Maybe we can’t be okay
But maybe we’re tough and we’ll try anyway
We’ll live with what’s real
Let go of what’s passed and maybe I’ll see you at last
-Next to Normal, ‘Maybe’ (listen)
This entry will not touch on mental illness, but I feel Next to Normal’s soundtrack best sums up what it means to piece a life back together again, or not.
If you are lucky and things take their normal course, you will realize your parents are mortal. You will see them age, and you will be made aware of their failing health.
Then you will fight. You will fight because no parent wants to look weak in front of their kids. You will be asked to live normally, but you will suffer, and I mean suffer, the brunt of their frustration. You will be parenting someone who used to parent you and it sucks. You will be asked to make decisions for them, and choose between lesser evils so he or she doesn’t turn on him or herself.
If you’re luckier, they will live on and be the doting and annoying parent you’ve always known them to be. If you’re not so lucky, you will have to wish them goodbye and that’s when the real work begins.
The internet trend now is dividing their lives by their teens, twenties, and thirties. I define my life by WM (With Mom) and AM (After Mom).
After Mom, I learned to balance the checking account and be a little more vigilant about the chores I have to do. I learned to actually work with people and not be so caught up in the great talent myth.
I learned that not all families are rock hard foundations. Family becomes more of people you happen to be related to. Their best and worst comes out when you buckle down and really work to keep it together.
Your dreams change. For me, this was the most shocking. When you have very little left to your name, you get a reality check. It’s not about giving up on your dreams, but recognizing which dreams build you and which control you. You may have spent several years saying you wanted to be that rockstar or artist, but if the big break doesn’t come in, you will have to make certain sacrifices and risk not looking back. There are responsibilities bigger than you now, and with limited resources it’s a luxury to choose to love or hate it.
Your friends will change. I’d like to think this becomes less shocking as you grow older, but I can’t exactly say. I had a very difficult time with this, having lost my Mom in my mid-twenties. Where my friends then worried about whether they were in the right job or if that date they had will call back, I was trying to make sense of running a household on my own. You will make new friends, you will find better friends. But yes, you will also lose friends. This will hurt, but this will not be a bad thing in the long run.
These lessons didn’t come easy. I had to crash and lose more than people than I’d like to learn them. It doesn’t get easier, but it becomes less of a struggle when you learn to let go of the idea of what life and family are supposed to be. Take things as they come, and work your butt off to face the worst that does come along.