Yesterday was the birthday of the offspring that is most hostile to me; I was dutiful, sent a card and a congratulatory twenty dollar bill, and enclosed all the love I could muster along with it. It's really the best I can do at the moment, being under siege and all.
Then I thought that that child's birth was one of the four biggest days of MY life, as well. I mean, really: how can anybody deliver a baby and not count it as a HUGE deal? This baby particularly, while distinctly not planned, was so welcome, so immediately loved and doted on, and would be the last. (I was adamant on that; I don't like surprises of such magnitude.) We were nevertheless delighted.
And then all hell broke loose. About six months ago, I was in the process of writing a flashback journal of that child's first year, and as I recounted it as faithfully and as dispassionately as I possibly could, I remembered far too clearly that it was twelve months of terror and torture and illness and accidents. In the end the marriage simply could not survive the blows. We limped along for a couple more years, but it was clear the diseased limb needed to be amputated or the life and health of six psyches would be gravely threatened.
I stopped the journal a little bit short of its designated twelve-month end point, and I suppose that eventually I'll finish it, but truly the recounting was just harrowing for me. I lived that dreadful time all over again, having carefully tucked it away for several decades, and was still nursing those old wounds when a new series of blows was delivered on my head early this summer.
I've been kind of rattling around the house ever since, exhorting myself to pull myself together, then chastising myself for not being able to do it, working on my connection-with-myself exercise as best I can, but for the most part reading as many books as I can track at one time, and watching old West Wing episodes. In short, I think I've been depressed, wounded, sad, and it's not even the right season for it! Jeez.
When friends of mine are depressed or grieving, I tell them to treat themselves as if they had the flu, for in such sorrow the body and the mind are truly in need of succor, of what we in my family used to call pat-pats, of a general King's-X on what is usually expected of friends. Do what you feel like, I tell them, do only what you can do easily, and for God's sake, be nice to yourself. Don't join your detractors in their judgments -- nevermind them, their assessment of you is not what counts, it's not even true. Watch and listen to what your friends say and do, and do THAT. Be NICE to yourself; give yourself a break. And if you feel like crying, then make a damned meal out of it; weep and moan and hiccup and drip and let your face get ugly. Every injury has its allotted number of tears, and they must be shed, all of them, before you can truly heal.
That's what I tell them. I'm so smart.
I was okay, I mean I was being a little soldier about everything, until I finally watched a movie I had TiVo'd a few weeks ago and had not got around to watching until I ran out of "Saving Grace" episodes. It was "Heart of Gold", Jonathan Demme's documentary of a particularly poignant Neil Young concert. Well, why didn't somebody REMIND ME that Neil Young has been through absolute hell in his life, and is still here, loving and accepting as well as anybody I ever heard of, and writing just heart-breaking music about it all? I made it almost to the middle of the movie and then started weeping. I stopped the movie, but wept until I went to bed, and I wept in my bed, and I woke up this morning and wept some more.
Mary was not startled, she didn't even remark on it, she seemed to think that it was NORMAL, to be expected in my situation, and in fact seemed a little relieved that the damned dam had finally broken. I'm better now, at least I'm not sobbing aloud, and am able to imagine a nice dinner and maybe a movie after that, but I thought I'd better get all this written down.
I'm not a hypocrite, I don't mean to be an example of a stiff upper lip when one is enduring great sorrow, and I certainly don't want anybody to think I CONDONE holding one's breath against the tears. I don't even think that my good advice isn't good enough for me, or that I'm too good to cry. I just forgot about the practice of loving and writing myself out of a migraine or a broken heart. I had the theory pretty well set, but the doing takes a little longer.
We all need a little more time than we think we do. If we start hiccuping over a commercial, then that's a hint that still more time is needed. I don't know how I'll know when time's up, but I count on one of you to tell me. Promise you will do that, and I can let some of this stuff go. Okay? Deal?
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