Before I left for the airport this week to celebrate New Years in Chicago, my 2 year old niece asked if being grown up was scary. “Sometimes,” I said with a million memories flooding my mind.
The truth? Hell yes it is, but I can’t say “hell” around her or she’ll repeat it and I’ll be in trouble. While I would have loved to say no with confidence, I’m sitting here writing this letter a few hours later with all these questions still flowing through my mind.
As a kid, I think I was scared to grow up because everyone around me seemed so mad. Their lives revolved around leaving home and returning upset. I didn’t know why or what to blame but myself at first. Well, that and some lady called "a manager named Linda."
As an adult after a lot of therapy, I realize they were struggling with their mental health, bad bosses, and divorces. But the only thing to blame that I really understood in any tangible way was divorce because it had consequences I could see and feel. My Mom’s divorce was the first time I ever saw her cry. It was the only thing I could blame for suddenly not spending time with my Dad or Stepfather’s family. All of a sudden, these people I saw every weekend became memories.
Adding up all the missing people in my life as an adult, I decided I would never get divorced. From the time I was 12 until I turned 23 and got married, I recited this rule like an actor rehearses their lines. “Everyone in my family has been married twice and divorced twice. I am never getting divorced.”
Almost 15 years and two divorces later, I can tell you with confidence that divorce most surely wasn’t the scariest part of being an adult. The scariest part is realizing my rules might be the reason behind when I feel unhappy. It’s the little realizations I have every day that the rules I made might not be true. Not just the one about divorce, but the ones about my body, working hard, and friendship, too.
It has taken a lot of work to unwind and rewire these rules I made to survive. To stop fighting for things because I repeated them for so long, but instead to fight for what made my life feel worth living. To realize there’s no wars, no winning sides - both are just made up things that linger and haunt us. They tell us we’re doing something wrong when we’re all just trying to survive in a world with no map, no rules to follow.
The more I unwind all these tiny little lies I told myself, the more I get to live. As much as the escape into van life gave me room to realize I was following imaginary rules, surrounding myself with family separated from me by my Mom’s own hatred and rules is a reiteration of these new life lessons at warp speed.
This next chapter of life is a rewiring of my history and beliefs about accepting love. About being present. About saying what I need without regret. Lessons I’ve been working on for over a year now, but have to practice every day surrounded by people I love instead of strangers. I can’t drive away and work it out in my head any more. I stay present in this new reality of love, even when I’m scared of the living.
