I am trying to parse this aspect of my personality that I don't like, that has predictably arisen because of my move.
This is a fine apartment. It's better than the last if you take away the water and the view, something I needed more than I knew. It has more character. It's smaller and better fits a single woman and a dog.
I could be living in a Hostel... a fate that has befallen a neighbor from the old building. I could be homeless... like the people I see in our parks. But, I'm in a sweet apartment, half a block down.
I am uncomfortable here, and I don't have a right to be.
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When I leave something, or someone..... I leave. I know people who do that out of strength... what's done is done.... let's move on. I don't think that's my motivation. When I leave, I'm fleeing hurt, harm, sorrow.
When the 'Bittersweet apartment' went south... (the home I felt I'd lived in before) I had trouble even looking at it. I do to this day. Keith lived in a building a half block down, and when I would park to pick him up.... it hurt to look at my old back porch and see in my minds-eye the rest of the apartment.
I have the same trouble with the Howard apartment. Today, Meander pulled me to the wall where I used to take pictures of the 'water people' and I realized I had become one of them.
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I was walking Meander last night when we ran into George, Reva's ( oughta-be-husband). He is a good and kind man and in our conversation, he invited me to their building barbeque late this month. He said Reva had really hit it off with the woman who moved into my apartment and (selfishly) all I could think of was the morning I met her... and the same thing happened.
He said other neighbors were participating.... and my mind shut down. I said I'd see what time I worked, and left it at that.
Much as I love Reva and George and could visit them anytime... I can't go sit on a back porch with people who live in the apartment I loved and lost, and other people who are still there. I can't bear to see the water... the way I saw it from my bedroom.
The one building barbeque that ever happened was because Reva and I made it happen and it was amazing, but I can't emotionally go back there.
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A friend of mine was raped in her apartment and couldn't emotionally go back into that place.
Her realty company got her another apartment within a week and she moved. And her new apartment looks right over to the one where she was violated.
I thought, this is the most severe instance of your home being taken from you and asked her how she managed seeing the place where it happened, day after day. She answered, "it's what they had and it wasn't THERE". Now, she can't go back and get her things from the storage locker that is there to this day because it frightens her, but she can stand and look at the window where unspeakable things happened to her.
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And I can't go to a barbeque.
I'd love to solve this particular insanity in me.
I'll tell you what I think…then tell you what I've done in regards to this attachment to place and the memories—good and bad—that can be stirred up by revisiting.
ReplyDeleteWhat I think—what I actually KNOW—is that the only way to overcome such fears, the re-wounding of old hurts and badly healed sores, is to face them; go back. Suck it in and up and step boldly and know that it is just a place of the past and not the now or the future. Personal? Yes. Painful? Yup. But not more than the strength of you which claims and conquers…and has moved on. You have intellect and perspective and will; you can prevail.
What I know is that after my mother died, and the task of clearing out the house fell to me—her house, my house, the house my father built and which we moved into before I was a year old, the house where I grew up and lived into my early twenties…and came back to live in, along with my daughter, after I threw myself off a cliff and fell into a different world, and was slowly relearning how to crawl, and where I kept returning to daily to care for my aging mother until her death at 94…that place, the house where my father died one June day in 1983, where I buried all my dogs and cats in the back yard, the only real home my heart ever knew because love lived there, was just too much for me to vanquish. It wasn't that the place was still alive in my heart, it's that the place was now dead in the physical realm, as a place, and in the emotional realm, because the time and place and people and love which once filled every corner no longer existed. Instead, I found only an overwhelming loss. A bone-deep sorrow. I could only stay inside an hour or two, sometimes less…and remained affected for hours or days afterwards. Just opening the door and catching that oh-so-familiar scent sometimes brought me to tears.
So…what did this big strong intellectual outdoorsy he-man writer, and great giver-of-advice do? I one day said "That's it. I'm done. I can't go back. It hurts too much and I'm too weak or too cowardly or too…something. Or maybe not enough. But be that as it may, I vowed to never go there again, never drive by any road which allowed the merest glimpse of even the roofline. And saying that, I hoped to God I would then be strong enough to survive the power of my decision.
And so, just like that I left many things there that I wanted, left the house and money it's sale would have brought and which I desperately needed, and I've never been back. It was a monumental, near-fatal financial sacrifice…and I hate the cowardice or whatever that emotional fragility is in me that I couldn't overcome (though I expect that lies at the heart of who I am and what I do) and to this day I've kept my self-promise.
So, dear Robin, I do understand. Maybe someone wiser and better than me can offer better advice. For me, I finally had to close my heart in order to save it and the memories and life therein. Do you understand?
Grizz,
ReplyDeleteThank you and I think I DO understand.
Though you seem to berate yourself, as I do for the cowardice or fragility or whatever it is, in your case it seems a sad but beautiful story. You gave up what might sustain you in the future, for what sustained you in the past and has, in my opinion... made you the good person you are. To leave was to keep what you remembered, without tainting it with physical goodbyes. Your rich stories of your past might be vastly different and left somehow wanting.... had you stayed and cleaned up and out.
I am ashamed of this aspect of myself, but I think I know where it comes from. I guess I'm stubborn and have been since birth. This birth defect... that in reality hasn't truly affected me for a good thirty-five years, affects me every damned day.
My mother didn't want a child with a defect because her mother didn't want a child who had given birth to someone (something) broken. I was aware of this early on, and since the defect was right there on my face... I was made to feel an outsider at school as well.
I think I just decided...F*ck all of you... I'll go my own way, and I did. That choice has given me many great gifts in life, but the reality of childhood remains in the adult and I think that's where the sorrow of leaving comes from, and where the attachment to 'place' begins for me, as well.
I knew before I wrote this that the answer was to go to the barbecue. Looking at the post, I knew all the reasons and answers all along.
I guess what I wanted was to write it down and give it voice.
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Thank you for what you shared with me. I realize what a personal story it is, and I keep thinking about it.
You don't know how grateful I am that I've met you.
~R
I wouldn't have written this down anywhere else…
ReplyDeleteThank you. I'm grateful to have you as a friend.
It is so difficult to have a fresh start when the past keeps trying to rub shoulders with you in a physical way.
ReplyDelete