My Life in Ruins

The movie title has struck me multiple times in the past few days with a kind of dark humor. “Haha!” I think. Someone made a movie about my life. Of course, the “In Ruins” part in the actual motion picture refers to the setting, somewhere in Rome or Greece or ancient somewhere. It’s a clever play on words for what is probably a middle-of-the-road romantic comedy. Regardless, its title is terrifyingly poignant for me at this point in my life.

“How the HELL did I get here?” I ask myself multiple times on a daily basis. I was, at one point, in a land far far away and a time long long ago, the wonder child. Life was mapped out perfectly for me. Everyone told me how wonderful I was going to be, how lucky I was to be me, and I believed it all. Maybe too much. I’ve spent so much time trying to blame my current state on my surroundings that I’ve probably neglected myself in the process. Somewhere along the road, I went wrong.

For example, my mother died. I couldn’t help that and I certainly could not have seen it coming, but I could have responded to it better than I did. My answer was to be the rock in my family, the one who didn’t shed a tear at my mom’s memorial service, even though I was arguably the person closest to her. My answer was to work at the TIP camp I dearly loved. A week after she collapsed in front of my face. Working there was completely and fully my decision. People allowed me to make that decision however I saw fit, perhaps softly nudging me to take a break if I needed it. At that point, I was all adrenaline. What would I do with a break? Cry? THAT would be unproductive. I was damned if an insignificant little thing like my mom’s sudden death was going to keep me from being a resident and teaching assistant for this camp that I, may I repeat, dearly loved. Mom’s death wasn’t going to eff up anything else in my life. Things were already effed up enough as it was. I made it through that camp, admittedly not enjoying it as much as I would have, but certainly finding some solace in the constant company of the students and staff. I rarely cried..and certainly not in front of anyone else.

My answer after camp was over was to find a job as quickly as possible, live in a new apartment, buy a new car, adopt a new cat. If my mom was going to be out of my life, then my life would be ENTIRELY different. I would just somehow turn a page and everything would function as it had before. How sadly mistaken I was.

The job worked for awhile. I displaced all my energy into refugees and their plight, which seemed far worse than my own. My interpreter’s brother was even killed in Burma while I was working with her. See, my problems weren’t anything compared to these people! I had money to pay the rent in a nice apartment complex, money to pay the bills, money to pay for DVR service, money to buy a car and care for two cats. Money does not buy happiness. Bet you’ve never heard that before…

A few months in, I was exhausted. A few more months in, and I was taking bathroom breaks at work to cry. No matter how hard I tried to trick myself into thinking that my situation wasn’t that bad, that I could somehow skip over it all…the truth was that I was just horribly kidding myself.

Had I dealt with my mom’s death back then instead of burying it in the TIP camp or my refugee resettlement job, things might be vastly different now. I might not have felt a desperate urge to run away to the unknown, fail myself out of a postbac program, and grasp at unwilling straws.Those failings wouldn’t be compounding the ironic weight I feel from the absence of my mom. If only I’d cried when it was okay to do so. Now it’s two years and almost 4 months later, and even I sometimes forget why I feel inexplicably horrible on the 15^th of every month. If I can’t even remember, how can I expect anyone else to do so? I love my mom beyond any words I could ever imagine. She’s the most wonderful person I’ve ever known or will ever know. But if I could ask her anything, it would be to go back to the beginning and teach me how to cry.