Old Breaks

I don't really believe in time travel in the practical sense.  In spite of how much science fiction I consume, through screen or literature, and in spite of my persistent agreement with Hamlet that "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," time travel falls outside of even my own credulity.

That doesn't stop me from thinking about it, though.

If you can believe it, this came up in therapy recently.

One of the defining traumas of my life occurred one day towards the end of my eighth grade year of middle school.  My father had been commuting to his new job in California since January, and our house in Illinois had been on the market for five months.  I had been a hostage to an undefined, impending uprooting for about half a year, during which time I had finally found the kind of friends who made leaving seem especially cruel.  I had felt simultaneously obligated to hold together my mother in my father's absence, as well as my own remarkable impression of a high functioning human at school.  I don't remember the exact catalyst, but that morning in the late spring, I broke. 

Looking back, of course, I recognize several things, undiagnosed depression being one of them, deeply seated anxiety being another.  Yet another is that I had learned from a very early age not to make a fuss.  We were a good family.  We didn't have problems.  My exemplary grades and virtually spotless behavior were part of the deal and regrettably unexceptional.  So as everything fell apart around me, I felt as though I had to hold it together.  I didn't know at that point that sometimes holding it together is the worst thing you can do for yourself.

Standing outside of school that morning, I felt something heavy settle on my chest.  It was as though my brain were submerged in dark, murky water: everything was muted, echoing, translucently shadowed.  When we were let into the school, I made my way to the office of the counselor, to whom I'd been talking for several months.  I sat down and, though I don't remember the details clearly, I communicated my desire to hurt myself.  From valedictorian to self-harm in ten seconds flat: I didn't know how to be anything in between, and it never occurred to me that sadly those two things didn't have to be mutually exclusive.

The irony was that such a statement of intent to self-harm immediately kicked off a series of events that ended up doing more harm than good; of course these procedures are in place for a reason, but still.  The counselor had a legal obligation to hand me off to the school's social worker, whom I hated.  I had asked that my close friend Ross come to the office, and he came in on high alert, tall and blue-eyed and remarkably composed under the circumstances.  When they told me he couldn't come in with me to the social worker's office, I flatly stated that if Ross wasn't with me, I wasn't going. 

I remember that moment as being the first time my anger had ever really gotten traction in reality, and Ross sat beside me in the social worker's office.

Of course the school had to call my parents.  That morning, my mother was driving my father to the airport, because he was flying to Japan for a business  conference.  My mother told the school they would pick me up on their way.  This meant, of course, hauling me out of my friend's protective grasp and planting me in the backseat of a minivan.  I'll never know what exactly the school told my parents, but in short order, we were on our way to O'Hare. 

I remember spilling Diet Coke down the front of my shirt in the car.  Isn't it funny the things you remember?

When we got to the airport, it suddenly became apparent that my dad had left his laptop at home, so my mother went tearing back to the suburbs to get it, leaving me with my dad at the airport.  Back then, you could go through security even without a ticket, and I remember sitting in the dilapidated terminal seats with my dad, who had no idea what to do with me.

Until his cellphone rang: my mother had been in an automobile accident.

Here's where the time travel comes in.  I want to step through a portal, or push a button, or hail a TARDIS, and go back to that moment.  I imagine stepping out of the vortex (or police call box) and sitting down next to myself.  I want to put my arms around my younger shoulders and lean my head against hers.  And most importantly, I want to tell her how sorry I am.  It goes something like this:

"I'm sorry that you're in the middle of the worst pain you have known yet in your life and that no one seems to understand or even really notice.  I'm sorry that what you don't know is that your mom is fine, but the accident will effectively erase your part in this day from your parents' minds and memories.  I'm sorry that in a year or so, when you bring it up with your dad, asking him if he remembers the day you had your breakdown, he'll answer with uncharacteristic cruelty, "Oh, I'm sorry, the day your mother was in a car crash?"  As though your asking was appalling. I'm sorry you will have to hear that.  I'm sorry your mom will shrilly remember only her own emotional injury that day-- that your dad got on a plane the day after her crash and left her.  I'm sorry you're not in that equation.  I'm sorry you haven't articulated yet that emotionally, someone always has to 'win' in our family-- that there can be only one hurt that gets the attention, and that yours did not win that day, or any of the days that followed.  I'm so sorry.

"I'm sorry that you just don't have the tools, but you should know that your not having them is not your fault.  You haven't learned to own your rage, to hone it, as I learned in my early twenties, and you haven't learned how to manage pain, communicate it, use it, and calm it as I only have in the last couple of years.  I'm sorry you have no language to give to this dark, ugly pain that is very real.  I'm sorry that the worst moment of your life so far is about to be forgotten.

But I promise you this: I won't forget it."

This is not the only instance in my life that I would like to revisit-- not to do anything differently, but simply to comfort a younger version of myself, to acknowledge the situation and bear compassionate witness.  My sister, thinking she sounded wise but actually sounding cruel, told me once that I remember every wrong that has ever been done to me.  What I didn't have the words to tell her then was that I have to remember, because nobody else bloody does.

Sometimes, when I'm hashing out the oddly mundane details of these fantasies, I wonder what my past self would think of my current self.  The acne has certainly cleared, thank God and benzoyl peroxide, and the braces are gone.  I like to think that I'm comfortable in my own skin and that I wear it with greater confidence-- I hope this would show somehow (though, of course, that could just be wishful thinking).  At the very least, I imagine she would be impressed with my tall black boots and my refined command of eyeliner.  But these details are kind of beside the point.

As traumas go, I realize in the grand scheme of things mine is not so enormous.  Nevertheless, it felt that way, and it overwhelmed me.  I've revisited that moment so many times, especially in therapy, as a sort of archetypal break, one that is difficult to address in writing.  But I wanted to, and I think I've just realized why: because now, after fifteen years, I am bigger than that hurt.  There was a time when I was not, when it was like an eclipse; even when it was done, it still flickered in my consciousness. 

I joke with my therapist that when I enjoy moments of enlightenment, I say that I feel it in my "therapy" (this is kind of like another version of having it in your "feels," as a friend of mine would phrase it).  My therapist thinks it is a funny turn of phrase, but she observed once: "I don't think that's all your therapy.  I think you're just growing up."

It's the thing I've been trying to do for most of my life: to grow up.  What we realize, though, is that we're never done, there's no finish line, and there's certainly no prize.  We do the best with what we have and keep on truckin'. 

I guess, though, that at least I've made some progress if one of the things that I have is an increased ability to handle large, unwieldy pain more skillfully-- or at least, the ability to discern when, where, and with whom it is most effective to lose my shit.  I also have the knowledge that sometimes it is absolutely essential to lose your shit: to be a mess, to raise the red flag, to not hold it together and to reserve the right to fall the fuck apart.  To let people know that under no circumstances am I at this minute even remotely okay.  And that that's okay.

I wish I could give some of that hard-earned wisdom to that fourteen-year-old at O'Hare.  When I think about it, I find myself rubbing my arms, as though that self-comfort will transcend fifteen years.  I wish it could.  But, if I believe as I think I do, that I really have absorbed all of my former selves, like rings in a tree, maybe it does do some good.  Maybe somewhere inside of me there's a fourteen-year-old with Diet Coke down the front of her shirt who will take that comfort how it's meant.

Because this is the one, truest instance in which someone really does know how she feels.