October 19, 2005
Anymore
I just want you to understand that I’m not angry anymore – Ani Difranco, “Angry Anymore”
The counselor I saw a few times over the summer called the other day to recommend a book about adult children of divorce. I looked it up on Amazon and dropped it into my shopping cart, but I didn’t buy it. I don’t feel the need right now to rip open that wound, now that it’s mostly healed.
I know a lot of people can’t understand how an experience like that can shape you – partly because they want to believe their own children of divorce will be unshaped – but shape you it does. I’m pretty proud of the person I am, most days, and I wouldn’t be who I am if I without those formative years and experiences, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t erase it if I could. I’m simply tired of thinking about it; sick of wondering if their divorce, if his leaving, is the reason I had such a difficult time adjusting to the idea of a boyfriend, to the idea of a person by my side for the long haul. It’s foreign to me – though it shouldn’t be. (My maternal grandparents were married for 76 years, if that isn’t the long haul. . . )
We can learn, like the trees, how to bend, how to sway
Children are resilient, they say. And they are. I was. It wasn’t the girl child who needed healing - it was her adult counterpart. It wasn’t until the grown-up version of myself fell in love and learned what it was like for a heart to break that she finally understood the mighty blow my mother suffered. It wasn’t until I understood that promises made between adults are different than the promises made between children that I had to come to terms with the fact that I am the child of parents who broke theirs. It wasn’t until I began to think of myself as a wife, as a mother, that it terrified me to realize that if a father could so easily walk away, how much easier would it be for a husband, and how much easier still for a boyfriend?
But forgiveness is powerful. Letting go is the most difficult simple thing you can do. And I feel so lucky that I was finally able to release that secret hurt, to let it wash down the drain.
People are resilient, they say. And we are.
Posted by hannah at 05:46 PM
