yesterday i spent the greatest part of my day with one of the few people on the planet i can say i love unconditionally, just as she is.... NOD to bridget jones and her many diaries. during our animated conversation her mind is mind blowing- which is one of the reasons i love her so much, she was interrupted by no fewer than 15 texts from family members all much younger than she is and all dependant on her for everything, and i mean every blessed thing. after watching her reading the texts and after each one i literally saw her sink lower into her chair. everyone was a shot to both her heart and her brain, at this time in her life she is having issues with both of those physical parts of her body. she got to the point where she simply stopped reading them, and the guilt of not reading them became apparent as our many topics of conversation ended up back to one or more of the people who were texting her...
we were talking politics, religion, inclusion, books written and worked on, and so deeply varied was our conversation, i was having a hard time not feeling her pain as she was stressing out about not answering the texts... eventually it came up and i had to say what i was thinking, i said "is it really any surprise to you that both your heart trouble and your newly discovered brain issues are not related to those phone calls and texts, the rational part of you knows they are all adults and must take control of their own lives, aka your brain, yet your deep love for your family keeps you bound to every one of their problems and that is causing you pain in ... you guessed it your heart"...
our bodies are made to adapt to many things changes, in weather we survived many ice ages when as a species we should have been wiped out. we survive cultural changes, in some countries where revolutions from a monarchy to communism occurred within a person's lifetime, we have survived two awful and horrific world wars.... and in our personal lives we survive death, divorce, financial ruin, scandal and yet we are able to bounce back again and again. we are a pretty resilient species....
yet when i saw the pain in my friends eyes i saw that as tough as we are, we can not let go of carrying other people's baggage along with our own. as i watched this brilliant woman mentally torturing herself, because she can not let their pain creating antics be seperate from her daily life and leave her alone. she loves them all and takes it upon herself to try and heal all their wounds - it is family after all. as a compassionate person i do not tell her that the way she is carrying her family's burden is killing her.... i know she knows it and that she needs to separate herself if only for her own health and sanity.
so my question becomes at what point do we allow someone we love to suffer the consequences of the choices that they have made? this is a difficult one to answer. since our society places so many restrictions on just what makes a good person, does a good person ever abandon someone they love to suffer? most everyone would simply say no! a good person would take on the pain of everyone around them, ease any guilt and end up killing themselves from stress and anxiety years before it would ever happen under different circumstances...
as we ended our time together i watched as my friend stood up and the amount of pain washed over her face, she tried to be brave and not show that she was in pain, but seriously she is not that good an actress. like a wave it covered her from her head aching, to the tension tightening her neck and upper back, she was in serious discomfort, scratch that she was freaking miserable, it was obvious that as her friend i had to say something, but what?
we went our separate ways and i purposely did not say anything, i needed those thoughts to rumble about inside my own head for a bit before i said the wrong thing. words once spoken remember can never be unsaid or for that matter easily forgotten. as i try and tell my own children at times you must learn to censor yourself and the sooner you learn how to do that the easier your life becomes. but alas, at 20 and 23 i can talk till i am blue in the face, and my own children will not hear me, in hindsight that would be kind of disgusting, if you take it literally.... ok sidebar- off on tangent...move along...
this morning i received an email from my friend saying what a great time we had yesterday and of course my immediate reply would have been me as well...
but i knew that if i just said that, i would be denying everything i saw her suffer through the day before, and as a kind person i could not allow that, so as i began to reply and indeed tell her that i of course had a very enjoyable time conversing and discussing the many great and varied topics we discussed, i was honest and dramatic enough to describe every time i saw her reaction to what was going on with her family and the dreaded phone, i said i felt and arrow pierce me... ( good drama huh?)... and that since i am not st sebastian and will not become a human pincushion, i needed to tell her that as her loving friend that what i saw was truly killing her in front of me. and i could not remain living within any set of human morals and not tell her that she needs to separate from her adult children and adult grandchildren and that they MUST be allowed to walk the paths they have chosen on their own,and that she has to allow them to own the mistakes they make and not try to heal every broken bone with a bandaid....
this is now her time, if she feels that she was the right parent and did the correct things to bring children up to adulthood she needs to let her skills do the work.... and let them behave as adults. the time has come where she has to step back to let the chaos unfold but not around her. sure it will be a minor disaster when they all come to hear that she can not walk with their baggage any longer, she must put her foot down and demand to be given the right of walking away. leaving them to get their own claim checks and go pull their mess off the luggage cart. sure they will sling guilt at her like it was mud, tossing with aim and precision as only a good guilt tosser can. i told her, you take your umbrella and duck and cover to avoid the guilt being tossed at you, after all you have invested your entire adult life creating a very good life for them, now is the time that they take control.
in a few days things should start to calm down as they begin to sort through their own luggage, keeping things of value and tossing out the rest. all the while making their own bags lighter and easier to carry... the relief they will feel is important as they need to acknowledge their own two legs and stand upright and stop crawling away from every loud noise, every drop of their rattle. they need to begin to take ownership of their own lives, and in the end they will be thankful for her giving them the space to spread out and grow....
will she benefit from them growing up and not throwing tantrums every 15 minutes damn straight! i am very anxious to see as both her heart and her head begin to heal slowly at first and growing steadily stronger as the strain on each lessens. so yes there does come a time when even as a parent you need to step away from the chaos and let your children grow as the tree that grows strongest is always the one that does not grow in another's shadow, it needs air and light and space to spread it own branches and catch it's own rain.... to grow as it was intended to grow, not stunted in shadow.
to answer my own question with a question,
can you hold onto something too long?
you tell me.
tony
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