We were born saying goodbye
to what we love,
we were born in a beautiful reluctance,
not quite ready
to breathe in this new world,
we are here and we are not,
we are present while still not
wanting to admit we have arrived.

stanza from “Cleave” by David Whyte

Many times last year I thought about ending my life. I don’t even know whose voice it was I want to go to heaven—maybe my mother’s? I know she wanted to go. To my relief, I discovered that I don’t meet the triadic definition of suicidal because I have absolutely no answer for what method, what plan? Nor can I imagine actually doing it. But wholeheartedly yes, I have wanted this over. Enough already. To end whatever I was experiencing then and sometimes even now. When does the light come back? Do I need medication or is this just life in a little bit heavier dosage? There are so many more layers we all are facing now, on top of garden-variety existence. Isolation, fear of contagion, loss, separation, loneliness, fragmentation. The end of touch. No one seems to be sitting on the other side of the see-saw. The weight feels stuck on one side.

Upon looking at a heart-tugging photo of a friend with her three littles who are now teens, I wrote to her, I often wonder where the littles go; it seems like they are separate people who have just traveled on… at the same time perfectly conjure-able in a parent’s mind and heart.

I think about G’s little self and the littles of all my friends (even the littles of our own selves): where do they go? The ones that trusted their mamas? Who hugged and held hands and sent love notes? The ones who believed and gave unabashedly? The ones whose needs were so simple? Whose tears dried and whose eyes re-lit moments later. Who were fascinated by the miniature movements of our world and mastering some new skill until fluent—and who shared it all with us so proudly?

Did they exit stage left and get replaced by a new actor that subtly resembles the last but not entirely? Art is supposed to imitate life, but sometimes this feels inverted. A lot of this feels more filmic than real.

[As for us bigs, this whole “inner child” work is no small project. Last year I also started hearing a whispered does anybody love me in another voice, a very small child, alone. Me? Who are you, I try to ask. I see a crib. A long hallway. No one in hearing distance. I feel a searing loneliness. I sense something answered in Whyte’s words, “we were born saying goodbye to what we love.” I am certain there are childhood scenes it would be helpful to understand—both what happened and how I could have misinterpreted them. But also: what was it really like when my parents were my whole world? When “altogether” was my favorite word? Why does the sound of falling brick hitting the floor during demolition remind me of being hit, as if I have no relationship to the strike? Why does the puppy being away with G make me feel like he may never come back, like I have done something so terribly, confusingly wrong, reminding me of my dolls and bears imprisoned without visitation rights far in the back of my mother’s closet, caused by some misstep of mine?]

In the same way, I note that our loved ones, even friends, can be gone and replaced by new actors, so to speak. How can we be losing good friends over political differences? I have spent altogether too much time wondering how I could have gotten twenty years of marriage so wrong. How we could have exchanged vows in front of a whole congregation, all of whom were asked to make a corresponding vow to help sustain ours when winds were heavy and knots loose. (I think one person in that sea tried. Maybe two.) But more relevant: I don’t believe the person X is today is the person he was that day, at twenty-two. Not even close. In fact, perhaps someone might argue that he shouldn’t have to keep vows he made when a different actor played him. I just can’t seem to imagine the man I married doing the things this person has done, and I say that with less bitterness than it may sound. He is not the same. That is all. I wonder if his parents and friends see him the same? Or are all of our lenses constantly adjusting, some toward blurry, some toward clear?

I know that G is not the same either. The one terrified of fires is now diving head first into them. The quiet observer is now the social driver, podcast engineer, hanging out at the station with her friends until all hours of the night. There is vastly more here in terms of the person she is becoming “since I started living my own life,” as she says.

I hope you don’t think I’m carrying any of this around as active loss. I am not. Certainly no more than the mystery of where little G went. They are both as gone and un-fetchable as the other. Both of them liked me a lot more, too. This, if anything, is where the melancholy lies. While at the same time, I really don’t mind. 

I don’t want my mother back. I don’t want X back. I don’t want G’s childhood back. But in the interest of honesty, the final scene of the movie About Time really made me cry. I am not sure if for me the child or me the parent. Or for all that is lost. Or for the very mystery of what time —if it is time’s fault— does to us. So visible in the young, and yet so real in us all. 

I may just want a moment back.

“Altogether” back.

*

20-20 is synonymous with hindsight. As I wrote some of this in the gloaming of that remarkable year, I wonder what we will think of it in a few years’ time. The double wrecking balls of political division and an unmitigated global public health catastrophe led by a merciless chief executive? Or a moment of great calamity in which massive realignments took place—some horrid and some profoundly life-altering for the better. What I sense that cuts across both is an appreciation for our collective humanity. And a greater gratitude for friends, classmates and cousins—reconnections that have not (and likely would not) have happened if the world had not stopped spinning. For all of the damning of social media, I go to an app throughout the day where I can hear them speak their truths, ask their questions, seek counsel, grieve, celebrate, question, fear, vent, hope. 

I go to another app at least weekly to a happy hour that started as a laugh and has become a support group. We are starting one of cousins. And being fully virtual is what gave me the courage to try to start a new business—a cable line is all I needed. 

I hear of others playing games and doing puzzles with family. Taking long walks and far more deeply appreciating what is left when we are not on the run (or allowed to be on the run). 

I wonder if, for many of us, 2020 will be a dividing line of life-before and life-after. Will there be a baby boom-let? Will post-pandemic life leave indefinite traces? How will our world’s children, businesses, schools and institutions be affected, long term? Will there be such a thing as a snow day? Will we be asked to wear masks again in this lifetime? Will our country reunite over anything? I enter 2021 with a new name, new business in its infancy, and fairly new set and setting. Everything under construction. I can’t recall another time of such irrevocable change. 

So what does it mean, all of this change? This ongoing process of becoming? And the longing under-pinning it?

Recently I learned that when a snake sheds its skin (the process of ecdysis) the hardest part for it to shed is its head. Since a snake grows but its skin does not, it must shed the outside layer to survive. The first tell that a shed is about to begin is the dulling of skin color. Next the snake’s eyes turn cloudy or blue/grey. Then color eventually returns to body and eyes. At this point, it is ideal if the snake can put its head against a rough surface or between two rocks and rub against them. The whole skin should release from head to tail like a reversed sleeve, but sometimes there are issues like retained skin and eye caps (which can cause pain, blindness or other permanent damage). All of this transpires over the course of a week or two, and the snake should be treated tenderly to avoid getting hurt during this time.

Perhaps we are similarly in this position—more often than we realize. Shedding, at times imperfectly. Needing to be treated tenderly as we become another version of ourselves.

Maybe X and G and people I no longer recognize have been doing the hard work of shedding their own layers to become who they are meant to be today. And maybe my own desire to end my life in moments has been the feeling of these stones on either side of my head—and me pulling, pushing, tugging, trying to release outgrown thoughts, beliefs, convictions, even vows, housed in my head. 

Maybe this, too, if I may be so grand, is our nation.

So that another life can be lived.

So color and movement and touch may return.

Maybe the littles have it right, leaving nothing of their selves behind except in slivers of another’s recollection. 

PHOTO CREDIT: BoasAbound (Etsy) retailer of boa sheds