turn and face the strange
you haven't changed a bit, she effuses, intuiting this wisdom from a superficial eight-second conversation in the grocery aisle amidst the turnips.
i swallow a flippant reply. i haven't seen her in, like, nineteen years, maybe since high school graduation. i recall the picture of she and i at prom, casual friends: in said photo, i am wearing a pastel floral puff-sleeved dress in which i resemble a large Laura Ashley sofa, and my hair is braided on top of my head like Heidi of the Swiss Alps. my shoes have bows on them and my eyebrows are as fluffy and thick as a caterpillar. haven't changed? haven't changed? oh god, old girl...shut your mouth, that's crazy talk.
i understand that my once-upon-an-acquaintance was merely being polite. she wasn't trying to suggest that i haven't grown, or grown up, or that i look like a refugee from 1989. but her comment still spawned in me a bizarre and powerful urge to strip my clothes off right there amongst the root vegetables and the happy shoppers and force her to see my scars, acknowledge them...all the years and the wrinkles and the sorrows, all that life has wrought on me and me on myself. i wanted to shake those raw, scabbed beauties in her placid face, shock her with them, own them. at least, erm, figuratively.
it's been a couple of months since i had that conversation. in the interim, i've wondered at the vehemence of my reaction. it most definitely stemmed from my grief, however far along the healing path i may think i am. and it reflects, i think, a process of integrating grief into my own identity. in the early months after Finn died, all i longed for - on those rare occasions that i subjected myself to random interactions at all - was to "pass" as normal. had some aged cheerleader told me then that i hadn't changed, i would have preened, i think, at a performance gone right...and then darted back to the sanctuary of home to nurse the raw wound that was my reality. later still, i just longed not to be reminded publicly of said wound at all; hated to be exposed in my grief in any circumstances not under my control (ie, any circumstances outside my own blog, basically).
but then i guess i internalized it. i accepted it, and came to terms with it, and became able to speak it, and became accustomed to it as a part of me. and that has been good. bringing my grief out into the light has, for the most part, shrivelled its power to wound me, and allowed me to become some version of whole again.
but i'm not the same as i was before. as i was not the same after any of the other great upheavals/sorrows/betrayals of fate that have sporadically marked me since that hideous prom picture was taken. as i was not the same after i fell in love for the first time, not the same after i brought home my living son and discovered the strange half-life joy of sleep deprivation. life changes us, the best and worst things the most deeply. i think that needs to be honoured, though not necessarily in grocery store aisles. and yet i wonder if i've integrated grief too much into my sense of self? if it's normal to react so fiercely to someone's passing comment that i haven't changed? if it's healthy to have integrated grief and scarring so much into my identity that i'm offended when someone - even innocently - tries to pretend it's not there?
i don't want to go back to the person i was before Finn. i'm not sure i ever did, even in the worst of it: hell, i was not so carefree even before, and in his short life he taught me and brought me things i will keep close to me all of my days. but as i've healed, i've become more attached to that not wanting to go back, more invested in my self-identity as this tempered vessel, this patch-ridden human being. i have become disdainful of attempts to present life as sunny and perfect, dismissive of easily-won happiness as naive, even banal. i have also become inclined to assume that things will go wrong, particularly around pregnancy and childbirth, because my experience has repeatedly borne this out in one way or another. i have succumbed to the hubris of believing that i am special, unlucky, marked...even though in this online world i have come to realize that i haven't lived the half of it.
i think part of this identification with loss has been a reaction designed to assert my right to space and existence in a world that often seeks to dismiss the sorrowing, bury them with their dead. but i wonder about going too far, holding so tightly to the fact of loss that the rest of me gets subordinated to that tragedy? is the fierce, fey compulsion to inflict my stretch marks on a bygone acquaintance at the Shop & Save an, erm, bad sign?
do you want to be told you haven't changed a bit?
bon
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Nope, I don't. But I do wonder about the things you've mentioned. But I can sometimes, at this point, forget for brief moments,
Great post, bon, as always. Thanks.
I wrote a response to this and posted it on my own blog:
http://sodearandyetsofar.blogspot.com/2008/06/except.html
Good heavens, no! I would hope that I have changed in many ways and as the result of many things, not just my losses.
For a very long time I carried that hidden feeling of wanting "credit" for my scars- even if I didn't always voice those feelings. That need to be acknowledged as someone who has known deep pain is diminishing with time. As I look toward the fall, and the reality of entering into a new school community where virtually no one will know anything about our twins, I am finding myself strangely okay with that. There was a time it would have hurt to think that piece of our family story would go unnoticed. Now, I think I'm okay- and maybe in time, there will be people I will tell. Maybe.
Oh,Bon. I had an experience with a friend who was with me, in spirit if not in body, through the worst of times with Jackson's NICU time and I was unspeakably (and I mean UNSPEAKABLY) angry at her for a long time when she commented that I, ''looked great, glad you're taking care of yourself'' a few weeks after he died.
It took me a long time to realize that I wasn't angry (at her obvious lie, ha, because I looked like warmed over shit for the better part of a year afterwards) at her but at even the suggestion that I could look presentable because it implied that a) I was selfish enough to take time for me b) that my loss wasn't perfectly broadcast in my face and c) if people couldn't look at me and SEE his loss then what right did I have to walk around like everything was ''fine''.
I told myself that I didn't want to be forever identified as the parent of a dead child but at the same time I felt I was failing Jackson in some way by not screaming it from the rooftops, that I was so sorry to have survived without my child.
I still get caught up in it now and I don't think I will ever completely shake either the survivor guilt or the mommy pride that wants my son's memory acknowledged and honored, always.
do you want to be told you haven't changed a bit?
Oh, yes.
I want to be seen as a normal person with a normal life.
Not as a pitiably unlucky victim of fate or a bravely sad character in some mawkish tear jerker or a "survivor" (even the word sets my teeth on edge) who's emerged triumphant from great personal tragedy, clutching scraps of hard won, yet incalculably valuable knowledge and insight.
do you want to be told you haven't changed a bit?
I was comfortable in my own skin for just a year or two before it all went to shit. Prior to that I was gawky, geeky, immature, often unkind, and very unsure of myself. I have to say that LIKE this me...the one who has grown and changed and matured. I feel comfortable being this me. I don't want congratulated for it...I'm not sure I even want it affirmatively acknowledged. But I certainly don't want anyone to think I "haven't changed a bit."
I may not be glad for the reasons that I changed, but I have to admit that I am glad I have changed. I don't think owning any of my life experiences makes my life abnormal or paints some sort of a superhero letter on my chest...it just makes me different from who I was...it makes me a better person than I used to be (at least, I think so).
A friend of mine recently told me something similiar to this after we hadn't spent time together in over 10 years. She said I looked exactly the same. Sure I will take it, even if she was just being polite.
She also experienced loss though and we were both looking at each other and silently recognizing that in our eyes, the tragedy remains.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Unless it's to say, "Holy crap, do you look better than you did 10 years ago!" (In which case they'd be lying like a rug.)
I would kill to go back to that place for even an hour. To feel like the world was my oyster, my body was in my control, a family was possible when I deemed it so. My eyes weren't sunken and dark-ringed, every word out of my mouth wasn't a 4-letter euphemism for something, my patience was great and my temper low. I actually take it as a huge sign that no one has said anything about my appearance in over a year, because I know it means I look like shit. That I haven't lost the weight. That I don't take quite the care I used to. That I look like I haven't slept in months, and aged 10 years in the course of 12 months.
the only person I had a brief conversation about this with was a woman going through chemo. And we had a little pity party together about just how much this very issue sucked, and what we honestly thought about the other. I wouldn't dream of having this conversation with anyone else.
Tash, (not to derail the topic, but) I have had similar conversations with a friend of mine who has just finished up chemo for ovarian cancer. It's amazing, the look of loss, the look of the effect of loss. I wonder if it's only recognizable to those who have been through it. Those who can say, "oh, yes, I know that look. I know that pause or sigh."
She is the only person at school I can really talk to about all this, and she has never had (and now will never have) children. I know she is mourning that, too, while fearing for her life. Sometimes I feel guilty for going on and on about this loss and infertility while she is struggling with both, but she won't let me, "It's all loss," is basically what she says.
Beautiful, thought-provoking post, as always.
I just love the way these posts always seem to end in questions. I spend too much of my time absorbing and not enough questioning.
Would I want to be told that I still look like I did ten years ago? Absolutely. Twenty years ago? Definitely not. I'm not sure, though, if I can answer the more direct question of do I want to be told that I haven't changed a bit, because the answer won't alter the fact that I have changed. Tremendously. At the moment I heard that my husband and I carry a fatal genetic disease and that we had passed it on to the child we already loved so much, I changed. All the other major milestones in my life up to that point seemed to have enriched me, or made me grow. But this news didn't do that as much as it changed me. It's as if when I got the news, my self took a step to the right or the left, and I will never come from the same place I came from before I got the news.
People used to ask me if I was feeling better, back to normal, and I realized I should just be blunt with them, even if they were well-intentioned, and tell them that I will never be back to normal. Though people may not understand that response, it's true. I have changed and I will never be back to normal. I am, however, a slightly different version of myself--same memories, same history . . . different frame of reference.
I would hate to be told I haven't changed. I don't want to be the person I was. Not because there was anything wrong with that person (at the risk of conceit, I don't think there was, for the most part), but because that person was unimportant compared to who I am now.
As you have so wisely identified, Bon, I feel like my Doodles and their death is the defining aspect of my life and my personality - to say I haven't changed would be to discount their existence and their profound impact on my entire person. There is not a single day, a single thought, a single breath I endure that is not colored by them. So to say I haven't changed would be to take away all I have left of them - it would be to ignore the indelible stamp they have left on me. And once my story is "old", once their pictures and videos are no longer on the facepage of my blog, that stamp is all I can hope to show to the world as evidence that I did have these babies and they did matter.
I used to think "You haven't changed a bit." was a great compliment. It implied I took good care of my physical self and I was loyal to my self.
Now, I don't think anyone will tell me that.
I have the same dilemma: I don't wanna be seen as the poor thing, but I would also like acknowledgment that of course I had changed, and hopefully, for the better, even if only a tiny bit.
I was just talking with my husband about this today. I'm amazed that my body has gone back to how it was before, minus a few alterations. But mentally and emotionally I am so different from who I was before. And no, I don't want to be the same. I don't want to go back. Somedays I wish I could get rid of the pain.... but the lessons I've learned have been important.
Lori said that she had at one time wanted "credit" for the sorrows/losses in her life. i know exactly what she means, though not just in the context of miscarriage. i used to (and sometime still do) wonder how i can relate to a person who knows (or pretends to know) nothing of the sadness and loss that i have seen.
Wow. Stunning post, Bon.
Would I want to be told I haven't changed a bit? Probably not. It's all still too fresh. The wound still too deep. I want it to be recognized, not pitied, just acknowledged. I sometimes feel I am better than people around me who have not suffered a similar loss. Am I arrogant? Big-headed? I guess I don't mean better than. I just know better. I do better. Because I really know how fragile life is. This true understanding sets me, sets us, apart from them. In a way, I like this. My deadbaby badge of honour. I am not the same because of my dead son. His impact on my life is different than that of his brother or sister, but it exists and it deserves recognition. Absolutely.