Half a World Away

Tonight LJ (who is mostly forgiven, at the moment, for his neglect; not because he's done anything about it, but because I'm not really too much up to fighting any more losing battles for a while and have resolved to just relax and do what I've got to do to make myself happy)--anyway, tonight LJ had one of his cohorts over for business purposes. This kid is 18, just graduating from high school in a few days. I listened to him talking to his potential prom date on the phone, throwing in comments (fortunately drowned out by basketball, running water, and sizzling chicken)like "Run away! Run away!" and "Oh, you poor girl; let me tell you what you're letting yourself in for here, sweetie."

Mostly I think I'm just jealous. I'm nearly twice this kid's age and I feel about a million years older. After they left, I got to thinking about exactly why that is.

I think back to when I was 18. I was a freshman in college, completely sheltered. College is supposed to do something about that sheltered-ness, but in my case I was so determinedly obtuse that I refused, really, to let in any experiences outside my comfort zone. I wanted the same friends, or the same types of friends; the same boyfriend, the same ideas. I wanted to pass through college as though it were a long dark tunnel--at the highest possible rate of speed, with my eyes closed tight, concerned only that the light at the end be exactly the same as the light I'd just left.

It wasn't, of course, and it was almost a relief at the end to find it so. Within a couple of months of moving back to Chicago at the end of college (I was 21 by this time) I blew up every single edifice I'd built over the past five years. There was shrapnel everywhere for months, and by the time things settled down completely I was married. A mistake, to marry in the firestorm. I realize that now. But how do you avoid making decisions in a whirlwind when you don't even recognize that the wind is even blowing?

I am famous for this. I am famous for being prematurely okay. Only in hindsight do I ever realize how bad it really was. I guess in a way that might be a good thing--it lets me survive without focusing on being hurt or being angry. But it also has kept me from EVER being hurt or being angry when it would be appropriate to feel those things.

I look back at the past sixteen years of my life and all the things I've done, all the things that have happened--to me, around me, whatever. And looking at all these experiences, the overwhelming feeling is it's really not so big when you look at it all together. That year-and-a-half with JP, of course, is like the Twin Towers in that particular skyline picture: I want to look, because it's beautiful and I know what happened; but at the same time I can't bear to look, because it's beautiful and I know what happened.

And in a way, I think that might be the key to why I'm halfway to being jealous of an eighteen-year-old kid who's got a better chance of going to jail than to an office job; why the past sixteen years weigh so much and why even the good memories are so damn hard to carry around sometimes.

I say--often--that I regret nothing. And I don't; but shame and regret are two entirely different animals. I don't know what I've got to be ashamed of, exactly; I just know that on some level I am. I know a lot of it has to do with CR, how completely I let myself be duped and exploited by him. But there's more to it. Things I did, things I didn't do, people I've mistreated. (Curiously I don't feel anything about the things I did during the years of my addiction, which would be the logical stuff to feel ashamed of; and never having been someone who's been too keen on the disease theory of addiction, I can't even fall back on the explanation that I was sick. It was a disease, I think, but not the kind the addiction experts commonly mean when they speak of it that way. I firmly believe that within my lifetime there will be some discovery that will explain addiction to opiates--if not all addictions--on a purely biochemical basis. That's another post, though.)

I don't know how to forgive myself for the things I've done, maybe because I've never had a real opportunity to forgive anyone else--to forgive something requires that you actually feel hurt or angry about what they did, and in my life that's never been an option I've allowed myself. Gloss it over, smooth it out, laugh it off, no harm done...except to me, it seems. Choke the anger down and put on a big smile. Put on a good front now--you can cry later. Except when it was time to cry I never could; when it was time to be angry I'd somehow forgotten how to do it, or maybe never known how in the first place.

That was easy to handle when I was eighteen. Now that I'm nearly 35, it's a little harder to keep it all together. And I don't know if it's ever going to get any easier. But maybe I can try to remember that feeling of it's not so big, in the grand scheme of things. I don't know; maybe that's the key.