The Great Adventure, Final Thoughts

I didn’t know what to expect from my cross country trip.  Past history would indicate the entire trip would have been fraught with arguments from my youngest daughter.  I was hoping this would give us the opportunity to bond together, talk, and maybe air some things out.  Neither happened, I guess you could say it was a neutral trip.  I was grateful for her presence and her help. I am not sure I would have liked to drive this trip alone.  I didn’t place any negative or particularly positive judgments with our interactions; I also recognize by the end of the day, we were often exhausted.  When we stopped for meals, we did have a nice time, even a few laughs.  I was expecting the worst, hoping for the best, and in the end neither happened.  Also to be fair, my daughter was terrified to talk to me while I drove.  I am easily distracted.  She asked me not talk to her while she was driving because she is smart enough to know she needed her full attention on the road when she could only use her mirrors for sight.  She is a much better driver than I am; she is careful and conscious of other cars around her.  Funny thing is, I taught her much of what she does on the road: to always know where the other cars are in relationship to you, to always plan a defensive move in case someone else does something stupid, to watch the other drivers because if they are turning their head a lot, they are going to change lanes, or watch to see if they are distracted.  It is far better to be behind a drunk driver than beside or in front of him, and if a driver is aggressive and driving erratically, let him get out of your way.  And the biggest things of all I taught her was semi-trucks always win, do not try to outrun them, let them merge and let them change lanes.  They have the power to squish you, so don’t mess around.  It felt good to know she listened and learned from me.  You know what they say, if you can’t do, teach.  (This is not fair to professional teacher, which is a different dynamic.)

My daughter sacrificed to make the trip with me.  She had to pick up extra shifts the week before, and probably lost some shifts she could have had during her time with me.  Despite all the arguments and tension between us, she is still willing to make sacrifices to help me.  There were times during the trip she put my needs ahead of her own.  That’s what family does, and that’s what you do for someone you love.  Teenage girls are difficult at best, but at the end of the day, she loves her mommy.  Despite any hurt feelings I may have during the arguments, despite my frustration, despite what I may think at the time, she is my daughter, and that is all she needs to be in order for me to love her fully, and to walk the ends of the earth if it would make her life better.  I don’t know what her perspective or thoughts are about our journey, she didn’t discuss them with me, but I guess I didn’t talk to her much about it either.  I said thank you and I appreciated her making the trip with me, but I know I did not convey how much I appreciated her willingness to sacrifice her time and income to assist me. 

Mommy/Daughter Pic a few years back

This is another ghost of my past, a leftover remnant from years of abuse, I have a difficult time expressing how I feel, or initiating a conversation where I might expose vulnerability, even to my own daughter.  Milena has expressed frustration from time to time because I don’t exhibit the emotions she expects me to have.  It is not that I don’t have them, but I don’t let others see what I feel.  I am a great deal better at it than I used to be, but fortunately, she did not know me during the time I could not express any emotion at all.  I admire her ability to allow herself to feel and express emotions.  It makes her a person of greater depth.  As she continues to mature, as she gains some life experience and when she gains better control over her emotions, she is going to be an amazing woman.  I am starting to understand that at least in part, one of the reasons I have been failing at having the relationship with Milena I desire is that I am guarded.  I try to be more honest and expressive in my relationship with her, but I don’t know if that is something I will ever be able to do.  The best I can hope for is that at the end of the day, she realizes my fierce dedication toward her well-being and success is evidence enough of my love.  I saw my mother as a cold, indifferent woman.  It saddens me to think my children might think the same of me, because they did not see what my mother was, they cannot appreciate how hard I have worked to get to where I am.  To know that despite how far I have come, my children view me at times the same way I viewed my mother is heartbreaking. 

I did enjoy the trip.  I got to see parts of the country I have only seen in pictures.  I wish I could have made the trip without all the anxiety and fear I felt for this major change in my life, but it is good to get out of your comfort zone.  Changes and challenges in life keep you young and vital.  It keeps your mind and outlook fresh and you find yourself anticipating the next day.    As humans, we constantly strive for comfort, whether it is our environment, our emotional state, or our physical state.  Some comfort is beneficial; we need a soft place to land in all those areas.  The problem with being comfortable is it eventually becomes detrimental to our well-being.  I have chronic back pain.  In the morning I usually wake up in some level of pain.  I can change my position and the pain may let up, but when I step on the floor and place the full weight of by body on my back, the pain increases.  If I chose to go back to bed and be more comfortable, my quality of life will inevitably decline significantly.  I will lose muscle mass, my mood and self-esteem will decline as I no longer feel I am a contributing member of society, and I will become isolated and dependent.  So every day it hurts to step on my feet when I get out of the bed, I reach out of my comfort zone so I can have a life worth living.  I manage the pain as best I can, using multiple tools and interventions to return to a state of comfort.  There are narcotics and muscle relaxers, but the best things I do to manage my back pain are not the easiest or the most comfortable.  I get up out of bed every day.  I don’t sit too long, and I don’t stay on my feet too long.  The thing that goes the farthest to manage the pain and allow me to live a better life is exercise.  Not a treadmill or running, but balance exercises to strengthen my core muscles and to ensure my body remain in proper alignment.  Yoga, Pilates, Tae Chi and similar gentle but exercises that challenge the body to stay healthy.  I also pay close attention to my weight, not like I did as an anorexic, but I try to eat healthy and maintain a healthy weight so I do not place additional strain on my back. 

Women stay in abusive relationships because there is a comfort level with the kind of life they know.  It is a horrible way to live, but it is easier to deal with what you know, what you have come to expect.  There is more education and resources now than when I left my husband 23 years ago, but people are reluctant to leave a known way of life no matter how horrible it is, than to venture into a life where the end of the day is not known, where you have to make decisions and can’t be sure what the outcome might be.  I grew up with an abusive father.  Female children will model what a spouse should be based on how the father modeled a good husband toward their mothers, and a good father as he parented them.  Not only did I marry my father, but I married a man who modeled my father on crack.  I can’t remember my father ever laying a hand on my mother.  Yes, he beat the living shit out of me, but I never saw him strike my mother.  He dehumanized my mother in other ways, especially in ways that demoralized her perception of sexuality, but he never hit her.  After the divorce, my father never stalked my mother, and never denied his children child support.  Of course the child support was court ordered, but he paid it.  My father was emotionally abusive to my mother.  He threatened to have her committed to an institution, even as young as I was I remember my father threatening to force her into a psychiatric unit.  In the late sixties and into the seventies a husband could still sign his spouse into a psychiatric hospital against her will.  In the late seventies, it was getting much harder to do, but it was still a threat to my mother that could have happened.    Just as my husband convinced me I had serious mental health issues (crazy) my father used the same type of abuse to keep my mother in line.  I married what I knew.  I lived in a marriage and accepted his abuse of me, and eventually the abuse of my darling children because that was the only life I knew.  Our efforts to obtain and stay in a level of comfort will ultimately stunt our growth emotionally, spiritually and cause physical decline.  It took the levels of abuse to rise to horrific levels to push me out of the marriage, because that was a level of abuse I was no longer comfortable in, and I did not want my daughters harmed.  I was one of the lucky ones.  I am alive to tell the story, and after I left, I dedicated myself to healing both myself and my children. 

At first I couldn’t understand why the thoughts about my first marriage were resurfacing.  I always analyze things to death, but I have a driving need to understand what I do and why I do things.  There are lessons to be learned everywhere in the world around you, and I am curious enough to want to learn them all.  The experience of leaving my first husband bore shreds of similarities to leaving Ohio; at least it touched on a few of the emotional issues.  But the two experiences could not be more different.  Leaving my husband ultimately ensured a better future for my family, and I believe leaving Ohio will ultimately provide a better future for me.  The loss, the fears, the uncertainly are all the same.  Leaping into the unknown is frightening.  Finally, I am starting to gain some insight.  I was dying inside of the marriage.  I was at the very least stagnating in Ohio, I am not sure it was as dramatic as dying.  Both events have caused me to leave my comfort zone, an area where it was no longer pleasant to be, but it was better than stepping on the floor in the morning to feel the back pain.  Being comfortable in our lives is only meant to rest and rejuvenate our souls, it is not meant to be a permanent home.  I’m not saying everyone should take off and move across the country, but maybe audit some college courses, start a new hobby, do something that is uncomfortable and hard for you to do.  It can be fun, too, but it must be out of your normal daily comfort. 

The trip was difficult.  A series of events turned this move into a reality.  I am still scared, and a little uncomfortable.  I miss my children, and I still want to be their mommy.  It’s not the “empty nest” syndrome I hear about, I enjoy the solitude and peace of living alone.  But it is hard to understand I am not their mommy so much anymore as I am their mom, and when they need me, they will call.  It is time for them to live their own lives, and to explore their own world.  By the same token, it is also time for me to live my life, something I never had the opportunity to do.  That is what scares me the most.  I know how to be a mommy,   but do I know how to be an individual?  It is terrifying, exhilarating and exciting all at the same time.  Of course, I am afraid of failure.  But how is it I can fail at being myself?  I suppose I could have stayed in my comfort zone in Ohio and involved myself into my adult children’s lives, but as remaining in comfort will do, all of us would eventually suffer for it.  I could have remained mommy and twisted the beautiful, independent and wonderful women I raised into something different, just so I could stay comfortable.  I have to accept it is time to live my life, whatever that may turn out to be, and allow my children to live theirs.  I couldn’t bear to push my baby birds out of the nest to see if they could fly, so I left the nest instead. 

The part that does terrify me the most is living my own life.  All my life I had been forced to respond to the situations around me, to always think of what was best for my children, placing their needs ahead of my own.  I have lived a reactive life, trying the best I could to deal with the next crisis.  I have never really had the opportunity to make decisions in my life for me.  I have never had the chance to direct the course of my life, the course my life has taken has been to a large extent directed for me.  My childhood directed me toward my first marriage, but I directed my way out of it.  I have made decisions which have changed the course of what my life should have been, statistically speaking.  I suppose their will come a day when I can take credit for that, but for now I see it as a response to where my life was.  For the first time in my life, my future is in my hands.  I will have challenges to meet along the way, but the decisions I make do not have to be predicated of the best interests of my children.  I hope I finally value myself enough as a human being to utilize the fierce dedication I gave to my children toward forging the future I deserve.  I taught my children how to be independent women.  Now it is time I learned how to be independent myself.