Separation Anxiety

As I let them grow(go)

My eldest has been accepted into a study abroad program which, should she choose to go, begins in the first days of September. She has chosen and I have insisted. My college art program did not have a study abroad option, something I always regretted, though I did finally take the time to travel outside of a school initiative. She is both excited and afraid and I have, for the first time, felt the real pull of her future away from me. I have never wanted something more for a person other than for her to live when I started bleeding at 4 months with her, enough that I thought I would lose her.

Photo by Simone Dinoia on Unsplash

I made offerings to the god I believe in, no promises because I never make those, but pleaded with the entirety of my being for her safety and her arrival. When she’d read the email telling her of her acceptance she messaged all of us, her sister, her father, and me to tell us she loved us all so much and I knew. The whole, wide world was calling her and though she knew it was what she wanted, she drew in her breath to hold her tears.

We are called to step up here. There have been a few times like this in my life where whatever it is I must do, I am certain I absolutely cannot, yet I know if she does not get it from me, I have doomed her to self-doubt and machinations, the very same that have haunted me all my life, the ones that have me questioning my worth, my talent, my right, my ability. I could not leave the lump in her throat, so I cut it into small pieces and chewed on the gristle myself.

He said it is much harder for me because I lived with her longer. Harder to let her go each time she leaves for the world, and he is not wrong. I am not sure how he was able to go, to walk away, leaving the ache and its managed care to me. He left on his own as a younger man when he went to culinary school and always expected he’d wander alone.

I was unable to do that, as once she was here, I knew that any and everything I did would have the additional requirement of leading her to the starting line of her own destiny. I would need to navigate the treacherous landscapes, holding them above my shoulders, until they could see clearly over the crowds just where they were going. In every moment of their successes and failures and struggles, I lift higher even when standing just on the toenails of my big toes.

I watched HAMNET in the middle of the afternoon and again in the morning while handling some administrative work that I despise. I had a feeling this would shiver me in my skin, was even already a superfan of that Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, but I was shattered by their performances, by the slightest movements in Ms. Buckley’s face as she worked her magic on the screen. My heart shattered in her portrayal of loss; I believed every cellular vibration of ache in her character’s grief and longed to smell both of their heads, Lily and Virginie, the babies I’d ushered in.

I loved them and missed them even as they stood in front of me, felt even worse when they were just far enough away for me to feel the pull of the tether. We will always be connected by this graceful tug, always allow one another to breathe and grow and return. The thought of not having this meaningful connection shatters me, and I think of how I don’t have this with my family of origin, not in the easy way in which the three of us ebb and flow with one another. Despite my stoicism, I am occasionally felled by the poisoned arrow of indifference and betrayal shot at my chest by the two women closest to me.

I love reading (and listening) to the autobiographies of artists and creatives, and am currently listening to Just Kids, Patti Smith’s award-winning memoir documenting her time with the photographer, Robert Maplethorpe. My youngest and I were reading it together, as it had been assigned to her by her AP Lit teacher, and I wanted to experience her discovery of them. I have been a fan of them both separately and together for a good part of my adult life and was excited to see her discover a world outside of our suburban existence, much as I had at her age watching movies by Wim Wenders, Pedro Almodovar, and other foreign directors.

I’d not met a subtitled movie I couldn’t find something beautiful in, longed for the landscapes and light, accents and considerations that other cultures introduced. Bearing witness to the creative and emotional expansion of both of my girls fills me with joy.

I feel more embodied than I ever have in my life, at just the time my body appears hellbent on betrayal. Though I feel the sensations on my skin and the fluttering of my heart when moved, I am wrinkled, less toned, less motivated by being physically attractive to others, though also hoping I might still be. The first grounding in my life came with motherhood, the moment my firstborn came flying into the world and everything was hot and sweaty and viscerally charged beyond anything I had ever known. The second appears to be right now.

They say babies begin to recognize themselves as separate from their mothers around 6-9 months. Between 8-12 months as this realization intensifies, many babies begin to develop separation anxiety. I am beginning to feel this now. Separation anxiety as I set them loose on the world. It isn’t so much that I don’t trust them in the world or believe I must be there at all times to shield them, just that I miss our symbiosis, the space where there was so much overlap in our identities.

Oh, you must go, I’ve told her. Let the world open to you and you to it, as I remembered my firsts-travel, love, solitude, separation, self-discovery, myself as my very own. The degree to which I have come to hold space for this love has increased as I have become more solid, thicker, heavier, grounded, an easier position from which to launch them so we can become our own celestial beings in the night’s sky.

In the liminal space between which we are held and where we release ourselves is where we make beauty and art to explain to ourselves this feeling. In this space, I have returned to painting with ferocity as if holding onto their tiny fingers, grabbing for their toes, as they write their own memoirs and life stories. As I also continue to write mine.