Each of these pieces of string and thread and rope are the stories that everyone knows but repeats anyway, for the joy of it, without someone saying "Oh yes, you've told this one before." They are the rituals and repeated behaviors that comfort everyone. They are even the teasing and sometimes the bickering, the things that can be said safely. Every little bit of shared, recognized behavior, goes into the knotted mess of associations that is a family.
There are two major losses that can occur in this arrangement. One is the worst: the loss of a person. The other is lesser: the loss of the unit. I've experienced both in the last few years, but I want to talk about the second right now.
I suppose I want to talk about it because, as an adult, one does not seem to be expected to feel very much about it. There's quite a lot of information out there about what a child of divorce may experience. There is not very much, or at least not very much that rings true, about what an adult child of divorce thinks and feels. There's even less about what all of us adults experience again and again when we lose the assumed families we create for ourselves. The fact of the matter is that the loss, though different for an adult than for a child, is there.
When a family is taken apart, the people remain intact. It's those strings that take the damage. Imagine great hands pulling the people, like dolls, away from one another. The strings snap, tear, unravel. The remnants will remain attached to whichever person was tied most strongly to them, but there's no longer anything at the other end.
When a child loses their family, we all recognize that they are experiencing something that will remake them. They have no independent agency in the adult world. They will have to change habits, routines, likely even homes. Beyond this, they have to try to apply a child's understanding of the world to adult problems.
As an adult, we have our own lives and our own agency to return to. The dissolution of a family can't force an adult to live in a city they don't want to live in, or spend half of their week in one home and half in another. It's a better deal, I'm fairly certain, and clearly a different one. But it doesn't mean that an adult doesn't feel the ripping of those threads. And an adult is acutely aware of all of those remnants tied to their limbs, the ones that were once a source of reassurance but have become annoyances, reminders of loss.
I am, of course, only speaking for myself. Blogs are not known for their sociological research. But I feel somewhat authoritative on the matter because I have had the experience of losing two families in as many years.
When my family, the real one, came apart, I happened to be volunteering with an organization in an arrangement that caused me to live with my coworkers in order to share expenses. I had already become fairly attached to the people around me, but the situation thrust me into it further. When I got the phone call from my parents, I was days away from leaving the country for work. I returned as fast as I could, but not soon enough to say good-bye to my childhood home. By the time I was able to get back, it was sold, all the family's things sorted through, divided, perhaps donated in my absence.
I suppose if I'd been thinking clearly, I would have cancelled the trip and gone back. Things are just things, but also, they're more than that. A space is just a space, but it is also a home. When I allow myself to think of that house, it's only to imagine what the floorboards felt like on my bare feet -- first, little feet, later larger. I think about what the bathroom counters felt like when I was almost the same height as them, and then later when they only came to my waist. I think about the little change in level between the different floorings. I allow myself to see the furniture, the way it was laid out, but I stop there. I don't open drawers. I don't ever think about the small, incidental things that were important to me but probably didn't make it into any storage units. And just like I don't think about those things, I try not to think about the rituals that I will no longer take part in. I try not to think about the photos that are suddenly dated. I try not to think about the stories that used to be the surest way to a shared laugh and are now somewhat awkward, melancholy.
I didn't fly home to say good-bye to those things. I don't think I realized it as a possibility. Instead I laid low and tried to do what adults do: get on with my life. In my case, that life included a large group of friends and roommates. It was like a new family to replace the one I'd lost. To help me forget those remnants of strings around my ankles, I had new ones tying me to a brand new set of people.
I won't create false suspense; of course the new strings were pulled apart, too, about a year later. It is surprising to me how the two events feel somewhat similar, despite their completely different levels of importance. I imagine that, if you are able to anticipate the change, it's possible that at least some of these threads you are able to untie, freeing yourself from them deliberately. If you don't see it coming, though, they stay knotted to you with dangling ends. In several years I know the ones that will still be attached to me are the ones from my real family, but in the aftermath of the ripping apart, I can still feel the sting from the second set.
But what? The options are to resist every tying strings again, for the ultimate protection against damage....or, of course the only real option, to go on offering up my wrists and ankles to knots. It's life, and there are no pat morals. We keep doing the things that we do, because to stop would be to die while living. And by the time we reach old age we may be entirely obscured by the knotted ends of strings that tie to nothing, but at least then we know that we lived, that we loved, that we tried.
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