I don't remember my year in the trailer park with my first husband. I don't remember that smell of other people's life inside the walls and carpet of our trailer, or the feeling that you couldn't trust the floor beneath your feet. I don't remember the life insurance guy who came and sat in our ugly, dark kitchen and sold us some policy that ensured us if one of us died, the other would be well taken care of with more money than either of us dreamed of having. I don't remember the way I wished for terrible things to happen so I could have that money and escape...so I could be free of him and that depressing, claustrophobic darkness of debt that I had no other ideas about how to lift off us. I don't remember feeling ashamed.
I don't remember that crazy girl who would come over in her tank top and short shorts when I was sitting, chubby with a pregnancy and dripping wet with sweat, on the stoop outside the door, and she would blabber nonstop through twenty cigarettes and a trillion nervous ticks and twitches, and eventually talk me into loaning her a few bucks and watching her dirty baby for hours.
I don't remember getting as craby as I got huge with that pregnancy that made me hate the smell of beer and my mother's taco salad.
I don't remember crying melodramatically, eating popcorn for dinner, and spending Valentines Day cutting out hearts and flowers and writing nice things on them (from him, to me) and taping them all over our brown living room while he was out drinking with his brother.
I don't remember listening to George Winston while I dreamed up happy scenarios of me and the perfect child I was going to have. We ran, hand in hand through parks, giggling. We played in water fountains. We danced and twirled around and around, and then letting that baby cry for hours because I was afraid of all the anger inside me. I was afraid I would hurt him. I don't remember feeling ashamed some more. Ashamed and embarassed and sad and hopeless.
I do remember pretending to be happy, pretending to be on top of it all, pretending to be strong and loving, pretending to be a grown up...until I couldn't pretend anymore.
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The challenge in this writing exercise was to, after all the "I remembers," go in and poke at something you really don't want to remember...something you avoid thinking about because it's too ugly or hard or embarassing. As I wrote this the first time (in 2009) and again, this time here, I found/find myself sobbing. This outburst of emotion, I can see, comes from several places: 1.) I am still holding on to bits of shame and guilt for those choices, for my ineptitude as a parent and a person. 2.) My heart is also breaking for that lost and crazy version of me...that me that wasn't me at all...but was. And 3.) this sobbing is also, quite clearly, coming from a beautiful wave of relief and gratitude that I fought (with my choices) to become a truer version of me...and I am still moving closer to her. She is the best I have to offer this world, and I cannot wait to discover more of her.
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