Since I saw D last month, I have been grieving Matt’s suicide again. I don’t really have the time or the privacy to really immerse myself in it, but I have been taking small chunks of time here and there to think and cry.
When I went on my car trip this weekend, I took a handful of mix tapes (ah, mix tapes) that Matt made for me before he left for the army. I don’t remember ever listening to those tapes after Matt died. When I was in the thick of those first years of grief, it would have been too much. I just packed them away and didn’t think much of them until I was sorting through things before I went to see D.
I dusted them off and listened to them again while I was alone in my car with 8 hours to think. With the first chord of the first song, I started crying. Even now, it is a little overwhelming.
Ever since D told me she thought Matt would have married me if he could have, I have been tiptoeing around that idea. With 8 hours to think about it, I realized I really, really want that life. I want the life I could have had with Matt.
I want to know what it would have been like. I want to know who my children would have been and what they would have looked like. I want Matt to be the amazing father he would have been to the red curly-haired daughter I always imagined we would have. I want D to be my sister-in-law. I want to know where we would have lived. I want Matt to grow old with me.
I want these things so much, it feels like my chest could explode with the longing. I want a do-over. I want a life without losing Matt. I want a life where he got better and was happy.
At the same time, I love the life I have. I love Mr. A. He isn’t a 2nd choice husband, he is seriously the most perfect person to spend my life with. I love our children and I can’t imagine any other children in their place. I love our life and our family with every single fiber of my being. I am unbelievably happy with my life and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
So how can it be that I want them both? I couldn’t have one if I have the other. But I do want them both. I know it is crazy. I want the Now and I want the What Might Have Been.
I know that the life I have is my only real option, but that doesn’t lessen the longing for the other life. Right now, I am letting myself soak in that longing for a bit before I box it up and put it on a shelf deep down in my heart again.
I think this terrible Sophie’s choice of desires is good for me, even though it sucks. If I weren’t experiencing it, I don’t think I could really understand the complete and total longing for different lives.
I think it might be, in some small way, how L might one day feel about losing her birth family and her life in China. In all of this hurting for me and the loss of my own What Might Have Been, I can see more clearly how it might hurt for her.
And not only does it hurt, it keeps coming back years and years later. With the passage of time, the pain isn’t really any less.
It sucks. It really, really sucks.
It blows my mind that you consistently write so eloquently about such brutal emotions and situations. Thank you for that. I’m sorry you’re suffering, but I think you’re right that it’s the right thing to do. And that must suck.
wow, it’s actually sort of an amazing parallel. seeing how this might help you understand and guide L through these emotions with true empathy is a real gift!
some beautiful writing there- the way yr mind is working on all of this- I am right here today. Right here. And I send you love.
Wow – this si a really beautiful expression of this kind of longing. I’ve come to see this as a part of becoming an adult – having situations that make us realize that there’s not necessarily The Right Path, there’s a variety of paths that would be right. And sometimes it hurts like an amputation to realize that we’re never going to have the possibility of pursuing a particular life.
It’s made me see the validity in the criticism that most of our entertainment has a youth fetish – there aren’t a lot of descriptions of this. Hearing someone else describe what it’s like to have a deep love and acceptance for what is, while simultaneously grieving what would have been, is a great gift.
My first love did not kill himself, but instead chose to completely cut himself from my life, to the extent that I did THINK he might be dead. (I found out ten years later that he did that so he could become a Catholic priest. It took him TEN YEARS to tell me that. It was a difficult conversation. I was very, very angry that he hadn’t had the balls to share that with me instead of letting me believe that he had just fallen off the face of the earth. His excuse being that he felt if he told me to my face at the time, he would not have been able to do it, his feelings being so torn between me and his “calling”. (I’m still kind of bitter.)
Anyway, after he told me that he had become a priest intead of marrying me, I really grieved for the “what might have been if the Catholic Church weren’t stuck in the middle ages”.
I know it’s not the same (he didn’t choose to take his life, he simply choose to give it to the Pope instead of me) – but the end result was that I was left longing and wondering.
It’s been 8 years now since I found out. The longing and wondering is now an occasional twinge and not full on distress, but I think you do have to let yourself go through the grieving. (And none of this has ever made me regret the life I have – with a man I love.)
It takes courage to admit that. Thank you for sharing.
Yes, thank you for sharing. I have not gone through what you have, but I have tortured myself with “what ifs” about other paths my life has taken. One thing that I keep in mind, though I am not saying this because I think it will lessen your grief any, is that you don’t know that the “What Might Have Been” with Matt would have been satisfying.
In your mind, you probably envision the best case scenario for what might have been- happy marriage, kids, etc. But it may never have ended up like that in reality. Maybe you two would have grown apart. Or you wouldn’t have been able to have children with him. Or he never would have been able to conquer the depression and get better. Or maybe dating Matt through college would have set you on a path where you would not have ended up with Matt in the end (for whatever reason- his doing or yours) nor might you ever have met Mr. A – you may have ended up with someone else completely.
When I do my “What Might Have Beens”, usually only the end result of everything changes in my head, but in fact, all the decisions and variables inbetween could completely change the outcome.
I do understand that you are probably mourning that you didn’t even have the *option* for “What Might Have Been”. I am sorry it is so painful.
The what if’s for any of us can be agonizing.
Even more so, I imagine, when so many of the choices were made for you.
I feel like an insensitive clod–I am so sorry we didn’t talk about this.
It does all really suck. The what if’s. They can never be answered and sometimes I think it’s best if the what if’s would just leave me alone, but they always come back to haunt me.
I miss you. I wish I could bring over something really fattening so we could eat it in one sitting. I’m drowning in boxes, Eva is having a hard time adjusting (she even tried to bite me yesterday), and my computer died a forever death and I’m sitting in the college library like an overgrown freshman racing against the clock to get some stuff done online before J picks me up. Call me again if you don’t hear from me in a few days, but I’m thinking of you!
It struck me while reading this, that this is what many adopted people live with. The eternal “what if” questions. We love our families but long for something that doesn’t involve such devastating loss.
Wow–the power of what might have been is so strong.
I am thankful that your honest. I sit here crying because I totally get what you’re saying and it makes me sad that this life is at times so hard. Thankful for the blessings we have in the mist of missing the what might have been.