I have been sad for the last little bit.
This is not depression.
I know what depression is, and how it feels in my body and in my head. When my son, Seth, died, THAT was
depression. I walked through mud. I don’t know if my heart was beating because I
wasn’t listening to it anyway. I made it
to work and was disgustingly efficient in my job. Not because I gave a shit, but because if
not, I would have had to slit my wrists with the tediousness of it all. I did not have the energy to move, to
breathe, to feel. It was all a wash, I was
the clouds, nothing felt good because nothing felt bad. I was feeling nothing. No pain. No anger. No hurt. No love. No gratitude. No guilt. No
connection to anyone or anything. I didn’t
even have the energy for lonely, because that was a far way off, and I couldn’t
get there. I just didn’t care.
So this, this is sadness.
To be very clear, this is not about any one person. He, well, he is just a starting point and an
ending point to this little piece of the story.
I miss him. Something terrible if
truth be told, but not enough to hate him, or want what I thought we had,
back. I have learned. What I miss, and what I am struggling with,
is the part of myself that I felt while being there. I miss how open I felt. I miss how honest I was. I miss the sense of building, and staying present,
in the quiet spaces that seemed a thread in my world. I miss how I felt
worthy. How the sharing of deeper thoughts
and deeper love moved me, helped define me, made me better. I had seen through, and past, all the very
surface flaws, in him and in myself, and had accepted that for grace. I have no regrets.
In the process of learning all this, the feeling I have of
missing part of who I was, and who I still want to be, I shared the whole thing
with my children. Yeah, yeah, go ahead
and give me the lecture about adult conversations around children, but since
this was directly in their path, their input on their mom’s journey is important. Here is what I learned:
My son was
totally taken in by the facade. He
believed the lie. He had adapted himself
to believing that people are always good, something I had always encouraged. He understands about lies, and actually
thinks he is a good liar (He is not, but he is 11. He might get better). He
also understands, without a doubt, that lies are a choice. That there is never a good excuse for a lie,
no matter what you tell yourself, and that lying never actually helps, even if
you think so in the short term. He also
gets that he had nothing to do with the lie, and it said nothing about him, and
everything about the teller. My son has
lied, been caught, had to pay the consequences, and more important, been decidedly
made to actually have to stand up for the lies, own them. In person. Take the
fall out. He learned, perhaps the hard
way, that not everyone sees life that way, and won’t come through for him. But he doesn’t want to give it up. That would
be a dangerous place for him. It would
mean that the lie won. And from an 11
year old perspective, there is only win and lose. For my end of it, and what I
learned about myself is that I take full responsibility for his anger, his
doubt, and his ability to adapt. Bad
things happen, but who you are in the midst of bad things is actually the best
judge of your worth. I put someone
capable of lying in his path, and trusted, myself, that my judgment was not
skewed. I was wrong. My judgment was completely wrong, blinded even, but I
helped my son understand that even though there was a lie that caused the pain,
it was not his or my lie. We stayed
intact, and true to our own beliefs about trust and love, and that we did not
want any of that to change. Not ever. We
would not let this, my son’s disappointment and confusion, define us. We got to stay exactly who we are. And he was sad.
My daughter was
not even remotely taken in by the facade.
She saw everything. She knew, for
her, and without a doubt, that talk is cheap, actions mean more, and that consistency
of actions make the most impact. She
knows that people are flawed, but that recognizing flaws and doing better is
the only way to make things work. Watch,
learn, do something different the next time.
Apologies are not needed in her world if not accompanied with actions
that make the apologies real. So, lie,
but figure your shit out and don’t do it again, like ever. Judge, but figure your shit out, and don’t do
it again, like ever. Be sarcastic, and cruel, and distant, and hurtful, but do
it because you didn’t know better, and then when you know better, do
better. She saw, without a doubt, that
the same mistakes were being made in our world that had been made in others,
all without remorse, responsibility, or attempt at change. And that while she
knew that my son and I were being taken in the wake, she was gonna stand out
and watch until we figured it out, and did better. She knew we would. She had seen both of us live with our hearts
on our sleeves before, and come through when we finally had it stomped enough
to have a lightbulb moment. She decided
she loved me, if not the relationship, and knew, even as I doubted myself, that
I would get out of it eventually, ethics and honesty would win. She was
right. And could point it all out in
black and white, accurately and unquestionable.
She was worried that I had lost myself, that I didn’t see. And she was sad.
Me. Well, I saw the facade, ignored it, and let
my heart lead. I saw how things didn’t
add up, but also believed that “surface” was not my point of view. I was confident about my own worth, about my
own authentic part. I was truthful and
forgiving, and accepting, in a way that I wanted the real people in my life to
be. I was my son and daughter combined.
Open, but too trusting. Honest, but
giving away too much. Building and present,
but with a foundation that was too unstable. Aware, but too forgiving. I had done exactly what I had hoped I wouldn’t
do, and exactly what I wanted to do at the same time. No
matter how healthy I was in my approach, in my actions, in my trust, if the
other person I picked couldn’t keep up or adapt, then my progress forward both
inside and outside of the relationship was flawed. I could do nothing about it, but watch the trainwreck
occur, sure, for some completely unnameable reason, that love would be
enough. And I was sad.
So back to the sadness.
I am sad because I miss him. Something terrible if truth be told, but not enough
to hate him, or want what I thought we had, back. I have learned. What I miss, and what I am struggling with,
is the part of myself that I felt while being there. I miss how open I felt. I miss how honest I was. I miss the sense of building, and staying present,
in the quiet spaces that seemed a thread in my world. I miss how I felt worthy. I am sad because, for this one moment in
time, I was wrong, and love was not enough.
That is a rough lesson.
But here is the other lesson I needed to remember. Love is an action. Love as a verb meant that this was perfect. I
knew exactly how it looked, how it felt, who I was, and what kind of gratitude
I was made aware of every day simply because of the flaws. I had my own beliefs about love tested, and I
did not fail. My sadness is that there
are still people in my world, in my children’s world, who don’t get it. Who still see love as some kind of feeling
that requires no work. It took having
this sadness to realize that maybe I need to work on it more for myself. Love myself with the same kind of love (as an
action) as I have been giving. Let
myself feel everything I experienced in giving it away to stay in my world and
grow. The sadness is that it is not
there yet. I am still in doubt. Can I do it, find love where it already lives
and work to keep it, grow it, cherish it? No matter what kind of package it
comes in, especially if the package is me?
Nope, not depression. I care about this. And sadness will serve me just fine to move
me forward.
