Full Circle

My daughter is seventeen now. I cannot even begin to tell you how weird that is. When I had her all of those years ago, I wasn't happy. She was a surprise (I was on the pill) and one that I wasn't at all sure I wanted. There are all sorts of reasons I felt that way that I'll get into at some point maybe, but the bottom line is that it was very difficult for me.

I would hold her and stare at her and wonder how I was going to raise her. How I would do right by her. How I would love her the way she deserved to be loved. How was I going to do this for eighteen years? It seemed an eternity when every hour was a struggle to get through.

But hour-by-hour, day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month, year-by-year, I did it. Sometimes plodding with the heaviness of the responsibility, and sometimes going at the speed of light trying to keep up with her ever-changing needs.

And now here we are. Looking at colleges and getting a driver's license and debating the pros and cons of getting a tattoo (God help me). She is growing up - almost there - and I just can't believe it. When you're in the throes of parenthood, whether it's the snotty little mean girl in first grade or the utter cruelty of middle school or that first real heartbreak in high school, it feels like this will be your life forever. You acclimate to it and just get on with it every day. Then "suddenly" they are approaching that magic age of eighteen when you're supposedly off the hook as a parent. That moment that you've looked forward to - and dreaded - all at the same time, is finally arriving.

Your child is grown.

And your heart is stretched and tugged and tested. Both from the heartache of losing her to adulthood and from the unbelievable excitement about the next phase of your life finally arriving. That phase that you daydreamed about on the really hard days and dreaded on the really good ones.

It's then though, that you realize that life has come full circle. Sixteen years, two months, one week and six days ago I was driving in my car with my two-week old baby and realized with some dread that while I love this child more than I ever thought I could love another human being, I would never really be mentally free again. That terrified me. I had the gift and privilege of raising this beautiful girl, but with it came the burden of worrying about her until the day I died. There was no getting around it.

And worry I did! Hand-wringing, gut-wrenching, hair-pulling worry. But I've also laughed a lot. And beamed with pride. And reveled in her accomplishments. And she has filled my heart over and over again with her sweet personality, great sense of humor, intelligence and strength.

So, as I dropped her off this past week for a week-long test run at her dream college, my car was empty of her and her stuff and that long ago car seat and baby paraphernalia. But my mind was not empty of her. She remained in my thoughts. And I realized once again, all of these years after that moment in the car with my newborn, that she always would. She would be ever-present. I would always worry about her. I would always love her. I would always parent her. She would always have my heart.

Evil. Pure Evil.

I've been married for nearly 24 years. We dated for four years before that.

28 years. Twenty. Eight. Years.

That much time in a relationship does something to a person. Sometimes, it does good things to a person. Like polishing a rock over time making it smoother, more refined and even shinier on occasion. Being with the same person for 28 years forces you to work together, cooperate, compromise, negotiate.

But sometimes...sometimes...yes, sometimes it just makes you pure evil. Drives you mad and takes you to the brink of sanity. You want to kill that person. But you know you can't. So the evil takes other forms. Less deadly ones. Ones that don't put you in prison but still reflect how homicidal you have gotten.

Yesterday was one of those days for me. My husband was being a jerk. Just a jerk. We were talking about something innocuous, but I was annoyed with someone who had repeatedly dropped the ball for the last week-and-a-half on a simple task. I was more than annoyed. I. was. PISSED. Venting about it with Greg (not AT him) and he wasn't being empathetic or understanding of my feelings at all. Quite the opposite in my opinion and it was hurting my feelings and making me madder.

Add to the mix our two-year-old German Shepherd dog continually sniffing my butt as we were "discussing" the matter and I was about to go nuclear. She requires a lot of  patience.

I wasn't patient.

While I wasn't yelling at my husband, I was having unkind thoughts about him as we talked, and trying my best to prevent my brain from exploding all over the living room walls.

At one point, my husband, turns his attention to his computer to look something up and I see our dog out of the corner of my eye and turn my attention to her to see what she was up to since she had finally stopped sniffing my butt. She had discovered the Pop Tart. My husband had left a blueberry Pop Tart beside him on the couch where he had been working and the dog had just found it. It had the white frosting with sprinkles of little, blue sugary sugar crystals.

I don't know why I didn't jump into action. A dog. A Pop Tart. It was inevitable. She sniffed and then sniffed some more and then...LIIIIICK! A big wet one all across the frosted top of that Pop Tart.

I chuckled inside but didn't have time to do anything about it as my husband turned away from the computer and back to facing me. He then promptly picked up that Pop Tart and started eating it.

I just stood there and watched. Never said a word. The expression on my face didn't change a bit. Just stood there and watched it happen. No intervention whatsoever.

I DIDN'T STOP MY HUSBAND FROM EATING THE DOG-LICKED POP TART.

And I enjoyed every. single. second.

EVIL!! Just pure evil.

The satisfaction I got from that moment was scary. Wicked. I feel it even now as I write this. Just absolute contentment that he got what he deserved. Be a jerk to your wife, you get screwed with the dog-saliva pseudo-pastry. That's how it works. That's the risk you take in life.

So THERE.

Facade

I was cleaning the bathroom the other day (shocking, I know) and was looking out the window at our neighbor's back yard. Then I looked at ours. Both of them were in pretty bad shape. Tall grass overrun with weeds. Sticks every where. Dry, dirt patches where there should be grass. Dirty swing sets. I kind of laughed about it because earlier in the day I was admiring both of our front yards when I went out to get the mail.

It got me thinking about the show we put on for others. The facade we build around our lives to look put together in front of others when, in fact, we may be falling apart inside. I'm just as guilty of it as anyone else, and the older I get the more it bothers me that so much of my life is spent pretending. Pretending that I'm okay. Pretending that I'm happy. Pretending that I'm put together and that my life is in order. Pretending that I don't miss my dead family members. Pretending that I'm not worried. Pretending that all of this pretending doesn't hurt.

I had a friend say to me recently, "I have to play this role, Rachel. I HAVE to." The role of happy husband, father, son, brother, neighbor, friend - when in truth, he's pretty unhappy. The life he lives day-to-day is not what he would choose for himself if he felt like he had the power to choose. I knew in that moment that he just needed to say it and just needed me to listen and not judge or even respond. But I wanted to scream at him, "YOU'RE 50! IS THIS HOW YOU REALLY WANT TO SPEND YOUR LIFE??? AND FOR WHAT? WHY? WHAT'S IT WORTH IF IT'S NOT REAL???" But I didn't. It's not what he needed from me in that moment so I just continued to listen.

I realized later that I was smart to withhold verbal judgment because I'm playing a role too, every bit as much as my friend is. Every single day I am. I smile when I should and laugh when I should and shut up when I should and get serious when I should and DO and BE and LIVE like I should - when the truth of the matter is that if I was being completely honest with myself and others, I would be a MUCH different person leading a MUCH different life.

That makes me so sad. I'm not living in a genuine, honest way and it's an exhausting, heavy load. But how do we get out of it? How does a person pursue a life that is more authentic to be who they really are and who they really want to be, when they have a marriage and children and a job and mortgages? How do so many of us end up sitting on our couches one night somewhere in our mid-40s and wonder, HOW IN THE HELL DID I END UP HERE??
 
And then, HOW IN THE HELL DO I GET OUT??

I've felt guilty for feeling that way. I've felt like a bad person. What kind of good, decent human being wants out of their lives? Wants to run away on a fairly regular basis? I've come to the conclusion that feeling way doesn't mean we don't love our spouses/children/homes/careers. But it may mean that we don't love our lives. I know that seems counter-intuitive and contradictory on the surface, but I believe we human beings are complex and can feel more than one emotion about the same thing, at the same time. Individually, there are many things that I love about my life, but as a whole, I really hate my life.

One of the things that I'm wondering is if maybe I love some of the key components of my life but that I feel like so much is missing from it? That I'm not experiencing and achieving and LIVING all that I want in the way that I want. Maybe I don't need to run away thereby eliminating things from my life, but simply need to add more things to my life that are more meaningful to me.

I really don't have an answer. I guess it's good that I'm at least mulling it over though. Right?