Lost In a Dark Wood / The Long Way Home

A deeply personal dispatch from Paris

I’m reading on a bench at the garden of the Palais Royal, something I do often when in Paris. On the other side of my bench there is a young family. A little girl, maybe about 5 years old, climbs all over the bench, her parents and even me; the world is an open, easy place for her. She’s free to explore. At some point while she’s off exploring, her parents decide to walk over to the other side of the fountain, just across the lawn. It’s so close that I can still see them. I know they didn’t leave her. But to the little girl, wandering back to the bench to find it empty, they may as well have left for good. She looked at the empty bench, then at me, and started to cry. Not a loud, demanding cry but a quiet and sad one. The fearful cry of a child who believes they have been left behind.

I know it well.

She came and stood next to me, unable to follow my directions to where her parents sat by the water. I took her by the hand and we walked over to them. As soon as she saw them, she leapt into their outstretched arms. There was no abandoning. They simply let her find them. I walked back to my bench, fighting back tears, and started recording a series of very long voice notes to a friend who I knew would understand why this simple interaction tore me apart.

Lately I have been lost in a dark wood of childhood memories, re-learning truths I have been very diligent about locking away in the farthest corners of my memory. I was a child, no older than the little girl at the park, when I experienced an event I can only describe as an abandonment, without getting into the specifics. At least not at this time and certainly not in this format. It’s incredible how our minds work. How we protect ourselves from the things that we can’t examine or process while at the same time building bridges and trails that seem to always lead back to that single truth. For me, that singular truth is that I was formed by the wound of abandonment by the people who shouldn’t have done that to me, and my bridges and trails now look like hyper-independence, hyper-performance, hyper-avoidance. I don’t need anyone to take care of me. I am worth keeping around: look at how hard I’ll work. I don’t want you to stay with me only to leave when my guard is down.  These are the bridges and trails leading back to a little girl who learned how to survive.

On the Saturday before Mother’s Day, instead of going home to spend the weekend with my family like I usually do, I chose to be alone. I was walking to the museum when I was struck by a scene across the street from me: a  young woman, presumably a mother, is walking down the street while a child is asleep in her arms. Small legs dangling from either side, small head resting on her shoulder. This is a safe and comfortable scene. I sensed that as long as she can help it, nothing bad can befall this child. A small memory window opened then. I saw myself as a child and it brought me to tears. She never knew that feeling.

I’m in Paris now to celebrate a dear friend’s entree into motherhood. In the taxi home after a long dinner together she started describing the baby in her womb: this is her arm here, resting above her head…my girl is lounging right now. She put her hand on her belly and truthfully, what I felt most clearly was deep joy and love. I know that this child will grow up knowing she is loved and protected. She will never have to wonder if she did something wrong. She will never break herself down trying to become so helpful that she’s too indispensable to throw away.

I don’t have any neat final thoughts here for you today. What I am grappling with is a lifetime of pain and confusion, now suddenly come to light. It’s been a significant assignment for my psyche; something to unwrap and unravel as gingerly as possible, so as not to unravel my very self along with it. This is work that may take a lifetime to complete.

In the meantime, I am doing my best to take care of the present. I’m in my favorite city now, spending every day doing mostly nothing but slowly enjoying myself. I never really understood when people talked about their inner child. It seemed a little silly and unrealistic to me. But now I get it. My inner child, who has spent decades locked away in a dark corner of my mind, has finally broken free. And she is angry. She has a lot to say, and I’m finally listening.

I hope the days are kind and loyal to you. Thank you for being here.

- x -