Twosday: Lindsay's Changes
Ten years ago
When I think about who I was ten years ago, it's easy to trivialize being a teenager who'd never lived in one town for longer than a year, with a stack of library cards in my wallet easily ten times as many as the names programmed into my phone. Mom couldn't stand to stay in one place for very long, because eventually everything that didn't bear thinking about would catch up to us, and then everything would go wrong. Of course, when grandma died there was no running away for her anymore, and nowhere left to go but back inside her head where all the doubts were, but when I was sixteen I was terrified that I would end up like her. That somehow never fitting in, never staying in one place, never sleeping through the night without wondering when the momentum that she cherished would stop and the days of the grey fog of nothingness would close in on us again, would make me another person who could never be happy. Ironically, that's what made me strong. When I was sixteen, I was torn between desperately wanting to get away from her and make my own life, and horrible guilt at the knowlege that there would be no one to stop her from sinking if I did.
It's from mom that I inherited my love of travel, of wide open spaces, of the world and the people in it, and after so long in so many worlds, I have to say that I am exactly like her, but I am entirely different. I am no longer afraid of the empty future ahead, of the grey cloud that swallowed so many days, or of the dark hours of the night. I want the raging rain and the red-rimmed sun and everything that lasts for only a moment and leaves it's fingerprints in your mind, and the fact that it all falls away, while it draws my breath away, doesn't prompt me to dig my fingernails into the palms of my hands as I listen to the irrational fears from the other bedroom in the night, or the repeated mantra of "morbid, morbid, morbid, don't think about it," that I thought could keep me from obsessing over so small and uncontrollable a thing. And taking control of my own life - finally deciding that no, I could not stop this from happening, and that I had, for once, to do something for myself - it freed me, in a way, and it freed my mom too. Instead of long nights of waiting, instead of wondering when we'd move again, instead of trying desperately to make sure that she never heard a cross word from anyone, making sure that she stayed far away from anything that happened that might be bad, that someone might say which would cause us to stuff boxes and move again, I left her and went to school. I had to wait a few years after grandma died, just in case, but she was getting help then and I thought it would be the easiest way.
And because she kept going - going to therapy, yes, but also traveling and traveling to feed the part of her soul that always screamed for distance, for more blue sky, for anywhere but here - that horrible guilt has been released now. I know now that I did the right thing.
When I think about who I was ten years ago, it's easy to trivialize being a teenager who'd never lived in one town for longer than a year, with a stack of library cards in my wallet easily ten times as many as the names programmed into my phone. Mom couldn't stand to stay in one place for very long, because eventually everything that didn't bear thinking about would catch up to us, and then everything would go wrong. Of course, when grandma died there was no running away for her anymore, and nowhere left to go but back inside her head where all the doubts were, but when I was sixteen I was terrified that I would end up like her. That somehow never fitting in, never staying in one place, never sleeping through the night without wondering when the momentum that she cherished would stop and the days of the grey fog of nothingness would close in on us again, would make me another person who could never be happy. Ironically, that's what made me strong. When I was sixteen, I was torn between desperately wanting to get away from her and make my own life, and horrible guilt at the knowlege that there would be no one to stop her from sinking if I did.
It's from mom that I inherited my love of travel, of wide open spaces, of the world and the people in it, and after so long in so many worlds, I have to say that I am exactly like her, but I am entirely different. I am no longer afraid of the empty future ahead, of the grey cloud that swallowed so many days, or of the dark hours of the night. I want the raging rain and the red-rimmed sun and everything that lasts for only a moment and leaves it's fingerprints in your mind, and the fact that it all falls away, while it draws my breath away, doesn't prompt me to dig my fingernails into the palms of my hands as I listen to the irrational fears from the other bedroom in the night, or the repeated mantra of "morbid, morbid, morbid, don't think about it," that I thought could keep me from obsessing over so small and uncontrollable a thing. And taking control of my own life - finally deciding that no, I could not stop this from happening, and that I had, for once, to do something for myself - it freed me, in a way, and it freed my mom too. Instead of long nights of waiting, instead of wondering when we'd move again, instead of trying desperately to make sure that she never heard a cross word from anyone, making sure that she stayed far away from anything that happened that might be bad, that someone might say which would cause us to stuff boxes and move again, I left her and went to school. I had to wait a few years after grandma died, just in case, but she was getting help then and I thought it would be the easiest way.
And because she kept going - going to therapy, yes, but also traveling and traveling to feed the part of her soul that always screamed for distance, for more blue sky, for anywhere but here - that horrible guilt has been released now. I know now that I did the right thing.