I Shall Be Released

I’m a worrier by nature and by nurture, spending much of my quiet time running through disaster scenarios in my head and wondering if I’ve done enough to prepare for the zombie apocalypse. Okay, not really on the zombie bit, but I do worry about a lot of things. A LOT of things. And though it’s ingrained in my nature, I try to keep it at bay with a little blue pill and a reminder to myself that what will be, will be… regardless of whether I think about it beforehand.

It doesn’t always work, but I try. Most of the time if I’m pushing down the worry, it gets replaced with complacency… a steady roar of boredom spiced slightly with the disdain of how far I’ve traveled from the person I thought I would be.

Since December of 2008, the majority of my worries have centered around the growing person inside or outside of me. I’ve worried about his scrapes and bruises, his words and emotions, and worried probably most of all about the effect my worrying might have on him. Sometimes I worry that I overcompensate for worrying by acting as though I’m not worried at all which … of course… worries me. I’m like a viciously worn set of rosary beads in the hands of a semi-sane Sister.

See, my son was blessed and cursed with a soul that doesn’t just exist… it FEELS its existence. He is up and down and all over the place the way I must have been as a child… the way I am as an adult. And every time I hear him talk to the television screen and say ‘Why is that coyote doing that? That’s not very safe, is it?” I wonder what I’m raising him to be. I wonder who I’m raising him to be. I wonder if I’m raising him to be, well, me. Shell-shocked and subdued from the roller-coaster youth I once was. I once felt my existence the way he does… drinking in the sun with the understanding that only children seem to have that every. day. is precious. Every day should mean something more than just another day.

Most days now, I’m so bogged down with the legal lined pages of our lives that I don’t pay attention to what comes next. Most days I just want to survive from sun up to sun down without losing my patience at the house or dog or child or career. Most days, I’m just… moving through it all. So when I finally do stop and survey the life we’re living, it terrifies me. I find myself in a cold sweat, wondering how on earth we got here and where on earth we will go next.

Because this isn’t really living, is it? This worrying constantly… this spinning and spiraling through dirty laundry and dirty dishes and dirty floors. It’s not life, the way it should be lived… or is it? Because maybe that’s my greatest worry… that somehow this is all there is. This get up, go full speed, lie down, repeat… this is all there is to the minutes and hours and days of our lives. I don’t want my son to survive… I want him to thrive. I want him to spread his arms wide and embrace every second of every day.

The way his mother does not. Anymore.

The way his mother can not. Anymore.

Because my life is here, boxed into the corner I call home, wading through the whine and whimsy of other people’s lives. My life is here, dipped and displayed amongst the books and diplomas and yes, the debt.

But maybe I can be different. Maybe today will be the day I put aside the worry about the money and embrace the dreams I once tended with love and ferocity. Maybe today I can set aside what people say is right… push it down into this box of a life and tape it closed with the sticky threads of my worries.

Maybe today I can watch my son, learn from his carefree abandon, embrace his wide-eyed wonder at the miracle that is the sun rising another day. Maybe today, I can remember how it feels to really live.