breakingfreedotorg

Mama, Why Are You So Happy?

25 May 2011 1 Comment

by Cecile in Rants & Ravings.. Truths & Honesty..

Talk about pivotal moments in life. It was several weeks into my lay off and despite financial concerns; I had reached a point where I was beginning to feel better, lighter than I had in a long while.

“Mama, why are you so happy?”

This was the innocent question posed to me by my then not quite yet eleven year old daughter last year as we giggled and played on the living room floor. It was asked abruptly, with surprise and such an engaging, earnest smile of delight shining from her gorgeously huge brown eyes. And it took every fiber of my being not to show her how that sweet question absolutely shattered me.

All the air left my body and I couldn’t breathe. She might as well have slapped me across my face. It took a long, awkward moment before I could pick my jaw up from the carpet and keep from unleashing the aching sobs that began to burn for release. How the hell did I get here? To such a dark place that my treasured child felt the need to question my joy during a carefree, loving moment between us? A moment that should have been just an average weekend afternoon of us goofing around like dorks. When did my happiness and playfulness become the exception and not the rule?

Even worse yet, so very much worse, was the look of anxiety and sadness that creeped into her eyes as she watched me struggle through this maelstrom of emotion. As if to say, “Oh, crap, what did I do now?” I could literally see the walls in her face shutting down as if in preparation for whatever blowout might come next, like the slamming of storm windows before a hurricane for protection. This magical creature, whose bird like thrumming of a heart began to beat in my womb, was protecting herself from me. Not from any physical violence, never that. If I spanked her once in any given year, it was a lot. No, my child, who I love with a ferocity that knows no equal, was protecting herself from the unpredictable backlash of my emotional and mental instability.

Which is worse? Getting slapped by a hand or by harsh words from someone you love? I’d rather take the physical sting of the blow any day. That kind of pain eventually fades and heals and can even be, in a twisted way, a welcome distraction. Emotional pain lingers, it spreads like a cancer and eats away at your insides until you’re raw and empty. Until there is nothing left but an overwhelming darkness that permeates everything you see, do and experience. No light, no joy, just a barren wasteland of existence. Does this make the choices I’ve made with my little girl up until that moment easier for you to understand or far more cruel that I know this firsthand? That I have lived with this kind of weight and emotional baggage, for one reason or another, since I was very young?

What have I done, what in God’s name have I done..? This tormented litany reverberated throughout my entire being. The memory of each time I could have been kinder or more patient but wasn’t. Of each time I lashed out at her for some minor occurrence, each and every time I took my anger, frustration or misery out on this delicate little blossom of a girl. All those moments, seemingly innocuous when viewed in a single instance, (what mother doesn’t lose patience with her child at one point or another?), combined to create such an ugly picture that cut to my very core. This monumental realization crashed into me with violent impact and I was left unable to deny any longer the somber reality I had been creating for us both, and its damaging consequences.

Overwhelmed by a gamut of emotions, an awareness slowly blanketed my turmoil. Awareness that I still have time, I can still teach her. It’s not too late to change, never too late to want better, to BE better, and to learn to make better decisions. I can choose to sweep this vitally significant moment under the rug and ignore it. Or, I could choose to use it. To actually take the time to answer her question, to be honest and open with her, to help her gain an understanding of my actions of the past and that they had all to do with me and nothing at all to do with her. I looked at my sweet baby girl. I looked into her and with silent tears carving valleys down my cheeks; I began to talk with my daughter. Keyword WITH her, not to her, or at her. I opened a door of communication between us wherein she could feel free to voice her emotions, regardless of whatever they may be and know that she is unconditionally safe in doing so and where I could do the same. I explained to her that we all have options, that we all have the power to choose how to react to the events in our lives and that I had been making the wrong choices for a very long time. I looked deep into the wells of her eyes and told her that I was finally ready to start making the right ones.

Living with pain, anger, depression, stress, whatever the case may be, doesn’t have to be a life sentence. The key, for me at least, has been re-learning how to deal with those nasty upheavals of emotion and impotent frustration. They don’t go away completely; I still have the occasional bad day. However, those days have become much easier to deal with over time with just a shift in perspective. By accepting the realization that I have this strength, this ability to choose how to react to any given situation. Are you going to allow a single negative instance or emotion to pollute your entire day or let its toxin spill over into the lives of the ones you love? Or will you take a moment to actively make the decision to acknowledge it, let it go and move on. To take several deep, calming breaths and make the choice to embrace possibility, joy and laughter instead of dead ends, anger, and sorrow. Take the time to ask yourself; what option will bring you and those around you more happiness, more contentment, more peace? I’ve learned that nothing in this life has control over you unless you allow it control. It’s simply a matter of deciding when to take back that power, to decide when you’ve finally had enough of living at its mercy. You CAN choose to make your life your own again. Like everything else, it begins with tiny steps. Learning to break your day into small choices and make the decision to do the next right thing for you and those you love. Be patient with yourself. It’s not about where you screwed up or what you just did. It’s about what you’re going to do next that truly makes a difference.

This was my defining moment. My Awakening… What will yours be?