I've often heard it said that you can never really know another person. You see only what they choose to show you. You must decide to believe or doubt what they tell you concerning their thoughts and emotions. When their actions tell another story, you can only wonder what is real; which is more revealing, word or deed? Are they telling you the truth but behaving as they must for whatever reason? Or are they telling you what they think you want to hear while their actions are revealing their true colors?
I've been thinking about this subject a lot lately. Showing and telling used to be something that came easily to me. Although I was always caring and compassionate with others, I spoke my true thoughts, I did what I believed to be right and I gave to myself as much as to others. Over the years, although I wasn't trying to be mysterious, I found myself keeping my thoughts and feelings more and more to myself. While I didn't lie, I stopped volunteering the truth. When in conflict, I held my tongue and stopped fighting my corner. That little look of disapproval on my husband's face, the personal passion I longed to indulge that conflicted with one of my children's schedules, the place of interest I wanted to visit that everyone else considered unimportant ... I gave up not only "me time" but me. I no longer knew who I was or what made me happy. I saw it happening, felt my true self slipping away, but for years I did nothing to correct the imbalance.
About two years ago, I suffered a trauma that changed all of that. It fractured me into a million pieces and, in trying to put the pieces back together, I had to acknowledge that for a very long time my actions had been at war with my emotions. I was behaving as I thought I should; pretending to be someone I wasn't. Someone I had, in fact, never been. I was trying to be my mother ~ a fabulous wife, a truly noble human being who always put her husband and children before herself. She still does, though we're all grown with children of our own. While I admire her tremendously as a human being, I'm not her. Our interests, talents, and beliefs are totally different.
I know that as my children grew and needed me less, I should have been able to effect a gradual return to myself, to do more of what I wanted to do and when I wanted to do it. But I hadn't. I was a fifth of this wonderful family but, because I had stopped expressing an opinion, had stopped revealing my thoughts and feelings, it was assumed that I was happy with the way things were. I realized that, in trying to be the kind of wife and mother that my mother was, I was repressing much of what makes me the unique person that I am. She'd given me a precious gift ~ myself ~ but I was squandering it. I had buried myself and my dreams and I was suffering, both psychologically and emotionally, for it.
To correct what had gone so badly wrong, I made some hard decisions. Following through on them caused me a lot of pain. Inflicting them on those I loved most caused me even more. But the pain I endured to correct my course was far more bearable to me than the pain I caused them. I blew up the world my "children" knew and left them with nothing but my thoughts and feelings to try to balance against my current actions. I left them to piece together what was real and what was not; who this woman was they thought they knew so well. Crossing an ocean to live again in the country of my birth conflicted in their minds with my professions of love for them. Having a home in each of two countries wasn't how they'd envisioned their future. Now that they'd grown up, it wasn't supposed to be Mom moving out and setting up on her own. It wasn't fair to them or to their father. They'd done nothing wrong; I had. The crime was mine, though we all paid the price.
I'm told it took great courage to do what I did. I'm told many women find themselves in a similar situation when their children begin leaving the nest, when they find themselves facing a stranger in the morning mirror. I'm told most women accept the life they've made and continue along the path they've strayed onto. I don't know if that's true but I have truly recounted what others have told me. I'm certain only that it took a great deal of strength and resolve to deal with the resultant guilt of leaving the path I knew wasn't mine. And I know that I will always wonder if I did the wrong thing for all the right reasons.
There is one thing about which I'm certain: people are icebergs. You only see what's visible. You can never know for sure what lies beneath the surface.
