Awkward and Imperfect

I never wrote about my trip home for Christmas, what it meant, or what I learned from it. It built the foundation for an understanding I'm thankful for...one that just might save me.

My family--it's a strained relationship at best. Critical, sometimes cruel, they turned me loose at age 17 with numerous expectations and very few gestures of support. Like most families, we argue, we fight, we see things very differently...but with harsher consequences. At one point I was "disowned" for two years because I stood up to my mother over a wedding.

Those two years were hard...I broke myself of the notion of unconditional love and started to accept that ultimately, you were in it alone.

I eventually was "let" back into the family (thanks to 9/11), but the damage was done. We've never really discussed all that transpired...and we certainly don't speak of love, support, etc. It's all very strange, sterile, and forced.

That's what I went home to for Christmas.

Christmas dinner-- my parents decided to discuss my future using the "why don't you have a career/real job/husband/house?" and the "why are you such a loser?"method of inquiry. After trying to explain and failing, I started to cry. My mother saw the tears first and told my step-dad to shut-up, but this only inflamed him...and on it went. I left the house and walked down to the beach, not sure that I'd return...to them or to anyone.

But I came back. My mother cornered me in the kitchen and wanted to know what was wrong, really...and I told her. I told her that I was tired, that I was broken, and that I had nothing left to give. I said that things were bad and had been for some time and they weren't getting better. And, finally, I told her that I was closer to the edge than I had ever been.

And this woman, my mother, the one who can be so cold and cruel, fell apart before me crying. She told me that I couldn't give up, things would get better, that she loved me so very much, that my sisters loved me, that she would help me with whatever I needed..."don't go, don't go" she kept saying, "I love you."
My mother never touches me. That night she reached up to put her hand to my face and I pushed her aside. Her touch was so foreign that it wasn't a comfort. I went to bed. I didn't believe her, there was too much history to invest in one night's reaction.

The next morning I woke up surprised to see her home (she had to work that day). She said that work wasn't important, but that I was. We went to the Getty because I wanted to. And it was the expected family fiasco...my step-father pontificating about the pieces, my mother making wisecracks that revealed both her disinterest and disdain for most of the exhibits, my oldest little sister bitching and moaning about the tragedy of having to go to the Getty, and the youngest sister zoned out, floating through the day dreaming of Barbie dolls and slumber parties. Everything seemed normal, like the night before had never happened, it was forgotten, washed over, like the feud over the wedding. A new day, the old routine, and no resolution.
But my mother pulled me aside at the end of the day and said "I love you more than anything, don't do anything to hurt yourself, please. We can make this work, I will help you. I love you." She started to cry. And it was then that I realized that my parents do love me...it's an awkward, fucked up, and often poorly communicated love, but it's there all the same.

They love, they just aren't very good at it…but they're trying. And that means everything.
I came back fragile, sad, but loved. And the world felt a little more safe, and though it was a long way off, there was a light at the end of the tunnel…and she had given it to me.

I'm prone to view the emotional world as black and white. I can be very judgmental, very literal, very logical, and very strong in my reactions-these are some of my best and worst qualities. As I get older, I'm getting better at accepting the gray areas, but each time it's a new and surprising discovery and it's always hard and somewhat painful journey.

But from all of this, there is a new lesson learned…love can be imperfect, difficult, confused, and painful.

I started with a pure idea of love. When I loved D and he loved me, I felt I understood it. When he left (when I left), I thought it was all a lie, but maybe it's just, well…damaged, imperfect, and confused. I think it was there. I think I can accept that now…he did love me, he just wasn't/isn't very good at it. He's as confused as any of us… but I think he tried.

He's gone, I accept that. And this doesn't excuse the dishonesty or the cowardice. But it helps me understand, I think, a little more. It helps me grieve and it helps me realize that there's hope…for all us. That maybe I will love better as a result of this and that maybe I'll learn to allow myself to be loved in all of it's flawed incarnations. Maybe.


After All
Dar Williams

Go ahead, push your luck
Find out how much love the world can hold
Once upon a time I had control
And reined my soul in tight

Well the whole truth
Is like the story of a wave unfurled
But I held the evil of the world
So I stopped the tide
Froze it up from inside

And it felt like a winter machine
That you go through and then
You catch your breath and winter starts again
And everyone else is spring bound

And when I chose to live
There was no joy, it's just a line I crossed
It wasn't worth the pain my death would cost
So I was not lost or found

And if I was to sleep
I knew my family had more truth to tell
And so I traveled down a whispering well
To know myself through them

Growing up, my mom had a room full of books
And hid away in there
Her father raging down a spiral stair
Till he found someone
Most days his son

And sometimes I think
My father, too, was a refugee
I know they tried to keep their pain from me
They could not see what it was for

But now I'm sleeping fine
Sometimes the truth is like a second chance
I am the daughter of a great romance
And they are the children of the war

Well the sun rose with so many colors
It nearly broke my heart
And worked me over like a work of art
And I was a part of all that

So go ahead, push your luck
Say what it is you've got to say to me
We will push on into that mystery
And it'll push right back
And there are worse things than that

'Cause for every price
And every penance that I could think of
It's better to have fallen in love
Than never to have fallen at all

'Cause when you live in a world
Well it gets in to who you thought you'd be
And now I laugh at how the world changed me
I think life chose me after all