It was always difficult to talk with my mother. We couldn’t discuss anything without her dissolving into tears. Every conversation would trigger her pain of having been abandoned, first by her husband, and in some ways later by her two sons.
I understood the deep sadness of her life, perhaps more than anyone else, having had a ringside view for over four decades. Also perhaps more than anyone else, I achingly wished that somehow I could ease her pain. I don’t think I have desired anything as much as I wanted my mother to be happy. And I don’t think I have failed at anything more miserably than to bring some happiness into her life.
I found it utterly frustrating to see her descend into what I thought was self-pity, and it would anger me that she could not pull herself together to talk things over sanely, let alone make something of her life that was marked by broken dreams and betrayals. There were times when I was ashamed of her tears, and I was angry that I was ashamed.
Perhaps it is one of life’s great ironies that I now cry as much as my mother used to. If she were looking at me from wherever she might be, if there is such a notion, she would cry that I am crying so much these days, and she would wish me happiness. As much or more than I had wished for her.
I have written elsewhere of how in the Dark Dark Days, when I found myself in a tight corner with no one (I thought) I could turn to, I found some relief in tears. Unable to talk or write, I turned to crying to give me the release I needed to be able to continue to function in this mad, mad world: hustle that job (or two), take care of my children, mind the house and its many demands. Deadlines needed to be met, vessels needed to be washed and bills needed to be paid. Life must go on, right? Regardless of how miserable we feel.
When I was stuck, a good cry is what I sought. It was my go-to.
However, when I started reading the book I could never have guessed that it would open the floodgates of my crying even further in a way that only my mother would perhaps have recognized. It was a lifetime of tears.
It took me three days to finish the book. I read it at home, at work, in taxis, and at airports. And I sobbed unashamedly through it, unmindful of others around me and what they thought of this middle-aged man crying openly right next to them.
This is a book with many stories interwoven – of the author’s patients, and also of the author herself. In these stories, I found resonance with my own.
Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist who writes the Dear Therapist advice column for the Atlantic.
Gottlieb describes the work of a therapist as essentially that of holding up a mirror to their patients, while at the same time finding a reflection of themselves in the mirror their patients hold up to them.
We are mirrors reflecting mirrors reflecting mirrors, showing one another what we yet can’t see.
Lori Gottlieb
That could just as well be the definition of friendship, right?
The book too served as a mirror, in which I found my own story reflected. The similarities were not so much in the situations and events described in the book, but the difficult spaces that people found themselves in, and how they struggled to fathom a way out.
A few months prior to my divorce, I remember I had reached out very tentatively to an old friend whom I had not been in touch with for many years. As I started talking about the crisis in my life, I very hesitantly spoke about my marriage. At first it felt like a betrayal. Through my entire marriage of 20 years I had never spoken about it to anyone else. Not a word. Whatever transpired, I thought it was something that N and I needed to sort out between ourselves, and I felt that to even talk about it to someone else was somehow a breach of trust. I kept quiet and coped as best as I could.
As I spoke of my difficulties to my friend for the first time, I found myself trying to present a ‘fair’ narrative, justifying and explaining away the things that had hurt deeply.
[Even now, as I write this, I am alert to what I am sharing, and how I am sharing it. While I want to remain honest in my narrative, I don’t want to speak ill of N. We share a respectful relationship post-divorce and that is important to me. At the same time, I intend to write authentically of my struggles.]
Women often find other women to speak to about their marriages, and this provides an emotional buffer that men lack. Men don’t usually talk to other men about their troubles in marriage. And men can’t talk to female friends about it because that apparently leads to all manner of difficulties. So men are stuck with themselves.
I imagine it is helpful to have at least one other person know what is happening in your marriage. Someone who might not play the devil’s advocate but who might have your back and see things from your end, however one-sided it might be.
Gottlieb writes about the one-sided nature of our stories:
There are many ways to tell a story, and if I’ve learned anything as a therapist, it’s that most people are what therapists call “unreliable narrators.” That’s not to say that they purposely mislead. It’s more that every story has multiple threads, and they tend to leave out the strands that don’t jibe with their perspectives.
As I began to talk to my friend, and then to another friend, and eventually with my therapist, I found that I needed to tell my one-sided story, as I saw it. Until I no longer needed to tell it. And then I could learn to let go of it.
The stories of Gottlieb’s patients were heart-breaking, traversing universal themes of death, isolation, freedom and meaninglessness. I cried as much for them as for my own heartbreaks that had shattered my life in a way that there was no way to put it back together.
While the stories triggered my own sadness and pain, they also made me think that my difficulties paled in comparison and I had no business crying about them. Gottlieb warns against this tendency to minimize:
[…] by diminishing my problems, I was judging myself and everyone else whose problems I had placed lower down on the hierarchy of pain. You can’t get through your pain by diminishing it, he reminded me. You get through your pain by accepting it and figuring out what to do with it. You can’t change what you’re denying or minimizing. And, of course, often what seem like trivial worries are manifestations of deeper ones.
So, this book gives you permission, if you need it, to accept that whatever you are going through in your life deserves your attention, and I daresay, your love.
The book is also about second chances, that despite everything, there is always the possibility to move forward. Part of that process might need grieving, as Gottlieb’s therapist tells her:
But I am also interested in something else you said. Half your life is over. Maybe what you are grieving isn’t just the breakup, though I know this experience feels devastating. I wonder if you’re grieving something bigger than the loss of your boyfriend.
Yes, I too was grieving the loss of something more than the end of my previous work, my marriage and the death of my mother, amongst other things I had lost in the space of three years. I was grieving the disconnect with life itself. How did it come to be that I, like my mother, felt so devastated by life that I considered ending it?
Despite my mother’s three attempts to end her life in her thirties, she had a strong desire to live. Through her days of cancer, she fought the disease with sheer willpower. Her doctors were amazed at her strength, fortitude and positivity. During her last few days, as the doctors had given up hope for recovery, she sought their reassurance that she will get better and go back home. She was not ready to die.
At the same time, she was suffering. She was on a ventilator and she hated the mask which she kept pulling off her face. When the doctor asked her what she wanted, she would say: I just want to sleep. Over the years, especially in the final months of her chemotherapy, she had found it impossible to sleep. She would roll around in her bed for hours, sometimes taking more sleeping pills than were permitted, in the hope that she would somehow fall asleep.
When death finally came to her at 6 pm on 14 July 2020, she had slept peacefully for 24 hours. For someone who was so lonely and unhappy for long stretches of her life, it was as gentle an end as I could have hoped for her. Even though I could not help her cry less during her lifetime, I am glad I was there when she finally got a day’s restful sleep.
I didn’t imagine losing my mother in my forties would be a big deal. I was an adult with children of my own, and she had suffered enough, and I was glad the suffering had ended for her. My father had passed away five years earlier, so I knew what that meant. But slowly I came to realize that the loss of a parent, let alone both, at any age, is not easy. I had become an “adult orphan”, an idea that seemed a bit contrived when I read about it initially, but the cutting truth of it is hard to deny.
Gottlieb’s book gave me an opportunity to grieve without inhibition. It would have been impossible for me to start this blog without that grieving process.
I still cry, and I am not ashamed of it. Nor am I ashamed of my mother’s tears. I wish I had the good sense to tell her that while she was alive.
If you find yourself in a bleak place, I hope you will seek someone to talk to. However difficult it might seem, or pointless, I guarantee you the act of finding someone to talk to can pull you back from the brink. All it takes is one conversation. I hope you find yours.
Featured Image: Photo by Harli Marten on Unsplash
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