There's No Coming Back from This

by Ann Garvin

To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting. —e. e. cummings

It didn’t matter how far you’d come in the world of competency; women were always judged by their outward appearance.

This emotional spinning wheel of fortune was normal for parenting a kid who was almost a grown-up. Excitement, melancholy, wonder, fear could be packaged in one sentence and forgotten the next hour. The trick was to listen, support, and do no problem-solving until a solid problem was defined. Emotions were not to be solved.

The blame ball, in the game of life, rolled downhill and, as often as not, hit the victim.

It was like that old joke about people like me, people who cared knowing they shouldn’t: I’m going to give up people pleasing if that’s okay with everyone.

turned on my heel, caught my kit on one of the hooks by the door, and bumped my head on the frame going through it. That’ll show her, Kevin said telepathically.

You know, if you stood up for yourself like you do for everyone else, maybe I could respect you. I did put others first. I’d long known that if you focus on other people, you don’t have to figure out what you want. If you never ask anything for yourself, you’ll never discover who cares or, for that matter, doesn’t care.

I’d slid into so many roles because of duty and ease. It was much harder to make strong choices, forge a new way forward. To figure out what you want to do, go for it, fail, and try again.

Women learn to be pleasing—often their lives and livelihoods depend on it.

There was so much to learn, and it occurred to me that the largest life lesson of all had to be answering the question of how much to give, how much to keep. How much do you matter versus how much do others count when trying to be a mother, friend, or good person?

What would be the term for loss of a childhood but gaining an adult? A combination of grief and pride—surely this word could be found in a parenting dictionary somewhere.