a therapeutic rambling

What do you do when you so badly want to just drive away into the sunset? Or maybe not the sunset, since it's the morning and you don't even want to wait until evening and a sunset....just drive away into the now, the next town, the unknown---as long as it's away from the dark that you feel and the hurt. You ignore it, I think. You work out and work off the tears that you cried, sitting in your car in the morning, and you temporarily feel better and determined, even, to smooth over the fissures, the pieces that are showing cracks, and to act normal. You determine to find a place of calm, of numbness if that's what it takes to be able to hug your young children who still need you and love you and depend on you to be there; to be able to speak in calmness to them, nothing betraying the storm brewing within, continuing to help them find their clothes in the morning, help them get to school, help them with their homework, put some sort of supper together, drive them to practice....all the things that keep life normal. You determine to cling to that place of calm, or of numbness, in order to be polite and unemotional when dealing with your teenager who has told you several times--in direct and indirect ways--that he doesn't like you, that your rules are stupid, that you're basically ineffectual as a parent. If it didn't echo your own worst fears, maybe you would be able to separate yourself from this obvious teenage angst, shelve it in the round file, and move on. But the echoes are loud. And after months and months and maybe even years of battling passive aggression, not-so-passive aggression, rudeness, scorn, disgust, dislike, disrespect from someone who you've spent untold, countless hours and years serving, helping, grieving over, stressing over, lying awake at night wondering the best next possible move---all with his ultimate happiness in mind---you start to notice the cracking in the facade. You finally can't stem the tears that come unexpected at all times of the day. You hear the echoes that confirm your worst fears: you never parented him well or even right--in his youngest, most formative years, alone and inexperienced and self-absorbed, you did it all wrong. And this, this, is the consequence. Payback. Justice.

Add this to the recent disappointments in your life, the other losses, and you feel like you can almost hear normal giving way to grief, you can hear the cracks as they form. And you wish you could drive and drive, be alone to regroup and to remember all the good: the wonderful, smart, handsome, unfailingly loving husband you have; bright and lively young children who tell you daily in some way or another that you're the greatest mom in the world---an assertion that hurts, almost, because you know it not to be true but you're indebted to them for their belief in that; faithful parents who you now understand you probably and likely hurt as deeply as your own child does you; an unshakable faith in the creator of all things that will ultimately shore you up and keep you on your feet when every instinct is to lay down and never move again; a life that most people in this world would gladly live if only given the chance; a life better and easier than what so many are living. And even, finally, remembering that the good includes a son on the cusp of adulthood, battling demons and unhappiness within himself, who has many many wonderful qualities....and just hoping that time will mature what needs to grow, heal what is broken, and refine the gold that's there.

What you do when you can't just drive away is you cry and get it out, at least some of it, remember all you have to be thankful for and move on. It's life, right? The good and the bad, the tears and the laughter----and those trite things we know to be true. Just life.