Things my Mother Said

The saddest thing my mother ever said to me was 11 years ago. I had just moved back to Colorado after living in Germany for 2 years. My then-husband was deployed to Iraq and I had just come from a failed job interview. We were sharing a house on the West side of Colorado Springs. It was an older home with a full apartment downstairs and a small concrete porch in the back where I was laying. Tears of disappointment and frustration were flowing down my face when I asked her, “Mom, when I was a little girl what did I want to be when I grew up?” She was on the other side of the screen door cooking a pan of greens. Without much thought she replied, “Well… you never really expressed any hopes or dreams. You read.”

That statement sums up so much about my life. I never really had any hopes or dreams. I read. And I wrote. A lot.

There is an old military footlocker in the corner of my dining room that holds all of my journals from age 11 (6^th grade) until I went mostly digital sometime around age 26. Even then I continued writing on paper in notebooks and other scraps of paper as the mood struck me. My paper writing is the stuff that is too real to admit to, too dark and twisty to risk sharing. Too ugly. But it’s all there. And in the darkest, twistiest moments I wrote about my lack of hopes or dreams and what that really means. At age 12 I had no visions of myself at age 16. At 16 I couldn't imagine 18 or 21. And at 21, the idea of making it to 30 seemed impossible. There was always this sense that I wasn't supposed to be here and that someday I would finally give in to the dark, ugly thoughts I referred to as my “self-destruct” button.

In my darkest moment I shared my journal with a doctor because I was down to the last reason not to kill myself: my precious Husky, Max. In return I got a 3 day stay in the looney bin where they fed me various psychotropic medications that made me hallucinate that my hands were giant Mickey Mouse hands. This was during the cricket seasons where crickets were swarming inside and out so I was unsure if they allowed me a broom to help with bug control, or as a means to deal with different hallucinations. To this day I can’t be sure.  One day a chaplain came for his weekly visit and found me with the one book I’d brought in to pass the time, a book on Italian Witchcraft. We ended up spending three full hours discussing religion while the tech on duty watched and listened to the entire thing. He even skipped a planned group activity because he was so interested in the conversation. It was the same tech that saw how people were drawn to me and told me, “Just because you've been here doesn't mean you can’t work here.” They also had really excellent chocolate cake.

On the third day I was sent home with a referral for counseling and psychiatry. I had given my house key to a friend’s husband so he could feed Max for me so I had to break into my own home by climbing in through an unlocked window. That was 10 years ago.

Today the self-destruct button is still there, but it blinks less and less frequently. When it does it’s usually spurred by some memory about my past that invades my thoughts and interferes with my life today. All of those thoughts, all of those memories are in the footlocker in the corner. Part of me wants to resurrect it all and make it digital as a way of working through it. Another part of me wants to go out to a lake somewhere and give the box a proper Viking funeral as a means to try and let go of it all.

I've lived so much of my life grateful for all the struggles that made me who I am. But the older I get the more I know that the pain from all of those life lessons weighs me down and makes it all too easy to slice me open again. The memories run too deep and have left too many scars that just won’t heal. I don’t have the answer, but the longer I let myself live like this the less time I’m going to have to really experience the good. And my life now is so good! I have an awesome marriage, a comfortable home and I no longer have a day job eating up all of my time.  I have the freedom to pursue my passions and do what I want with my day. Yet, all I want to do is lounge around in yoga pants and binge watch bad TV. How do you learn how to want after a lifetime of focusing on all of the “need?”

Today my mother said something else to me that made me cry. She said, “In my mind, as your proud Mommio, I view you as having pioneered a huge movement which has saved many lives.”

Part of me reacts with thoughts like, “That’s my crazy mother!”

But then I think about all the times people have said things to me like, “I’d never thought of it that way!” or “I really learned something today!” I think of the times that people have sought me out for advice after only meeting me once. And as frustrating as it is when the person coming to me for advice is someone I was interested in dating (true story) it still feels good to have him say, “Thank you. I feel better for having talked to you about this.” So I know my purpose. I know I’m doing good things. I just wish I knew how to get motivated to do it more and not be so afraid of my own success.