I suspect my memory is accurate but either the post was deleted a year or so ago when I was cleaning up the blog with an eye toward turning it into a book; or the reflection was recorded in the Journal I kept for decades before launching this .... journal/blog.
On 25 April 1978, at 6:33 a.m., I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy and my life was forever changed. Cliché? Yes. And, also, true. I didn't sleep the night before because I was in labor. After spending nine months in, what was for me, a blissful altered state, a coworker dropped me on the doorsteps of a hospital to undergo 12 hours of the most intensely uncomfortable and challenging psychic and physical experience of my life, alone. At the end of the ordeal, I stood in the world as a mother and stepped forward into all the glory and heartbreak that role carries. 25 April 1978 was the start of a new era for me.
The effect of that night-into-day birthing experience changed the way I looked at the world and myself. Specifically: the pain and the loneliness of the experience left an indelible mark. The perceived lessons were "Never rely on anyone else" and "People always, ultimately, abandon you."I remember gazing out the window from my hospital bed, feeling amazed and invincible. Now I can do anything, I thought, by which I meant that after going through what I went through without companionship or guidance, I could endure anything the world threw at me from that point on.
As it has turned out, the labor of childbirth has not been the stiffest challenge of my life. Or, perhaps, in the interim I have developed strengths sufficient to triumph over more daunting challenges...
No surprise that my birth-bed reflections return -- "Never rely on anyone else" and "People always, ultimately, abandon you."
I came to MS to live in a house owned by a friend and, from that base, jointly launch an artist retreat and conference center. His announcement last night came after many months of tense cohabitation and felt, in that moment, like one more proof of the gigantic error I made moving here from CA in 2012. Nothing I hoped for has come to pass and much that I would not desire has become the defining status quo for my life.
The separation is, ostensibly, a mutually agreed upon strategy for "saving the friendship" but haunting questions continue to swirl. What is friendship? Do we have one to save? Is the ache in my heart proof that our relationship is something more than persistent respectful regard or just a measure of my emotional fragility?
The occurrence of these questions is also not surprising. Those who know me or read this blog will recognize this insecurity about "friendship" (and "love" by extension or extrapolation) as a recurrent motif in my thinking and life experience.
And we are also "wired" to long for something reliable and lasting and to believe that a thing must last in order for it to have value or be true.
Today I learn, again, that nothing lasts forever. That nothing and no one can be known completely, only understood a little more and a little more with the passage of time.
I'd call it "intuition" but it feels bigger and less personal than "intuition." "Trust people to be who and what they are" is part of it. And "trust your gut" is another part of it. 99% of the time, as something falls apart or someone leaves or a promise is broken, I catch a whiff of a scent I recognize. it was there when the thing began. I gaze unblinking at a gaping hole and remember the dangling thread I noted in the same spot when we started; and remember an inkling that I pushed to the back of awareness on Day One; an evidence I early denied...for any of a number reasons that we deny what we "know."
A beloved therapist/guide/teacher once compared life experience to a spiraling orbit, coming back round again and again to particular issues and interests and lessons; never retracing the orbit precisely but rather tracing a slightly higher or lower or wider path each time around.
The lessons I digest today are familiar in flavor and texture.
And also....new. I was 5 years old when I returned home from kindergarten to discover the caravan to the zoo had left without me. A broken promise and an abandonment. I'm 60 years old now as I contemplate the dissolution of what's been "home" for 3 years. It evokes memories of the 5-year-old disappointment but, unlike that day, I shed no tears and I don't cry out or collapse on the floor. There's less outrage. Some kind of strength, I guess.
Am I any less mystified?
I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
…I really don't know life at all
From win and lose and still somehow
…I really don't know life at all
---Joni Mitchell, "Both Sides Now"
