18th
there was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt
We all have stories about ourselves, narratives that we’ve repeated so often that we don’t even stop to think if they are true anymore. “I was a shy child,” some people say, or “I was a fat kid” and even if you aren’t shy or fat or whatever anymore, it’s part of you and it’s part of how you see yourself as an adult.
My narrative is, “I wasn’t very popular in high school and I was a pretty miserable teenager.” It’s true to the extent that I wasn’t very popular, and indeed, I was pretty miserable. But I did have a little pack of very good friends, some of whom I still call “friend” now and really, with the perspective of time… It wasn’t so bad.
But there was a narrative I told myself then, when I was 16 and confused and sad all the time. I was going to be alone forever. I just knew it. I’d drive home from a friend’s house, late at night, listening to OK Computer and thinking about how vast space is, and just thinking… This is it, I’m always going to be driving back home by myself. There won’t be a husband sitting in the seat next to me, won’t be a carseat in the back seat. Just me. It’ll always just be me.
Now, of course, with the hindsight of time, it’s completely ludicrous. And kind of melodramatic, too. I’ll always be ALONE! No one will LOVE ME EVAR! Sob sob sob.
But it was always the story I told about myself, always the thought in the back of my mind and it’s stayed with me for years, to the point where I often wonder how, exactly, I ended up married with a child before turning 30.
And of course, it’s kind of… arrogant, and self-centered. I met my husband when I was 23! That’s so young. In the scheme of things, I had a few lonely years — and so what, who doesn’t? — and yet I have made this into a Thing, a Thing that was part of the story I told about myself and thought about myself and it isn’t even very true anymore.
This all came to me in a rush when I was driving home on Saturday night from a dinner with my parents and my sister. Rob was sick at home and Catherine was tucked into her crib, so I was alone, it was 11 p.m. and I was listening Radiohead and it was quiet. And I wished I could go back to my 16-year-old self and tell her that everything was going to be OK, that one day she’d have this little girl who was wonderful and bright and happy, and that there’d be days where she would actually wish for a little solitude, but only just a litle bit.
But I don’t think she’d believe me.
