POST 26: "Goodbye My Love"
“It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start.” Mother Teresa
In the whirlwind of school, work and raising children, my marriage was strained, and although we tried, we were unable to recover.
I felt betrayed. I thought I had a deal with God. I would serve him to the best of my ability and He would not let me end up like my mother, a divorced woman. Like another broken family. Benjamin couldn’t understand: he didn’t cheat, drink, he had a job.
What was my problem?
For me it came down to the realization that my husband and I were complete strangers with only our children in common. There were no other interests that overlapped. For my husband, raised in profound poverty during the repressive regime of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, what we had was as good as it gets. You must be a bitch, I thought to myself, why do you want more? Someone you can talk to? Kvetch with and laugh? Someone who “gets” spirituality? Who likes discussing symbols and stories? I figured I had a good 40 years ahead of me.
Forty years of living with a stranger? I decided I would choose divorce over being married and not related to for the rest of my life.
I discovered that I had this ancient mass of grief, scabbed over, that my divorce now laid bare. Of all the things, I saw my 19-year-old self handing over my entire collection of Manilow memorabilia. All I understood was that something joyful was taken from me. And I let it happen. That was just the tip of the iceberg. Although a bona fide, platinum card-carrying survivor, traumatic childhood issues reawakened with a vengeance with the divorce. The Handbook wasn’t working so well anymore, thank you, 15 years of therapy.
The question was: how would I navigate this dark passage?
My typical response: I destroyed ten years of creative writing contained in my notebooks and journals.
Late at night I argued with God for breaking the deal I thought we had. I dared God to go ahead and flick a lightning bolt. Go ahead, O Smoting One, pour molten lava on me or turn me into a pillar of salt. Occasionally I would look up Barry Manilow on the internet, find the old songs and read old lyrics. I didn’t have the CDs or tapes. I read some of the newer songs – songs I missed for the past twenty years.
I cried. I cried for it all.
I cried for my lost marriage.
I cried for the homeless people I worked with at Broadway Church that I knew who failed at getting clean.
I cried for those kids sniffing glue for dinner I had seen in Colombia.
I cried because I wanted to make a difference and I didn’t.
I cried because I still missed my brother Chris so much, and how unfair it was that he died just as I was getting to know him.
I cried for my deceased parents, for the complicated relationships we eked out over the years. I cried for the parents I needed but never had.
I cried for every piece of paper I tore up, for every unwritten page I willed to invisibility.
I cried because actually I was pretty good at it. After a while I thought, shall this be a Kleenex cry, or shall we use a real handkerchief? Or let’s just cast caution to the wind and use our sleeve. Or the cat. Maybe even the arm of the couch. Or it could be a contest: how high can we fill the garbage pail with the most used tissues this night? Or do a tissue toss. At the cat. I think she thought it was a game. Or maybe use the Bible as a target. Or the window. I believe quite a few landed on the roof or even made it to Amsterdam Avenue.
This time was my first Dark Night of the Soul.
It was a depression that taunted me with images of my brother Sean and his failed marriages. Why didn't I just end it then and there? It was a fleeting, cruel thought. No, I thought. I might not be the mother I had hoped to be, but I was still my children's mother. I had promised to love and protect them to the best of my ability. That promise I would not break.
Mother T. said to pray. I cried and tears became my prayers. Those tears were the notes of a stillborn song. So I prayed rivers. I wept verses that longed to be told. I cried until I was too exhausted to cry, afraid to hope for a new future, but with that still, small voice begged God, “Please?” I prayed the psalms into the early hours of the morning. I didn’t pray for holiness anymore.
That was a teenager’s fantasy.
I prayed for some glimmer of hope.
There came a point I could no longer cry or read. I just sat in the darkness. In silence. I realized in snatches of moments that God indeed was there, just like that time in Hollywood when I felt so alone. Or like those times I snuck into St. Colman’s as a kid and hid away in silence. Still, even in the worst of times I always had a sense of God-with-me, like an incurable case of tinnitus.
The darkness I was experiencing was in the stripping away of all the expectations I had projected onto my life. I wasn’t going to end up like up my mom. A divorced, single mother. Well, here I was, a divorced, single mother. Was I morphing into Madonna?
Was this the beginning of every adult woman’s Kafkaesque nightmare: what would be next – would I start planning large holiday meals? Sneaking smokes at night? The thing was, I just couldn’t remember her real comforting presence in my childhood. She provided, but she wasn’t there when I was really afraid. Which was most of the time. That was the last thing I wanted to be for my children: an absent mother.
The fear of becoming that embittered, unavailable Madonna sent me right back into therapy. No matter what, I wanted better for my kids.
Notes
http://www.verybestquotes.com/150-mother-teresa-quotes/#sthash.e I
Give the gift of music to the next generation through donations to:
The Manilow Music Project
8295 South La Cienega Boulevard
Inglewood, CA 90301
[email protected]
Click here to go to the next post or click here to return to the previous post.
In the whirlwind of school, work and raising children, my marriage was strained, and although we tried, we were unable to recover.
I felt betrayed. I thought I had a deal with God. I would serve him to the best of my ability and He would not let me end up like my mother, a divorced woman. Like another broken family. Benjamin couldn’t understand: he didn’t cheat, drink, he had a job.
What was my problem?
For me it came down to the realization that my husband and I were complete strangers with only our children in common. There were no other interests that overlapped. For my husband, raised in profound poverty during the repressive regime of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, what we had was as good as it gets. You must be a bitch, I thought to myself, why do you want more? Someone you can talk to? Kvetch with and laugh? Someone who “gets” spirituality? Who likes discussing symbols and stories? I figured I had a good 40 years ahead of me.
Forty years of living with a stranger? I decided I would choose divorce over being married and not related to for the rest of my life.
I discovered that I had this ancient mass of grief, scabbed over, that my divorce now laid bare. Of all the things, I saw my 19-year-old self handing over my entire collection of Manilow memorabilia. All I understood was that something joyful was taken from me. And I let it happen. That was just the tip of the iceberg. Although a bona fide, platinum card-carrying survivor, traumatic childhood issues reawakened with a vengeance with the divorce. The Handbook wasn’t working so well anymore, thank you, 15 years of therapy.
The question was: how would I navigate this dark passage?
My typical response: I destroyed ten years of creative writing contained in my notebooks and journals.
Late at night I argued with God for breaking the deal I thought we had. I dared God to go ahead and flick a lightning bolt. Go ahead, O Smoting One, pour molten lava on me or turn me into a pillar of salt. Occasionally I would look up Barry Manilow on the internet, find the old songs and read old lyrics. I didn’t have the CDs or tapes. I read some of the newer songs – songs I missed for the past twenty years.
I cried. I cried for it all.
I cried for my lost marriage.
I cried for the homeless people I worked with at Broadway Church that I knew who failed at getting clean.
I cried for those kids sniffing glue for dinner I had seen in Colombia.
I cried because I wanted to make a difference and I didn’t.
I cried because I still missed my brother Chris so much, and how unfair it was that he died just as I was getting to know him.
I cried for my deceased parents, for the complicated relationships we eked out over the years. I cried for the parents I needed but never had.
I cried for every piece of paper I tore up, for every unwritten page I willed to invisibility.
I cried because actually I was pretty good at it. After a while I thought, shall this be a Kleenex cry, or shall we use a real handkerchief? Or let’s just cast caution to the wind and use our sleeve. Or the cat. Maybe even the arm of the couch. Or it could be a contest: how high can we fill the garbage pail with the most used tissues this night? Or do a tissue toss. At the cat. I think she thought it was a game. Or maybe use the Bible as a target. Or the window. I believe quite a few landed on the roof or even made it to Amsterdam Avenue.
This time was my first Dark Night of the Soul.
It was a depression that taunted me with images of my brother Sean and his failed marriages. Why didn't I just end it then and there? It was a fleeting, cruel thought. No, I thought. I might not be the mother I had hoped to be, but I was still my children's mother. I had promised to love and protect them to the best of my ability. That promise I would not break.
Mother T. said to pray. I cried and tears became my prayers. Those tears were the notes of a stillborn song. So I prayed rivers. I wept verses that longed to be told. I cried until I was too exhausted to cry, afraid to hope for a new future, but with that still, small voice begged God, “Please?” I prayed the psalms into the early hours of the morning. I didn’t pray for holiness anymore.
That was a teenager’s fantasy.
I prayed for some glimmer of hope.
There came a point I could no longer cry or read. I just sat in the darkness. In silence. I realized in snatches of moments that God indeed was there, just like that time in Hollywood when I felt so alone. Or like those times I snuck into St. Colman’s as a kid and hid away in silence. Still, even in the worst of times I always had a sense of God-with-me, like an incurable case of tinnitus.
The darkness I was experiencing was in the stripping away of all the expectations I had projected onto my life. I wasn’t going to end up like up my mom. A divorced, single mother. Well, here I was, a divorced, single mother. Was I morphing into Madonna?
Was this the beginning of every adult woman’s Kafkaesque nightmare: what would be next – would I start planning large holiday meals? Sneaking smokes at night? The thing was, I just couldn’t remember her real comforting presence in my childhood. She provided, but she wasn’t there when I was really afraid. Which was most of the time. That was the last thing I wanted to be for my children: an absent mother.
The fear of becoming that embittered, unavailable Madonna sent me right back into therapy. No matter what, I wanted better for my kids.
Notes
http://www.verybestquotes.com/150-mother-teresa-quotes/#sthash.e I
Give the gift of music to the next generation through donations to:
The Manilow Music Project
8295 South La Cienega Boulevard
Inglewood, CA 90301
[email protected]
Click here to go to the next post or click here to return to the previous post.