The Dark and Light Side of the Moon (A long one)

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My problem with posting lately—I’m struggling with grief.  It clings like an unruly shadow that pesters me as soon as I open my eyes when the alarm clock goes off.  It takes the cloudy shape of anxiety and second-guessing, then morphs into a depressive weight settling onto my chest, daring me to get out of bed.

Well, “daring” is too active in its description.  More like a quiet smother, wondering if I’ll just give in and stay in bed and turn my back onto the world.  (Which is tempting.  Especially on mornings when the children have slept over at their dad’s, and there are two less faces and hearts in the house needing care.)

It’s been gaining momentum, in direct proportion to my physical healing.  The stronger I get physically, the less attention I need to pay to my fractured wrist, concussed brain, scar tissue shoulders, whiplashed back and neck.  So, the grief and anxiety and depression have entered in full steam ahead:  a ha!  Now you can pay attention to me, mere mortal. 

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I’ve also realized my grief plugs in directly to the traumas (and healing journeys) of the past, reverberating somewhere in my rib cage and echoing down through to my feet, dreamlike sequences that flit in and out of my heart and mind—

The black hole, primal fear from my baby self, all alone, ‘left in the parking lot’ on a cold winter night and ‘found by a passerby’ outside of a University hospital in the distant country of my birth in Asia. Or maybe I was walked inside of that hospital and relinquished.  Or perhaps I’d been born within its safe, medically clean walls, and my birth mom left me there.  Or died.  Or perhaps I was stolen from one side of the family who didn’t want me, without the knowledge of the other side…the possibilities, as we’ve learned from transracial adoptee stories of my age group from this particular country, are varied and also murky. (It hasn’t ever made me stop looking for her.)

The trauma of growing up and wondering if I would ever be “sent back.”  And while my adoptive family was supportive as they emotionally were able to be, living in my transracial household and small town brought about isolation, self-doubt, and racial white-washing.  A home-life sprinkled with divorce, and the deaths of my father and his partner (who weren’t even recognized as being in a civil union, let alone a gay marriage back then), the constant escalating conflict between my brother and my stepdad (my mom’s second husband) that resulted in my brother leaving the house never to return.  My half hearted suicide attempt with an asperin overdose in high school.

The trauma of my second “real” suicide attempt the summer between freshman and sophomore year of college, and feeling strangely calm about the fact that I learned the difference between wanting to die vs not wanting to live.  It was the latter for me, like Miracle Max from the Princess Bride—there is a difference between all dead and mostly dead.  My healing journey around trauma began there, thankfully.  (Little did I know how it would be a marathon that continues to this day.)  

The death of my mom’s second husband soon after this, and nary a word from my brother in all this time when he passed.  Being tasked by my grief stricken mom to locate his ashes at the University hospital and wandering around the labyrinthine tiled corridors in an emotional fog, finally finding a small cardboard box with his name on it on a random shelf in a random room, and hours later delivering said box to her after driving 80 mph through backroads because my dilapidated car blew tires every now and again and I didn’t want to get run over on the highway changing it.

The trauma of enacting and re-enacting relationships with men whose love I accepted as what I deserved, because it was filled with pain. 

The trauma of an excruciating divorce where I was accused of being a liar and a mentally unstable parent.  And because of my struggles, almost believing him, when I knew the opposite was true.  And having to report and relive how he had delivered death threats in quiet detail, had choked the family dog and threw him across the room in angry outbursts, terrorizing the girls and me, so I hurriedly found a new home for him and ‘pretend’ it was because our doggie just couldn’t handle living in the new house we had moved into, how he had kicked my daughters, had broken dishes and household items in anger, had screamed and swore at us, to the point where his brother intervened at his mom’s house.  And despite “standing in the truth” not quite getting the outcome that would fully protect my daughters from his anger issues, and so living with a half-protection decree and making it be the best that I can for them.

The constant triggers of dealing with him, although with therapy and time, I’ve figured out how to communicate in a way that doesn’t allow him so far into my headspace.  And the worry about an unhealthy dynamic at my ex’s house, how he’s alienating the girls from his mom and they hardly see her these days, how he’s alienated the girls from his brother for seven years.  Worried he’s losing his temper with them and how they may be affected by it, and understanding too that no matter what, he is their dad and they will love him with all their heart and trying to help them manage the conflicts that come with living in a world of balancing on eggshells when they do share their ambivalence.  Worrying constantly if they will be okay? 

It plugs directly into my fear that after everything we’ve been through, how many hours of therapy and healing and reaching out and creating a different world, still struggling with the entrenched idea that all good things must come to an end.  That no matter what I do, it won't be enough to protect them.  Or if it’s calm and good and healthy, there’s something wrong underneath it all, and I feel myself unraveling.  It’s easier to believe that the bad will come.  It’s easier to believe the doubts and the insecurities that you are never enough.  That’s what the cloud tells me before I get out of bed.

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And as the undertow drags me down, and I feel it sinking through my bones…the smallest of voices will whisper quietly:  get your ass out from under the covers.  Or maybe it’s just body habit that heaves my legs out into the air so the rest of me follows, and somehow I've made it to standing in the pre-dawn light, and this is the flip side—

The overachiever who graduated top ten in her high school.  Who applied and was awarded an international scholarship to live in Europe as an exchange student one summer.  Who began working at age 12 as a babysitter to earn cash, and then carried on with part time jobs all through high school.  Who earned a varsity letter and a place on the honor roll every single year, participated in drama club, and community and high school performances galore, and fiercely loved my friends every step of the way.  Whose mom was a girl scout leader and maybe that’s where I get some of my be-a-sister-to-every-girl and be-kind-and-leave-the-world-a-better-place perspective.  When my dad passed when I was 16, I wore that grief and carried it like a blanket, and despite that suicide attempt between freshman and sophomore year, graduated with dual degrees from the university, all the while working three jobs and partying like it was 1999 (it was, almost, lol). 

In the time before the internet, it was by fax machine that I found a job in my birth country, where I lived for a year and earned my living as an English teacher, then afterwards hitchhiked through Australia spending my earnings and throwing laughter and sprinkling hopes around the sky, the ocean, the beaches with my then fiancé.  I'd return to the states without the fiance (an amicable parting), and made a concerted effort to return to Asia, but instead settled into a new life on American soil in a place that was the closest mix of my two identities and where my not belonging to either country seems to fit the best.  My mom by then had met her third hubby who would later adopt me as an adult soon after my first child was born, but he would sicken (and miss my wedding to the ex hubby), and then die not too long after.

At that time, I had been the main financial breadwinner in my family, I think following my mom’s work ethic, who traveled to every inhabited country in her line of work.  I didn’t care, and I was “in love” and “love” was all one needed in this world.  There were warning signs about his anger, but I missed them, truly believing that love would win in the end (f!@# you, Disney childhood—or maybe it was just my way of clinging to a child’s dream and wish that love had to win in the end, to shine a light and drive out the lasting shadows of those terrible, dark thoughts 1) they didn’t want you in the first place, or 2) they can send you back.)

Side note:  I stress with my daughters that love is important and awesome and good.  And at the same time, for tales such a Beauty and the Beast, it was not Belle’s job to “change” the beast, it’s the Beast’s job to change himself.  Too many people think it’s Belle’s job, but in the end, the only person who can change themselves is that person.  (to which they roll their eyes and say, I KNOW MOM).

I’m a bit of an overachiever at work in some ways, as well.  The financial breadwinning mentored from my mom—who was leading by example in teaching me financial independence, has led me from one career leap to another, always making financial gains to support myself and my family.  But in doing so, also looking for ways to help, to make the world a better place, as cheesy as that sounds.  Adding love and peace and kindness is my aim; if it can’t be the whole world, then at least my coworkers and people who I see on a daily basis.  I think I get upset at myself for not always living up to certain “expected” adult standards (based on society? Other people?), especially when I’m thrown into a mix with higher-powered colleagues with higher-powered degrees (and higher powered political agendas, barf).  If I step back a bit, I’m usually able to realize that I’m capable and separate my strengths from unreasonable expectations… to be able to serve in my capacity and carry out my job responsibilities, and at the same time help people feel better about themselves.  Most importantly, be kind.

I’m working to make a better life for my daughters.  That filling up their world with love and kindness and experiences through girl scouts or extracurricular activities, or just hanging out cuddling, or just BEING WITH them when they say, mom!  Look at this!  And not burying my head in my phone/device.  The hugs and the laughter and the baking cookies for santa or the last minute taco bell run we have to do together because it’s a school/work week night and we’re in a rush.  Telling them I’m proud of them one moment, and then sucking in my breath and doing my best not to react when the tween gets mouthy and instead insist that it’s OKAY TO HAVE YOUR FEELINGS BUT IT’S NOT OKAY TO BE MEAN for like the 100,000 time. 

The shared experiences with my friends and my friends who are now family to me—making space for their wishes and dreams and secrets and laughter and sharing and listening and accepting.  The many adventures through high school and college and adulthood-land, sharing road trips and weddings and random visits when the cards were aligned, where we could reunite and stay up all night laughing. Remembering they were with me at the hospital when I tried to leave this earth and they were with me when my dads passed away and I was with them through heartache and when their babies were born and now those babies are halfway to almost grown up.  The days are long but the years are short and it’s hard to believe I blinked and we are all scattered across the land, with full lives and shared love.  I know I could be a better friend and keep in touch more regularly and anxiety comes into play there, but one thing I know for certain is that I love them and they love me, too, despite my faults.

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My mom was alive for all of this.  She tried to intervene with my ex husband.  She met my now hubby and loved him like a son before she passed, and for that I am grateful.  Her death is a marker of a passing of all of these parts—the good and the bad, the trauma and pain and the heartache.  The successes and the failures and the challenges and the traumas, some summarized here, other details at the edges that I’m not ready to write about quite yet.  She loved me and at the same time didn’t speak the kind of language I could recognize, causing tears and heartaches and misunderstandings that are part of our story.  Over the years I’ve understood that in all her best ways, she loved me with all her heart. 

She pushed me out of the nest when I went to college to become a self sustaining, independent person.  She cheered on my adventure to my birth country, arranging through her work to have two rendezvous visits with me overseas.  One year, while I was still in college, she organized a mother daughter trip to the Caribbean, it was after her second hubby died and before her third one was really on the scene, and I’m so glad I have these aquamarine memories of snorkeling in the pristine, technicolor coral vistas together, two adult women, one quite young, the other still in her professional prime.  I wasn’t that little kid wondering if she would send me back, any longer.

When she passed, the one connection through the thread of my many layered adventures disappeared and left me untethered.  At times I’m floating along the air currents like an errant helium balloon, at the same time, my daughters hands grab hold of the ends and keep me rooted on this earth. 

They say there are five stages of grief, but the original wordsmith of those concepts, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, was annoyed at the misinterpretation that these “stages” are procedural and go from one to the next in some kind of order.  Instead, they can be cyclical or repeat or become a mishmash, a haphazard spiral of grief, not necessarily a step by step sequence.

Grief is.  Like breathing.

Love is.  Like breathing.

There is no way around, above, or below.  It just is.  And maybe going through out-of-step spirals is just one way I have to cope.