The Hardest Thing to Write About

Someone wise once said "They say the best way out is through (and yes, it was The Fray)." But really? How is there even another way? Life is always, inevitably and irreversibly moving forward without any thought for our feelings. I once read this line from a book, and it made me stop and ponder a moment: "Fate makes no distinction between tragedy and happily ever after." I don't believe in fate, but I do believe in life. I do believe that there is no force that frowns upon the wicked and smiles upon the good. Evil comes to all of us. If we're going somewhere, we'll get there, and there's no stopping the bumps along the way. If I were to have said that line, I would have said "The road of life bears no distinction between tragedy and happily ever after." Because the simple fact of it is, if we are meant to feel pain, to head towards a sorrowful destination, we will. We really will.

I don't like to talk about when I was younger and unsure of myself, at least not in any substantial way. I talk about my hair back then, my third grade teacher, my reaction to 9/11, my favorite food, but I never talk about the currents of my life at that point. I've never been brave enough to do it. I don't feel very brave tonight, but I feel like I need to try, so I'm trying.

Among the many memories of my life, there just isn't one of my parents telling me that they were getting a divorce. I don't remember sitting down and hearing about it. I suppose if there was a moment like that, it wasn't surprising news once I understood the words involved. I'd already started closing myself off before that, I think. I don't really know. I just know that between my second and third grade years, my life changed, and I changed. I think when we're older, unsavory events hold a bigger impact in our minds because we have a greater capacity and understanding to make sense of them. It's only now that I'm older that I have been able to see the small ways that my life was changed. My third grade year was quiet and timid, characterized by a small little girl who felt like everyone was looking at her with disdain in their eyes, who leaned her head down on her desk when they announced the attack on the Twin Towers because she couldn't understand why she was feeling so sad, who lost a dad to something she didn't understand, a mom to a job because of that mystery something and herself to emotions she didn't understand. I wanted to make friends that year really badly, but I felt like there was an invisible cord wrapped around my ribs, squeezing them tight when I tried to work up the courage to speak. I cuddled my sister at night, not sure what to do with the hurt and guilt in my heart. I didn't know how to let it out and make it go away.

But I guess the real pain of it came as I grew up and had to live with the repercussions of it. There were times when I felt so lost. I'd stand in the doorway between two halves of my life--one that I wished I could keep forever and one that I wished would disappear while I blinked--and I'd feel the two halves of my soul squeezing in each direction. On the one hand, I had a beautiful family, a miracle Mother, and a Father who was certainly always supposed to be mine. They loved me and I loved them, and the happiness I felt with them was enough to make me feel so whole I could burst. On the other hand, I had a man who walked out of my life, who repeatedly rejected me, who insisted on turning me against those that loved me, who made me feel small, and who never loved me at all, I sometimes feared. It was the last part that hurt my heart so. If I couldn't make the man who was supposed to be my father love me, even if I had been given a Father who really did love me (and I've never doubted that he does), what good was I?

Every time he called, I'd seize up inside with panic. I wanted him to love me, but I knew that he didn't. I knew that I shouldn't care. I was torn between the want and the fear and the anger. Days like that usually ended in me twisting up all the feelings and shoving them down my own throat to fester in my stomach. Sometimes it ended in tears, in words I couldn't and still can't find, in shouts that hurt me worse than anything else. I just, I didn't like feeling so small and so hurt, so mostly I just hid those down as best as I could. I still do that, I think.

When I graduated from High School, he called. That was the last time we talked, and the conversation never really ended properly. When I got married, I deliberated quite a bit about sending an invitation. I didn't want to. The hurt and anger I feel towards him...wouldn't allow it. But I did it. I sent him one. I waited on edge, though I'd never tell anyone, to receive any sort of reply to it. I didn't want to talk to him, but I wanted him to care, to try, to congratulate me, or even to feel sad that he'd had no part in this changing of my life. A big part of me just wanted to move through this, the happiest chapter of my life, without any interference, without a reminder of the pain that I still felt. Instead of any of that, I got his invitation back in the mail three weeks after the wedding, and a lot of harsh judgments and words concerning my decision not to invite him (though I had). I wonder sometimes if God had a hand in helping that invitation go astray.

I just. I know that what I experienced wasn't terrible, really. People lose the ones they love to death all the time. It's painful, and it's difficult to live without someone you love so much, to walk a few more steps away from their memory every single day that you live beyond them. I've never had to do that. I've never experienced war or starvation. But when I think about people that do feel those things, and I match up their pain with the pain in my heart, I feel weak. I have a small burden to bear.

I know this in my head, but my heart won't feel it. It just, it just doesn't really ever go away. I live with the hurt still, and I expect to do so until I die. I manage to put it out of my mind most of the time, but it's never very far away. I feel so much anger, I feel so much hurt, I feel so much confusion.

I'm angry that he left. I'm angry that he decided that we weren't worth it, that I wasn't worth it. I'm angry that he hurt my Mother. I'm angry that he hurt my sister. I'm angry that he confused me and led me to question myself. I'm angry that something so trivial will upset me all my life. I'm angry because he gave me problems that I'll spend my whole life working through. I'm angry, I'm angry, I'm angry. It's raw and it's red and it's wild in my heart.

I'm hurt that he left. I'm hurt that he decided that we weren't worth fighting for, and especially hurt that he decided that I wasn't worth fighting for. I tried so hard to be good enough for him! It's all I ever wanted. I hurt because it feels like my fault sometimes. I'm hurt because I can't change him and because he sometimes distracted me from the blessings and the Father that was in front of me. I'm hurt because I want to stop hurting. I want to stop this aching and I don't want to cry anymore, but when I stop acknowledging the hurt it sneaks up on me and stays. It leaves me empty.

I'm confused because I don't understand why. I feel like I deserved this sometimes. Maybe I wasn't good enough. Maybe I should have tried harder. Maybe it was something I did before I was born! I'm confused because I don't understand why this had to happen. Not just to me, but to my whole family. It affects everyone I've ever met, whether they know it or not, and it especially affects my Mother. I'm confused because I know she didn't deserve it; I don't think anyone could ever deserve something like that. The confusion twists inside me endlessly.

I read a book about two people that fall in love--only she's haunted by a series of terrible events that shook her life to its frame and left her a shadow of who she could have been, and he doesn't know how to help her. When she loses her life in an accident, he finds himself traveling back into time, given the priceless opportunity to rescue her and stop the first terrible event from happening so many years ago. Remarking upon this difference between the girl she'd been and the girl she got to be now, he relates a story in which he is a young boy, driving through a forest with his uncle. He says to his uncle: "this forest is so beautiful," to which his uncle replies: "you should have seen it before the hurricane." Looking closely after these words, he notices all the small flaws that he hadn't noticed before. He looks at this girl and realizes that he's gotten this lucky chance to change her story; he's given her the chance to be, permanently, the forest before the hurricane.

After reading the story, I was left with this question:

Would I go back and change it if I could? 

I was left so unsatisfied by that story. I mean, sure she got to be the forest before the hurricane, and that is truly beautiful, but I think that the forest after the hurricane must have been equally as beautiful in its own way. I liked the girl just fine after her hurricane--it gave her the capacity to understand him in ways that she lost once she was changed. The point of the story, I think, was that he risked changing her life so drastically that she might possibly never meet him. He loved her enough to do what was best for her even if it took him out of her life. It was a happy miracle that they were able to meet again and be together.

I however, don't think that I would go back and change my life if I could. How could I ever trade the person I am now for a life free of pain? I would be so much less sure of the things I know now if I had never had to pass through adversity. I wouldn't be able to empathize. Well, I don't really know who I'd be. But I feel so protective of the me that I've been able to build that I don't think I'd want to change a single thing. But more importantly, I've come to peace with the fact that no matter how badly I want to change it or not:

I can't. 

And that's that. I have learned so much about my Savior's love for me through this experience. I have grown immeasurably closer to him through the ups and downs and pains and joys of my life. I really can't explain the miracle that this alone has been in my life. Like this post, my life has not been only characterized by pain and hurt and anger. There is peace that comes to my soul when I think to ask, and sometimes even when I don't.

The best way out, indeed, is through. I'm not through yet, but I'm working on it.