Sometimes, things happen which show cracks in the feasibility of that theory of mine. Things that seem to contradict my theory, in fact. Things float up to the surface of a buried past, even though Time has passed, and has had ample opportunity do some serious healing. Things like my ongoing battle with depression. Anxiety. Bitterness. Things that could, without a careful eye, seem unrelated. Sometimes the depression, or anxiety, or bitterness become the problems in themselves, without taking a deeper look at the origin of their existence. Life marches on, and the time and energy it takes to become introspective and look deeply within my spirit to see what's really there, just isn't available. So I press on, secretly hoping that Time, that essential element, will take care of what I don't have the energy or desire to do...to continue to dig for things that need to get rooted out.
Saturday, I went through some boxes that have been sitting in my garage since last spring. We have a spacious garage with great storage space, but yet we have this area of boxes and furniture, smack-dab in the middle, that came back to me from my life in Nebraska.
When I moved from Nebraska, I only brought essential stuff back with me, since the kids and I would be living in my parents' guest room. We didn't know what our long-term plans were going to be. But deep down, I really thought we'd end up going back to Nebraska, so leaving so much behind made sense.
We didn't move back.
Last year, my ex-husband went back to Nebraska to move his mother back to California after his dad passed. Since he would be having a moving van, I asked if he could please get my stuff out of storage. He didn't get everything, but he brought some of it. It's been sitting in my garage for months.
When I first got it back, I eagerly opened up all of my China and crystal. I was so happy to get it all cleaned up and into my kitchen. But then there were the other boxes that I encountered. Boxes that I couldn't bring myself to go through. The pain was there, in spite of the passing of Time. So I did what any reasonable person would do, when faced with such a challenge in the ongoing process of recovery. I procrastinated. Told myself I'd do it later.
Every time I'd go into the garage, I'd see those boxes. The school year ended. Summer started. We were in and out of the garage countless times. Getting bikes. Getting beach chairs. Getting water shoes. The boxes would be there, collecting dust, and whatever else I could find to pile onto them, as though they were a storage rack. It was the combination of the boxes nagging at me every time I'd see them, and the potential for the box pile to grow, that finally started to bring me out of my funk. The pile had the potential to get out of hand, and I wanted our garage back.
See, I used this determination-energy of mine to psyche myself out. I let myself become disgusted by the presence of the box pile, purposefully switching my emotional response from fear and sorrow, to determination and grit, while dangling the vision of a neatly organized garage as my carrot. Brilliant.
So I dedicated Saturday as the day to clear away the stuff, and create space. That is how I marketed it to myself. It was a practical act of service to my family and to myself. I envisioned the garage all organized and neat, and that's where I kept my eyes. I put on socks and shoes. I borrowed Abi's boom box, and put in a U2 CD. I was ready.
Not so fast. The first box I opened absolutely killed me. It was as though scenes from our last days in Nebraska flashed in the air as I uncovered the contents. A pink and purple flannel board book with flannel-covered paper dolls and accessories, hardly played with. Pictures of neighbors on Avenue A when the kids and I moved to town. A plastic block. A box of marbles. Coloring books and crayons.
My stomach started to hurt. Badly.
I opened up the coloring books, one by one. Will they be going to the Salvation Army, or into the trash? Pink princesses colored. Abi did this page. Scribbles on another. That would have been Lee.
I remembered the day the box was packed. A mixture of random toys, not belonging to any one kid, but belonging to all of their childhoods combined. Childhoods cut short. Too short. My mother helped to pack that box just days before we left our home in Nebraska for good.
Random, and painful memories continued to flash. I could see things that I hadn't allowed myself to revisit in years. Memories of shame. So much shame. Where'd that come from?
My house on Avenue A reflected a family deeply wounded. Having to pack that house was difficult. Having my mother and father come to my house to help us move, and having them see the messiness, a screaming sign of our chaos, was deeply humiliating.
Abi would have loved to have had that to play with on the drive to California.
My stomach hurt so badly.
The toddler tractor that was packed away, and never to be played with by Lee. The memory of all of their toys still in storage that they will never get to play with--toys they have all out-grown.
Before I knew it, I was crying. A deep cry that I haven't cried in a very long time. The kind of cry that, if left unsuppressed, could keep me in bed the rest of the day. I've had cries like that before, but very, very rarely. Now couldn't be one of those times--I was home alone with Abi and Lee. I couldn't let myself go like that. I had to only let enough out, to relieve the pressure...kind of like a mild tremor in earthquake country. But yet, now I fear that The Big One could hit one day.
A shocking revelation. I recognized that I am still grieving, as I feel the intensity of my pain. Time hasn't taken the reigns and finished off my healing, as I'd hoped. I still have work to do.
Yesterday at church, I was praying and asking God to help me through my grief. A thought came to me: Unresolved grief creates fertile soil for that root of bitterness to grow deeply.
Again. Unresolved grief creates fertile soil for that root of bitterness to grow deeply. I remembered my struggle with bitterness. Interesting.
There are so many layers to my grief. Some of those layers have been worked through, and are healed. Evidently, the layer of grief that deals with the sorrow of having my children lose the innocence of their childhood still needs some attention. Another layer would be the feelings that I had back then, and throughout the years of our crisis, where I felt so ashamed about the situation we were in. Shame for not being able to hold it together better. Shame for having kids that were so deeply wounded. Shame for not knowing the direction I was supposed to be traveling--whether I was to build a life in California, or re-build one in Nebraska. I look back, and I see that I came away feeling so ashamed, and I'm perplexed by that.
Abi came into the garage. She could tell I had been crying. Lee came in too, and he saw me. They wanted to know what was making me cry. I told them that looking through the boxes from Nebraska made me sad, because it reminded me of a lot of things that makes me sad. I told Abi that it was sad seeing her toys that she never got to play with. I told her that thinking about everything she and her brothers and sister left behind made me very, very sad. I told her that remembering how we left Nebraska made me sad. She hugged me. She told me not to be sad. That her life now with Papi is so much better than it was back then.
It's true. When I look back on how our life was, it's obvious that there was so much that was dysfunctional, I know I'd never wish to go back. It's not the dysfunction, or the work that I used to I put into hiding the dysfunction from myself and everyone else that I mourn, though. It's simply the innocence of those little kids of mine that were figuratively left behind when the moving van pulled away.
I can't go back and re-do anything. I can press forward and run for the prize. But in order to run without anything tangling my feet, I have to make sure that everything in my past has been properly run through. Not jumped over, or tripped over, or forgotten about. So I need go back and retrace my racing route a little bit. Travel back in Time, so to speak.
I still have boxes out in the garage. I might as well get back to work.
No comments:
Post a Comment