Today, for the first time, I feel like I have missed experiences along the way. Nothing specific, not something I can put my finger on, more of a feeling.
Realistically I know there are lots of experiences that I have missed. I didn't grow up in India, so I missed that experience. So far I have not experienced being a house wife in northern Mongolia, and due to current life circumstances I'll probably skip that one. I know we as human beings can never experience everything there is to experience in this world, it is just interesting to look back and feel it.
I guess today I am missing the life I know I would have had (and the experiences to go with it) had the last seven years gone differently for me. I feel like I have missed some cultural experiences of being young, of growing up. Something quintessential to this generation, to this place in the world. And it's too late for all that now. For sure, I can still do all those quintessential things, but the experiences themselves would be different. Because I am different now then I was then. It's not regret, it's just one more experience that I don't share with those around me. One more disconnect. I look back on the last seven years and there is some part of me that feels it was wasted. Here, again, is this feeling that my life is finally starting. And today is seems kinda late for that. Shouldn't my life have started years ago?
And maybe this is grief for the last seven years of my life, surfacing to consciousness for the first time. Grief for all the things I gave up to live and survive the last seven years. Wondering if it was really worth it. The person coming out the other side of those years is pretty amazing, but the time spent there wasn't. I gained some experiences that add to my "old soulness", but today I feel as though I lost some things as well, things I can never get back. Today I am seeing the by living the last seven years I closed doors on experiences. And I know that every time you open a door you close another one. Today I also feel that I don't need to get those lost or missed experiences back. Realizing that has allowed the grief for what I lost and what I never had to surface today.
An old friend, grief, by now. I feel tempered as a person by the grief of the last year and a half. It is a comfort to me now, it's a bittersweet experience in me. Not suprising really, it is a family legacy I guess, inherited sadness.
Today, looking bakc and reflecting. And wondering how I am going to fit in with this whole new life of mine...how will I fare?
3 comments:
so like, balhhh sounds like an extended belch, which is, perhaps, a suitable sound for your stated state of mind . . .
missed experiences reign rampant throughout life, no matter how your time shakes out. i understand the disconnect you might feel from people of your own age group . . . nobody of my age that I know has 36 year old children (that's right! her birthday is today!!!) . . . and maybe that is the thing i have discovered . . . age is not so important, and common experience doesn't always mean shared beliefs and interests . . . it's funny where one finds friendship . . .
my daughter often regrets the life she might have had if i had avoided one particularly toxic boyfriend. But i say that she cannot know how that time might have turned out. His absence would not have guarenteed sweetness and light . . . and so i think of your last seven years . .. and the temptation of the infinite "might-have-beens" when contrasted with the all too definite "was". And the terrible possibility is that some of the "might-have-beens" would-have-been worse that what actually went down. You are wise to see grief and grieving as part of your current inner climate. Give it up for grief, i say, and then move through and beyond . . . into the happiness that belongs to you . . . and that is also a huge part of your inheritance.
i know that my dearest friend was often consumed by sadness, and that - as we tend to do - she wrote of that sadness often. But i also know that her life was also measured in great joy, the delights of music and motherhood, friendship and the flesh, food, toasted cinnamon buns, sweet sweet hot chocolate and cigarettes. Embrace that inheritance too . . . it is as brilliant and true as she was and is.
and you . . . i believe and trust that you will fare very well . . . and I respect and accept your grief, anger and sense of loss.
loving you
f
hey, it actually got there on the day that I posted it...had a devil of a time getting this one to post right (the balhhh was actually a test to see if anything was working with this post...I have since removed it as it had no bearing on the post itself)
it did indeed strike me as some kind of miracle that the date on your post matched the date i was looking at it! Perhaps that is now all back on track for a change. The balhhh is probably better off - for the sake of literary gravitas . . . but i liked its obvious spontenaity.
my heart stays with you.
f
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