Something's Gotta Give

September 5, 2012

I immersed myself in my past these last few days. Thinking about the “what if’s and what for’s”. I try to believe that I have no regrets. I see my son half of the time he is alive and that is a blessing. When I see him, it is as if he has grown a year in one week. He’s thoughtful, amazingly creative, funny and very, very sweet. His voice, his kisses, the way he opens up to strangers and friends….. I am so blessed to have the life I have.   I am glad that he is happy and healthy.

And yet….

I am so sad for the lost time away from him. I feel, somehow, like a failure, a wretched, selfish, loser who has no right to be his mother. I feel like I am losing time with him.  Time that is irreplaceable; forever lost. I feel weak and unable to fight back.

I recently watched a movie I hadn’t seen in years. “Something’s Gotta Give” with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson.  When I saw it years ago, to me, it was trivial and unrelated to my life. Today, it spoke to me.   Amazing how a few years can add on perspective, eh?

For those of you who have not seen the movie, the basic plot is that there is this womanizing man in his mid-sixties who hooks up with a girl in her pre-thirties and they drive out to the family summer house where, unfortunately, her mother shows up unexpectedly.  Things happen, and he has a heart attack and has to stay at the house for an extended period of time. Hence, the ensuing romance between the like-aged main characters. They fall for each other but life, alas, always draws them apart into conflict, therein continues the plot for the movie. She was tense and unhappy. He was blissful yet, lonely. In the end, however, with much romantic fanfare, they come back together and it is, after all, how Hollywood has ingrained in us since birth,  we all will live“happily ever after”.

At one point in the movie he says more or less, that he has found that he arrived at being himself from hearing the same story over and over again. It was in this way, he says that “my life begins to add up”.  To me, it seems he is trying to say that it was other's opininons that shaped who he became. 

We live our lives, at most times affected without intention or understanding as to what or how or to whom things happen the way they happen. A lot of times we live in judgment and fear with our explanations held tight around us like security blankets. Many times, we avoid reconciling the events which displace us, in an attempt to ‘move past’ that which makes us sad or feel vulnerable. We live embroiled in the pain and forget to reflect on the bigger picture.

As a single parent, attempting to co-parent with my son’s father, at times, unsuccessfully, I see this idea of our human stories as preeminent in our development as individuals. How often I want to hold onto the story that “he just doesn’t understand” or “he’s selfish and impetuous”. But the truth is that, I live this tragic story daily out need for consistency so that I can remain the comfortable space of who I have become. That feeling is most often based upon what my misguided ego perceives as my true self.   But my true self does not rest in stories and in egoistic visions of my past. It is always lives unteathed in the Now. 

What an amazing invention to have at our very own fingertips. The power to reinvent yourself at this very second. Your thoughts create your reality. Choose another thought and your reality shifts.

My son is in the hands of someone who loves him unconditionally. And I am at peace knowing that there is only good in this world for him. I choose NOT to focus on the old stories. I know that, for happiness to prevail, something’s gotta give.