The Life That Could Have Been

The hardest part of all the loss I have experienced is saying goodbye to the life that could have been. For sixteen years I have struggled to do just that. Each death altered that expectation more.

The death of my mom alone is hard. I think about all of the things that changed because of it. I went from an upper-middle-class lifestyle to near poverty in less than two years. Now that I am on my own I am grateful to have experienced both. It allows me to feel less of a failure that I am not at a place I was accustomed to but yet I am in a better place than I was for the second half of my childhood.

Though I was only ten when everything changed I had a pretty solid idea of what I wanted my life to look like. From day one of my being alive my mom knew what kind of life she wanted me to have. She knew her life with me wasn’t going to be long. She made sure I had a solid education. She was one of the favorite moms in my class. Every part of my life she made sure she was a part of. She kept most of her history and condition private so that those around me didn’t know. She knew that if everyone knew I most likely wouldn’t have been treated the same.

I chose Indiana. I tell people that, though I think sometimes it is more telling myself. I was asked the question of who I wanted to be with if something were to happen to my mom and aunt. I didn’t think I’d ever leave Maryland. I didn’t think I would have lost my mom shortly after I was sat down being asked that question.

There was still trauma and chaos going on behind the scene even with a pretty cushy lifestyle. Nothing that held me back too much. I still had expectations of what my life was going to look like. A life that probably could have happened if my mom hadn’t died when she did.

I have been attached to the life that could have been for sixteen years.

The life that my mom was fighting so hard for me to have.

I have tried to analyze all of the things that happened right after my mom died trying to figure out why I was so traumatized after it. I felt like I saw others who lost a parent at a similar age do better than I did.

I wonder if I had stayed in Maryland would I have done better? Moving to Indiana was such a culture shock that I think it added to the trauma. Then solely being raised by my aunt did a lot of damage. My aunt had lived with my mom ever since I was a baby so she wasn’t a new person which was good. She took away the things that comforted me that she didn’t agree with my mom who had allowed me to have. A lot of those things were the comfort foods I had eaten almost daily for most of my life.

Not to justify my aunt’s actions but she didn’t know how to be any different. She went through a pretty traumatic life herself. Then to lose my mom, her best friend for most of her life. And she also lost that cushy life herself. Though the older I get the more I realize just how irresponsibly she went through money. Money that we got from my mom and other situations. I know I can spend on things I probably shouldn’t have but she was almost stupid with money. I also doubt she fully knew how to be responsible or an adult. She was a broken child in an adult’s body most of the time.

I do find myself mad at her at times, but I do believe she did the best she could.

My aunt and my mom were heavily compared to each other which led to insecurity in both of them. My aunt did the same comparison with her children. Then she did it with me and her grandchildren, specifically my cousin Ivy.

There can be competitive comparison and the comparison that I feel is inevitable. The comparison that my aunt did was brutal. Ivy and I were close in age and we had very similar likes. One of those things was writing. I used to spend a lot of my time writing. I loved it. I still do, but back then I wrote more fictional stories. So did Ivy. My aunt would tell me that Ivy is the one with talent and that I should give up and stop. Most of the time it felt like Ivy could do no wrong in my aunt’s eyes but I was the failure. It has taken me years not to look at Ivy and not hate myself.

I find myself comparing myself with my cousins and seeing them on a level that I will never be able to reach. A pedestal in ways. So much of the time I found myself thinking I will never be good enough. People won’t love me as people love them.

That was one of the reasons I distanced myself from them for a bit. COVID happened and they moved a little further away so that contributed. But I would find myself leaving their house and whatever I was holding in I let out through tears on the drive back home.

When I chose to distance myself it was to try to let go of whatever expectations I had of them. Even when I didn’t understand why I felt the way I did when I was around them I was aware enough that most of it had nothing to do with them. I needed to find out what was causing these feelings. Yes, there are things that they might have done or said in the past that did create some of the feelings I was experiencing. I also know they have all grown and changed. Especially after my aunt (their mother or grandmother) died. It changed things in a way that was hard but necessary.

One thing I tell myself in this process is, “I have changed and I don’t want them to see me as the person I once was. It is only right for me to do the same thing.”

I got a book called “Inward” by Yung Pueblo. It is full of poetry about healing. There were so many that hit me hard. One I felt explained a lot about how I can feel towards my cousins and life in general.

“Love cannot cause pain; attachments cause pain. We create attachments in our mind when we want to hold on to something or someone, or when we expect things to be a certain way. When the attachments that we create in our minds break, we feel their rupture deeply. How deeply depends on how much we identify with the image that we have created. When things happen contrary to these images that we hold dear in our minds, we feel pain from these attachments being stretched and broken.

Attachments are not a form of true love. Unconditional love, selfless love, a love without expectations is a higher form of existence that creates no attachments or images. It is a state of profound egolessness. Expectations and judgments are attachments that the untrained mind repeatedly creates, causing more knots and burdens that impede our happiness. The
typical human mind is eclipsed by the delusion of ego; the ego separates, categorizes, and labels everything that it comes across, causing our discontent and misunderstanding.”

For me to have the life that my mom wanted me to have I have to let go of the attachment to the life that could have been with her in it.