Ten years ago, back when I was seventeen and graduating high school, we were all required to participate in exit interviews to discuss what we had arranged for our anticipated futures. I’m not sure if they still do them, but that interview was the first moment I began to understand just how much things were going to change after graduation− that the arrival of the real world was imminent. And when I sat down for mine with my English teacher during one warm June lunch hour, I’ll never forget the way he asked, “So where do you see yourself in five years?”
I’d known the question was coming, and had planned to describe my post-secondary goals. But I surprised myself by answering immediately, instinctively, “Married. With kids.”
I remember the way we both seemed taken aback by what I’d admitted. He raised his eyebrows, and leaned back in his chair. “Really? No University?”
I’d shrugged. “Well of course I’ll go to school and get my degree. But I want a family.”
And at that moment, I realized it was true. Until he’d asked, I hadn’t really known that deep down I wanted to be a mom. I wanted to be a wife. I wanted tradition, and routine, and despite all my career ambitions, I felt in my bones that family would always come first. And naively I also believed that I’d never meet with any roadblocks on my way there.
But of course, nothing went as I’d so carefully outlined in my Planning 12 binder. Eventually I did get married, but then I also got divorced. I did get to university, but not until after I became a mom− and I’m still another year and a half away from finishing my degree. And while I have two beautiful, incredible children, their gestation and birth caused so much trauma to my body that afterwards my doctors told me it would be very difficult for me to ever have another successful pregnancy. That I could expect to miscarry in the first trimester, and require surgery just to carry another child beyond that point, and that if I did I’d likely run into the same complications I experienced with my twins. And ultimately they disclosed that attempting to have more children would require serious planning, medical intervention, and emotional preparation because my body simply isn’t competent enough for it.
So once in a while, particularly as the last leaves fall and the shortened days become shrouded in darkness, I reflect on all this, and it leaves me feeling a little stained; a little fragmented. I don’t have self-pity, I just feel disappointed in myself. In a way it seems like I’ve failed to appropriately accomplish any of the things that I once believed would be so easy for me. I’ve always heard it said that wrinkles are proof that you’ve lived, laughed, and loved, but now and then I wonder if they aren’t simply a reaction to carrying around so much weight. And the older I get, the older I feel, like I’m burdened by that long list of things that didn’t turn out the way I’d planned or expected. The path I’d once marked so clearly in my mind seems tangled now, and I’ve lost my footing. Sometimes, I wonder if my inability to find it again is nothing more or less than what I deserve, as though all my failures mean I don’t have any right to the happiness I’d always felt so sure was waiting for me.
But when I confessed all this to my boyfriend the other night, he expressed something to me that I think I’ll always remember as distinctly as that exit interview. He took my hands in his, and uttered the most powerful line:
“You have to forgive yourself for yesterday. For all the yesterdays.”
Forgive yourself for yesterday. Since our conversation, that line has been stuck in my head, looping and looping. And gradually it’s been loosening, uprooting so many of those negative voices that have been digging in for years. I’ve given them power, unquestioningly, for as long as I can remember, but now I’m finding that I’m examining their validity with a little more judiciousness.
And I’ve begun to wonder if maybe he’s on to something. If maybe the real issue isn’t my failures, but my perspective on them. That perhaps happiness isn’t any less accessible simply because it’s had to be redefined, or reshaped to fit a different reality. And that while the future I dreamed of as a teenager might be gone, suppose for a minute that that simply gives me a blank slate to create a whole new one that is more in line with who I’ve turned in to?
I don’t know why I’m so hard on myself (though I suspect it’s some sort of lingering Catholic guilt) but I know as I near thirty I deeply desire to shake off my past and everything I’ve allowed to drag me to my knees. To show my daughters that you are not beholden to your mistakes, and that there’s no shame in imperfection− in being a flawed, stumbling, learning, growing individual. And that your past can only consume parts of you if you let it. That if I don’t start giving myself permission to slip up, I’ll never teach my girls how to learn from their own mistakes, and that the only unforgivable error I could make would be to perpetuate that cycle of shame. As a parent, there is nothing my children could do that would make me believe that they don’t deserve redemption or happiness, and maybe it’s time I try practicing same kind of unconditional self-acceptance.
No, I haven’t been perfect over the last decade; I’ve made disastrous choices, and let anxiety lead, and hurt people, and lost my head. I’ve been selfish, and insensitive, and cruel, and at times I’ve stepped out instead of stepping up, or allowed weakness too many opportunities to grab the wheel. At the end of the day I didn’t have a perfect first marriage, or a perfect college experience, and I don’t have a perfect body that performs on command to create the family I always dreamed of.
But if I did, I’d be an entirely different person. I wouldn’t have any of the things I have now, like unbelievable twin daughters, and a wonderful partner, and a beautiful home. I wouldn’t have so many amazing professors my age has enabled me to befriend, or career goals that have formed out of my own unique challenges. I wouldn’t have the life experiences that have pushed me to become a volunteer in fields I’m passionate about, and if I hadn’t fallen so low I wouldn’t have found the courage to question what I really want out of life, let alone pursue it. I’d certainly have a lot less to write about.
Though it’ll take some time to get there, I am slowly recognizing that I can either spend years looking backwards, wondering what could have been, or I can look forward to what I have on the horizon. I can set new goals, push through current ones, and enjoy each new moment as it comes to me. I can let go of all those perceived failures and remember that I do not deserve to be shackled by the shame of my inadequacies− that sometimes it takes realizing what you don’t want to figure out what you do.
It’s not so complicated. It's something I suspect we all need to remember once in a while. You can either hang on to who you've been, who you wanted to be, or you can forgive yourself for yesterday and embrace today. All the todays.
As I will− each fresh one that I'm given.
As I will− each fresh one that I'm given.
(image via Google Images)
