The Independent Child

This story might, at first, sound worse than it is. Don’t worry about me. I’m pretty durable, and this was a long time ago. Everything in this story is very deeply true, but I’ve changed some of the details to protect the privacy of the characters in it. Knowing I wanted to write this today, I delayed getting out of bed by about an hour. Sometimes, Feist-Dog allows me some grace.

There once was a woman who was strong, and smart, and loving. She had long chestnut hair that hung and moved and felt like the finest imported silk. She excelled at music. She was learning Latin and Greek. She read everything she could get her hands on, and she did everything she could to understand art.

Since she was nearly eight years younger than me, I carefully monitored the impact our time together had on her. Up to this point, I had always preferred girls who were older than me and had even been involved with one fifteen years older than me. When I wondered what my friend saw in me, I considered what attracted me to a woman so much older than me before.

Being with her changed something in me. I was nicer, more willing to experience life, and I smiled more. When she smiled, the whole saw her dimples, and everyone who ever saw her saw her smile. I can still feel her tiny hand underneath mine. I probably always will.

One day, she stayed at my house to play Doom II on my massive home computer while I drove to the all-night drug store to buy a test. Since I didn’t know exactly which test was best, I bought one of all three. When I saw her again, she laughed and said that one would have been sufficient.

We discussed the result of the test for several hours after that. Finally, with salty tears streaming from her broken, red eyes, she said, “Oh God, I hope you’re the father.” I wasn’t aware that there were other contenders.

Being aware of the impact an unplanned pregnancy can have on a woman’s life, I’ve always insisted on using spermicidal condoms. Some women don’t like the idea, but I explained to them that I thought it was more important to be safe, and if that was a deal breaker, then that’s just how it will have to be. As I’d been especially careful with her, I knew it was unlikely that I was the father.

Our relationship developed very rapidly—too rapidly, in retrospect. I thought she was very different. I’m still convinced that she was and is a uniquely good person, but she had a problem with scheduling the men in her life.

Months later, I was driving my brother-in-law to our weekly visit to the Grand Old Cherokee Inn and Lounge when he asked how I was doing with all this. Up to that point, I’d refused to discuss the matter with anyone, other than just that “she won’t be coming around anymore.”

To answer him, I pointed out that I was the least important person in this scenario. The most important person was obviously the child who wasn’t born yet. Then there was the mother, then the father, grandmother and grandfather, aunts, uncles, future friends of the child involved, the doctors, the nurses, the weatherman—and then me. It’s kind of a gut punch to realize that, even though you’re really hurt by something, it just doesn’t matter because the stakes are much higher for everyone else.

Two nights later, I wrote to her and said I forgave her. I still cared about her and hoped we could be friends. I don’t hold grudges and look forward to seeing what sort of life she and her child would have. I’m happy to say that she and her now multiple children have had a remarkable life, with the real father who appears also to be remarkable. I have no doubts about forgiveness, even though it was rough at the time. I still count her opinion and happiness above most people.

I was a middle child, but I was also a broken child. I came into the game unable to speak, read, or write properly. The advice of good teachers and my mother’s love helped me find ways to meet the world on my own terms. Still, though, I was a middle child, and that came with some conditions.

One of the conditions of being a middle child is that their older and younger siblings always require and deserve more attention than the middle child. In my family, considering my brother’s issues with mental health, these conditions were exacerbated. Being the only girl in a male-obsessed family, it was no surprise that paying attention to what my youngest sibling had going on was more interesting than anything on my schedule.

It soon became evident that, in a family, things like attention, sympathy, and time weren’t infinite. There were only so many hours in the day. When there were people who needed them more than I did, I learned to do without them. What I didn’t realize was that this was the beginning of cracks in the unbreakable relationship between my mother and me, and as life went on, I would drive wedges into those cracks and make them larger.

I learned that if I focused my time on becoming physically stronger, locked away in a gym, pouring my life out on steel bars and syringes filled with sports drugs, I didn’t need attention, acknowledgment, or understanding. I had myself, and I was strong. I poured my thoughts and feelings into my journals, making “talking to anyone” about what I thought or felt unnecessary.

Being myself and not needing anyone, I developed a reputation for standing up to authority when I thought they were wrong and backing them up when I thought they were defending the weak. I’m probably still that way.

After many years of becoming steadily more alienated from my mother, I knew we still loved each other, but were we friends?

I asked her one day, “I’ve been involved in theater and the arts my whole life, but I can only think of maybe two times when you came to see what I was doing. Why was that?”

That sounds like a “gotcha” kind of question, and that I was being a jerk. I’m not sure what I was thinking. The question just came out. Her answer surprised me.

“You never invited me.”

Dumbfounded, I took a moment to consider what she said. She was probably right. All relationships go both ways, and in my efforts to become an independent child and get out of the way of everything else that was happening in my family, I was actually systematically shutting everyone out.

Toward the end of her life, my mother and I continued to work on settling my father’s estate, but we didn’t talk about much else. When I got divorced, even though I had a lot to say about it, I never told my mother. I never really told anybody.

In the hospital, I had her hand as her last moments approached and said “I love you” over and over, hoping that would be what she remembered when the time came, not the years I isolated myself from her. When she died, I can say that we still loved each other, but it’d been many years since we were friends.

Being strong and independent sometimes means nobody notices when you get hurt because other people are hurting worse. Obviously, the alternative to that is being the more vulnerable person, and nobody wants that. Steel can’t make you smile or feel loved, but it can’t stop you from feeling forgotten or overlooked either.

So far, no one has ever hurt me that I didn’t forgive. If I were to advise a younger version of myself, I would say, “Don’t try to be too strong. Let the cracks show sometimes. People love you and never expect you to be anything but human.” I like to think that my mother would have enjoyed seeing my plays or reading my stories if I had ever invited her.