Wednesday
Feb232011
Worrying The Past
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Sometimes I lie awake at night, on nights just like tonight, and I try to draw the lines down from my childhood to where I lie in bed wondering about how I got here to this place.
I am so much happier, so much more well-adjusted than I once was, so much more hopeful and able to dream than at any other point in my life, but there is an urgency that starts ticking away now in the wee hours, an urgency that is stuck to my waxing sense of mortality and the speed of time, and I feel a greater and greater need to make these connections. How did I get here from there? Why were more than twenty-five years so unhappy? Am I merely on a honeymoon with middle age? Will I find myself there again for another twenty-five, dark and foundering?
I am at the happiest point to date in my life at thirty-eight, and yet I lie awake worried that the past will find me. It will point me out and say This Is Not The Real You.
There were, of course, happy moments in my childhood, but most of them seem lumped into the time before I was five. After that, a deep and keening sadness crept in, as though I were mourning the passage of all things, because all things were always passing. I lay awake at night then, too, but filled with a pain I couldn't shake, and I would panic silent scream into my pillow, because being alive was inescapable. There was nowhere to go with what I felt.
That wasn't all there was, of course. There were sprinklers on the lawn and digging toes into the beach sand in summer and hollowed out snow forts in winter and getting lost inside books, but all of it was touched with the sad and terribly anxious undercurrent that none of this was mine, that I did not belong here.
And now I am happy, and yet here I sit in the wee hours of a Wednesday morning trying to draw lines down from then to now. How did I come to be here? Will I somehow be made to go back there? I worry that I am out on a day pass. I think that if I can find another way to look at my history, if I can just tilt it a bit to the left and change my perspective, I will be able to shake more happiness out of it, and that maybe, if I squint hard enough, I will finally fix the records and be granted release.
I am so much happier, so much more well-adjusted than I once was, so much more hopeful and able to dream than at any other point in my life, but there is an urgency that starts ticking away now in the wee hours, an urgency that is stuck to my waxing sense of mortality and the speed of time, and I feel a greater and greater need to make these connections. How did I get here from there? Why were more than twenty-five years so unhappy? Am I merely on a honeymoon with middle age? Will I find myself there again for another twenty-five, dark and foundering?
I am at the happiest point to date in my life at thirty-eight, and yet I lie awake worried that the past will find me. It will point me out and say This Is Not The Real You.
There were, of course, happy moments in my childhood, but most of them seem lumped into the time before I was five. After that, a deep and keening sadness crept in, as though I were mourning the passage of all things, because all things were always passing. I lay awake at night then, too, but filled with a pain I couldn't shake, and I would panic silent scream into my pillow, because being alive was inescapable. There was nowhere to go with what I felt.
That wasn't all there was, of course. There were sprinklers on the lawn and digging toes into the beach sand in summer and hollowed out snow forts in winter and getting lost inside books, but all of it was touched with the sad and terribly anxious undercurrent that none of this was mine, that I did not belong here.
And now I am happy, and yet here I sit in the wee hours of a Wednesday morning trying to draw lines down from then to now. How did I come to be here? Will I somehow be made to go back there? I worry that I am out on a day pass. I think that if I can find another way to look at my history, if I can just tilt it a bit to the left and change my perspective, I will be able to shake more happiness out of it, and that maybe, if I squint hard enough, I will finally fix the records and be granted release.
categorized in health, personal history and tagged in anxiety, childhood, depression, happiness, happy, insomnia, worrying
health, personal history and tagged in anxiety, childhood, depression, happiness, happy, insomnia, worrying 
Reader Comments (15)
you are lovely...even in your darker moments, others saw light and knew you were destined for happier times and had earned more smiles than you were spending.
Beautiful reflection here I think. Now is a hard place to get to. Have you read Karen Maezen Miller's 'Hand Wash Cold'? I love it for my nights like this...
B
such vulnerable thoughts, and so well expressed. My heart hurts for the place you have been and fear returning to. thinking of you as you process heavy thoughts like these.
Wow, Schmutzie. I thought I was the only one who did this at night. Thank you so much for sharing this.
I feel like I'm in one of those dark, anxious spots now, wondering if I'll ever get back to the happy. I know how I got here. The line is direct. I just can't figure out how to sever it.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. So beautifully expressed, as always.
i carried the same with me from childhood into my thirties. the last few years - which have been marked by grief and the mundanities of living with small children, for all their sweetness - have oddly but blessedly swept it from me.
it wasn't the kids who did it, though, lest you think i'm making some kind of link. just time, i think. if don't know if i've outrun all the seeking and unsettledness that i dragged around for years, or if it just wore out and fell off.
i suspect - for me - that it's more that i finally understand some of the messy discourses that push and pull at who we are in society, and i have come to a place where those no longer make me feel "wrong." social media has been part of that, both in the capacity to leave traces of myself, to work myself out in words and have those reflected back, but also in the access it has given me to people whose way of being doesn't constantly make me question my own. like Neil tweeted the other day, and i paraphrase: "i used to dream of a world filled with writers and kindness and hot women. now i live it on Twitter." or something like that.
anyhoo. i hope - for us both - it sticks around.
As a "woman of a certain age" (in few years I'm going to have to retire that saying because ahem I will actually BE old) the past is something that I think about more and more. It's mainly because both my parent passed away in the last year and a half and I'm back in the house I grew up in. Usually my ability to remember the past let alone make connections is murking at best--I tend to live in the future--and it has been an interesting experience.
Mainly I've found that things do tend to come around again BUT we have a different persepctive on them this time around and we bring a different awareness to them. You are not that 5 year old with no other life experience then the fear--you have time and awareness of how things can be to draw from.....don't be afraid of the happiness.....yes it can be fleeting but once you feel it you can recognize it again when it comes around again. And it will....
I love this post. It expresses so much that I'm grappling with too. Thank you for putting it down so acutely.
I love this post. I also lay awake at night thinking/worrying about the past.
*sigh*
I seem to think similarly as you and find myself having moments like this as well. I just chalk it up to me 'thinking about life'.
Wow.
I am in love with this post.
I have read it over and over.
This kind of writing? I could read 10 books filled with this kind of writing.
The style here is one where I am drawn in, immediately, and throughout, I can feel your feelings.
I would hope this would be universal, for others, too. For me, I feel less alone with this post.
I can't thank you enough for that.
xo
Right there with you. I often feel like I don't really "deserve" happiness, which is just crazy. But at least I'm not the only one.
There is such a thing as too much reflection. One of the great challenges in life (many lives, anyway) is to let go of the past, without forgetting it or losing sight of its lessons. Focusing on the here and now sounds so easy, doesn't it? But it can be a real bitch.
Here's hoping you're able to hold onto your happiness.
When I find myself feeling down and start reminiscing about the past, I always ask myself: "How did this happen to me? How did I get here?" And I think back and back, and back some more, trying to find it - that exact moment my life took its turn and got me where I am today.
It's hard to look back sometimes. It's hard to look back at all of the things you have done and the choices you have made and wish those away..
Embrace your happiness! All that crap is what got you here, it must have been good for something.
"This too, shall pass away" Just be grateful that today you are allowing yourself to feel these emotions and express them. If you have been there before then you know it will pass. You are right where you are supposed to be my friend. Call if you need to. Xoxo