possibility of the failures. Of heartbreak. Of losing before we have the opportunity to ever make it. The fear cannot compel you. To make the choices in the face of that fear, and despite it, maybe that is what we're doing out here. And doing so, despite the odds against us.

Time Well Written

My desire and ability to write have escaped me. It isn't that I don't have the time. Or, I should say that if I chose to, I could certainly make the time. I haven't been that interested. My job, I suppose, is partly to blame.

I am chained to a lime-green cubicle for nine or ten hours a day, endlessly poring over articles, contracts, checklists, spreadhseets and legal jargon so mindlessly that by the time I am released, all my words have left me. Other words are there. Words like, derivative, and conjunction and contributor and third party rights, foreign option, reuse restrictions, addendum, second serial rights agreement, exclusivity and corporate editorial. The most hated two words of them all. I am tired of Corporate Editorial.

Also there is the issue of the boy. Both as an issue of time, and secondly, more strangely, that he has revised me. Where I was previously an introspective, anguished child, I am becoming someone who feels mostly (mostly) like a contented adult. It's a change in me that seemingly no one in my life can compute. I think that Pam said it best, when in response to hearing that I loved him, she said, "Honey, it's not unlikely that you have a great man, we all knew it would happen as soon as you let it. It's just kind of surprising to see for the first time. To hear you say you're in love (and you're not talking about NYC or your new Prada purse) takes a minute to process." Well then. Maybe it's taking me a minute as well. And how could I write that down, for the people who dislike this thing to begin with, or those who in response to my happiness ask if I'm drunk, or the people who know me well enough to know that even a year ago, my choices were less healthy. People who are dying to say I told you so, and those I don't speak to anymore. I don't know how to talk about myself anymore, or that it's anybody's business.

And so I'm having trouble with my blog.

I'd like to find a new approach to cataloging my life. Because prior to this summer (combination of business, crappy job and boyfriend) I found it to be a truly valuable exercise in self-awareness. (Plus it gave you surfers something to do with yourselves for a few minutes a day.) I'll work on it and be back to you in no time. Afterall, the holidays are coming. I'm sure I'll be able to find plenty of dysfunction-ridden time with my family to jot down some stories for my readers.