soapboxdiner

Empty Nest

Tonight I feel melodramatic, like a high school virgin princess for whom every emotion is kinetic and profound. The newness and uncertainty of this new stage of life has me walking past the open door to his freshly vacant room, still filled with the chaos and clutter of being 18.

He's three weeks gone now. The urgency and importance of making his way in the world, creating and defining his purpose, precluded both a demonstration of finality over his leaving for good versus merely placing a bookmark on his space in this home for him to come back to. His thoughts were instead preoccupied on filling his days with adultness -- the void and detritus of childhood be safely damned for others to reconcile in his silent absence.

No one tells you this is what the empty nest feels like.

No one tells you that behind the pride and joy over your successful parenting lies questions. Or maybe they do and you just don't intimately register them from the cheap seat. Is he happy, is he safe. Does he think of you or need you anymore? With what now do you fill your calendar and your mental and emotional and creative energy. All those thoughts that 18 years ingrain into your being, natural as breath and just as requisite. No one tells you that those questions are less about him than they are about wistful remembrance of a lost identity now permanently altered, now in need of new definition of self that you're not quite prepared to create.

Lift you gaze from your navel. Full Metal Jacket and Parenthood are Hollywood stereotypes and nothing is so drastic or clearly cut as all of that.

His first letter home arrives, simultaneously filled with longing, concern, and hope. You are woven into the structure of his DNA, his worldview, just as intrinsically critical to his identity as he is to yours -- as quantumly connected as split particles of light on either side of the universe.

Melodramatic virgin high school princess, signing off now to ponder on whether it is more healthy to focus my energy on redefining my old identity within this new context, embracing the creation of a new identity, or finding someplace in the middle where the ground is firm enough to build the bridge that can sustain the extremes of both.

8:10 pm - 08.28.14
previous | next

Home | Archives | Profile | Notes | DiaryLand | Random Entry