2009: The Year in Review (1)

2009 was a year.  I can not be more understated.  As the year closes, I guess my conclusion would be that it was a flat - back to baseline; at best, achieving a small uptick.  But considering 2009 started deep in the negative, and continued that trend for a few months at least, that’s damn good news.

As the year began on the heels of a trying 2008, I put stock in the global sea change that I hoped would project on my own personal sphere of influence.  I was excited, thrilled even, at the reality of Barack Obama becoming President (and still am!).  It felt like a new beginning, and hopefully a turnaround that would translate into my personal life as well.  (Funny, how I (like many others) expected  for that to work out.)


At the end of 2008,  I had experienced much loss and sadness. My 5yo niece, Natalia, lost her battle with brain cancer that had been diagnosed just 1 year earlier.  The death of a child is enormously tragic.  My father had died in October 2008, which in its way, was a blessing.  I could close my book on that complicated relationship, where I spent much of my life waiting for the other shoe to drop.  At the end of my father’s life, the shoe dangled by a frayed lace over me. I waited to see whether his advanced cancer would progress quickly enough to end his difficult life, or whether, in fact, his dual demons of alcohol abuse and mental illness, compounded by his cancer diagnosis, would determine a much more terrifying end.  The cancer won out, though not without him experiencing some dicey, delusional moments that frayed my every nerve.  And as I entered 2009, I breathed a sigh of sad relief that the worst was behind me.

But then, in early 2009, Laz, G’s dad, told me he was joining the Army.  ??!??! WTF?!?!?!  My world went reeling once again.

Back to that in a moment, because first, I was able to defer dealing with that for a while by focusing on the short term.  In February, I took a long-planned trip with G to China  to visit Laura, Bruce and Baby Lily.  It was an incredible trip – 2 weeks long – on a touristic, if not tiring, vacation.  We visited the Great Wall, cruised the Li River, went to Buddhist temples, and watched pandas frolic.  G and I learned the Chinese zodiac and how to count from one to five.  And I got the added bonus of a booty call – some unfinished business with an old flame who had moved to Beijing.

Back to the reeling (postponed)...on return in early March, the tears flowed, and flowed, and flowed.  It was a daily, usually quiet (not at all raging) deluge of hurt, loss, anger, confusion, and exhaustion.  Anything would bring me to tears.  Sometimes, I would just sit at a stoplight, and the hot tears would stream quietly down my face.  I would go to church, and find in the silent, meditative moments, the tears flowing again.  It was a profound sadness that I never remember experiencing before.  I’m sure it was the culmination of a lot of things- the grief catching up from the year before – but it usually felt like one big, sad realization that things were changing, and some of my hopes and dreams were not to be – or not to be as I thought they would be.

One of the most fascinating things I remember when I look back at that time, was that the tears sometimes felt like something in me was softening, melting, and flowing out.  A hard ball that had formed inside was softening and exiting.  It was cathartic.  It was therapeutic.  I felt pain and sadness, and was present to it, like never before.  Just the other day, I thought of those daily cries, and I missed them.  Sure, intense pain and/or exaltation is not sustainable, but the intensity of being with my emotions, and the realization of how often I am not, was instructive, and somehow beautiful.

I am also pleased to say that that hard, nasty, ugly ball inside has not re-formed.  I remain softer, gentler, humbled, more accepting of my flaws and others’.  I am at greater peace with life’s twists and turns, and most of all the acceptance that some pain and despair are a vital part of life.  In fact, it is what makes one deep and interesting.  Somehow, getting through that (more or less), makes me feel better and stronger. Before, I was just comfortable, accomplished, content, sated, complacent with my (fabulous) lot in life, open-minded (but always right); now I have *also* overcome, and I am still OK.  It's a higher and, I think, more meaningful bar.

I cried everyday  from March until Laz left for the Army at the end of May.   At times, I pleaded and screamed for him not to go.  These were sometimes angry fits, sometimes desperate.  But he left on May 28, and remarkably, a weight lifted.  The anticipation was over.  Our complications were no longer entwined in my everyday existence (for better and for worse).  I was surprised to feel the lightness.  It didn’t last forever. Ultimately, I felt, and still feel, the enormity of carrying the responsibility (also burden) of raising G alone.  It is tiring, and it is stressful. And I weather this exhaustion, the stress, and the anxiety on my own.    And while I have the good supports of family, friends and an au pair to ease the strain – those supports are complicated at times by guilt and needing to ask for (or pay for) help.

To be continued….jump to #2.