Day 4: Rescuing

What a strange feeling it is, knowing you need to go backwards to move forward. Like being a time traveller in your own life, time-sliding this way and that way, hoping you’ll come out pointed towards the future, with some semblence of mending where previously there was mostly just holes.

I’ll turn 40 this month. A milestone by anyone’s measure, although a little arbitrary I suppose. What difference does it make really, right? How many years go by. It’s not really time that life gets measured by, but the experiences we end up living through, and the relationships we make along the way. But I think if you lose a parent fairly early, you can’t help but measure your existence by their timeline. It’s a bizzare kind of grief driven calculation. At least in part. My mother was 68 when she died. If I get what she got I’d have 28 more years here. Clearly not enough. My kids would be the same age I am now. And there is so much beauty here, so many things to see and do. The knowledge that my experience here is finite is both terrifying and motivating. It feels like the question is, if our years are limited, how do we pack the most life into life? How do I make the most of every moment when we get both so many and so few?

I went to therapy for the first time about six years ago, when my first marriage was in trouble. My sister in law at the time paid for my session. I couldn’t stop crying. I had made some decisions that I felt had ruined everyone’s lives. “Here.” she said “Take this.'“ she put $40 and a phone number in my hand. And I can’t remember but I think she ended up scheduling that first appointment for me. I was that shut down.

The office was dimly lit and furnished in neutrals. There was a bookcase on one side, a wooden desk, a gray couch. My therapist has curly blond hair and glasses. She’s pretty. Well dressed. Present. And has become very meaningful in my life.

The first visit I just cried. I wore a scarf. I was cold and sad. I too was dressed in gray. No one bothered me. She let me cry. I scheduled my next appointment explaining I had very little money and probably couldn’t pay. She said, “pay what you can, Ill see you next week” and I did.

It took about three years for that moment to unwind. I stopped crying at every session. She explained boundaries to me by drawing a diagram on her white board. She explained the word “enmeshed.” A few months after my mother died my first husband and I separated, and then divorced.

And while therapy absolutely transformed my life during that time period, we did not dwell on my earliest memories. In fact, they mostly didn’t come up at all. They were sealed up tight in a vault of internal anxiety. I could only focus on the tasks at hand, raising children, navigating those last years of the marriage, taking care of my mom.

And then I fell off the face of the planet. Without those very codependent and intense relationships, that both dissolved at basically the same exact time, I had no idea where I fit into the world. I’d cry every time I dropped off the kids to my ex and then find anything under the sun to distract me from the gaping, hollow emptiness of the abyss stretching out in front of me, hoping it would seal back up once the kids came back home the next day.

I drove long miles on empty dark roads, circling the small towns and highways near the one bedroom apartment where I lived. I’d sit on the edge of the couch with my phone next to me wondering who I should call, and not calling anyone. I worked 6 days a week because it was easier than having spare time and I needed the money to survive. I acted like I was fine to anyone I talked to. But I was the opposite of fine. I was ruined.

I had a few friends at the time that helped me. They’d text me and make sure I was alive. Over cups of coffee and long nights spent talking, slowly I learned I could be human again. I adopted a kitten. I took the dogs for walks. In the summertime the kids and I went swimming in the apartment pool. They learned to dive, pointing their arms into the water and falling in, surfacing laughing , sputtering, and happy.

Eventually I connected with my now husband Kevin. We have a story but I’m not telling it today lol. We spent evenings talking once the kids were in bed. He lived across the country. We made long trips to see each other. I sang along with the radio and slept in rest stops. We fell deeply and madly in love.

He moved to PA. We had a golden summer with our kids all together. Since then things have been both wonderful and hard. Slowly, slowly, we are learning to create stable life together. Both of us carry very deep wounds. We have worked to create a home safe for healing in, and allow it to fill with love.

I am an idealst. A hopeless romantic. I see magic in every shimmering spiderweb and drop of dew. But the truth is no relationship can save us from our own deepest, buried memories. No one can save us from ourselves. Except ourselves.

So, after a two year break, I’ve returned to therapy. This time I went in ready to look at the things I’ve avoided for so long. My repressed and unhealed childhood traumas. My earliest memories of joy, and also of sorrow. Of terror. Of anxiety and abandonment and love. The origins of the alphabet that I use to write my patterns. The stories that shaped my view of the world. The shadow parts that have been waiting for their moment in the light.

My therapist is teaching me to rescue my inner children. She leads me through a guided meditation. I visualize a safe place in my mind. My safe place is at the base of an enormous tree with great roots. The roots stretch down and down and down. Within the roots is a hollow space, and within the hollow space is a room, filled with white light. It’s a place where all is right and safe and healing. It’s the place where I am able to access the pieces of myself that fractured so many years ago. And it’s a place where my children selves can dwell peacefully, excused from their responsibilites of masking, and keeping track of their loved ones, and keeping secrets, and seeking approval, and trying to hold up the world. The world holds itself. It does not need our sacrifices to keep spinning.

And after a lifetime of fawning, and freezing, and seeking approval, and seeking distraction, and running, and hiding, and pretending, I’m finally in the place to work on my own rescuing. To reach out a hand to that little girl, and say “Here, I’ll lead you to the place you need to be, I’m sorry things have been so hard, but I will not abandon you again.”

It is not an easy process. I feel in a space I’ve never been, seeking comfort in things both familiar and new. Her t-shirt is yellow. I lead her to the place of light. I paint the kitchen yellow. I eat starbursts. Yellow as well. I sit in the sun. I take walks. I bask in the love and embrace of my husband, and our children. I am blessed with sweet friendships although I don’t know if I am deserving enough or well enough to have them. I self isolate, and self doubt, and am learning to self soothe, and am beginning to understand the true meaning of a self that is able to love and be loved.

As the memories surface in waves I am sucked under. Tumbled by the force of the undertow and the sheer weight of the many miles of water above. But it is ok. This is what it is. This is the way we take the old world apart and build the new one. It is not enough to turn our backs on what is broken. It is not a question of shame. The future exists for all of us in a place where truth and memory find a place together. Our ability to rescue each other is limited only by our ability to rescue ourselves.

In my mind I can see myself as a child. Dark hair with bangs and pigtails. Chubby cheeks, tummy, and thighs. A care bear t-shirt, shorts, barefoot, eyes squinted in a smile. Tough, funny, scared, bold, wanting, seeking, both brave and afraid.

She is the one that needs rescuing.

And she, in turn, will help to rescue me.

Thank you for listening,

Love,

Natasha