This is all coming up now because I’m finally in a place where the external chaos is fairly non-existent and these folks around me are challenging my core assumptions about myself and about relationships. So the cries for help from the inner me…the ME that has been buried underneath all this grief and loss…are finally being heard.
This is a version of a reflection I wrote in 2015, that I recently came across. A future post will reflect on the journey since this post, but it represents a significant season of what might be called my ‘healing journey’…which I am definitely still on.
February 15, 2015
I should know better than to use Monday mornings to journal, especially in this season of trying to find language for all this inner angst I feel. But it is the morning best suited for that in my week, and I know if I don’t take the time to write stuff down, the internal pressure will just get worse.
On Friday a fellow MK friend invited me over for dinner, having seen my Facebook post referencing some internal turmoil. I am eternally grateful for that invitation. The alternative would have been to wallow deeper into my despair. After eating spaghetti and playing “America’s Got Talent” with his daughter, I was feeling strengthened by food, family, and some good old fashioned laughing. There’s just something about getting into an imagination of a 10-yr. old that is refreshing. We sat down to watch the Lindsay Lohan version of “Parent Trap,” and he asked me if I could talk at all about what was going on. He listened and sympathized as I shared my struggle with feeling bitterness, sadness and anger about being sent away to boarding school and the resulting disconnected relationship with my dad. And wouldn’t you know it, the scene in the movie was the one when the twin from England is meeting her dad for the first time, riding in the car with him on the way home from camp. She ends every sentence with “Dad,” and her dad asks her why she keeps saying that. She says something about how for her whole life she has never been able to say “Dad. And a girl needs to have a dad.” Pretty sure I was crying at that point.
I went home with four issues of this TCK magazine called “Among Worlds.” It’s full of articles about and by adult TCKs about issues we face. As I browsed through it, I felt like I was reading article after article about my own life and emotional struggle over the last few years. I began to read through the issue about grief, and gradually all my tears and internal angst are making some sense. Here’s what I think is happening:
One of the major realities in my life from before I was born is loss. For me: loss of relationship with my grandparents and cousins when we went back to Kenya after home assignment; loss of relationship with my older brothers when they went off to boarding school before me; loss of relationship with my parents when I went off to boarding school. Beyond that, each time I made friends, either I would leave or they would leave. So the strong friends I made as a kid when I spent most of my days with Kenyans…those friendships didn’t survive my transition to being American when I went to boarding school. The friendships I formed at boarding school were complicated by the rhythm of going home after three months for one month, long enough so that when you came back to school you often were re-navigating that friendship. Besides that, friends came and went through the revolving door of furlough schedules. Roommates changed every term, and were rarely the roommates I wanted. Instead, friendships were assigned by those in charge–be roommates with this person, be friends with that person, don’t leave anyone out but don’t complain about being left out.
The result of the mandated roommate shuffle for me was that I very rarely felt secure in a friendship. Previous experience conditioned me to anticipate that just as I frequently wished to be rooming with someone else, my roommate(s) likely also regretted being assigned to room with me. Similarly, when I made a connection with someone that I think would have been considered a “friendship,” that person inevitably had something happen so that they left and my friendship with them didn’t survive. In 4th and 5th grade I was particular friends with a girl who didn’t come back in 6th grade, and I’ve never seen her since. In 6th grade I actually had a friend who ‘got me.’ We were two peas in a pod and spent most of our time together. But in 7th grade her parents moved onto campus and she moved out of the dorm. And while our friendship sort of survived 7th grade (although it had to adjust a lot since she was now a station kid and I was still a dorm kid), in 8th grade I went back to the States. In 9th grade she went to the States. Through letters, we stayed in more touch than I had with anyone else. In 10th grade, when we were both finally back at RVA, she was different and I was different. We roomed together for two terms before acknowledging that it just wasn’t the same. She remains my first ‘best friend,’ but our friendship never quite recovered.
I remember getting to a place where I sort of dreaded rooming with my ‘friends’ because I believed there was something toxic about me that destroyed friendships with people I roomed with. Roommate after roommate became friendships that didn’t last. By my senior year, when the dorm had one too many girls for the beds available, I offered to take the dorm mom’s guest room, and not even have a roommate–essentially quarantining myself for the sake of all those other girls who somehow knew how to stay friends with each other and were better off without me.
So one of the major wounds of boarding school is a really confused understanding of friendship. Beneath that is a message I still probably believe to be true, which is that all those broken friendships…all those roommates who didn’t become friends…all those hours spent arguing and cat-fighting with girls I was assigned to live with….all of it goes to prove that I do not have whatever it takes to be a friend. More importantly, no one ever really WANTS to be my friend. Sometimes people tolerate me as a friend because my life crosses paths with theirs and we are sort of forced to create some sort of relationship with each other–roommates, camp counselors, co-workers, etc. But any sense of ‘friendship’ that develops under those circumstances is not real, and will not last. And while I can list name after name of friend who has moved away, left, died, or ended up not being a friend anymore, my name and any imprint of time spent with me is totally expendable and does not linger in anyone else’s memory.
So why is this coming up now, and even as I write, making me cry? Because for the first time–maybe ever–I am in an environment where no one is assigning relationships. I am in a community of relationships with people who are choosing to be here. No one is making them be here. And in this experience, people are trying to tell me that they WANT me to stay a part of their life…and in fact they VALUE my presence and relationship. These people are trying to show me that they genuinely care about me, and the affection they have for me is not being mandated by circumstances (college, Bible camp, work, etc), or by the institution (boarding school, mission organization, etc), or by the authorities (teachers, dorm parents, etc). I am the one who has been ‘assigned’ to this place because of my job. For the most part the people in this community and network are committed to staying part of this community. They have chosen to live here, to go to this church, etc…and they’re not going to leave to go on home assignment or to ‘follow God’s call’ to the next place. And on one hand I desperately WANT to believe these messages. But on the other hand, I am deeply terrified that if I give myself over to these friendships, and truly allow myself to embrace and be embraced by these people…as soon as I do that, someone will leave and I will be left alone again. On the third hand, I have made this public commitment to “following God’s call” as a deacon, and so there’s the risk that as soon as I fully lean into these friendships, inevitably God will force me to leave to go to the next ‘call.’
My spiritual director would ask me to try to visualize a scene of what these feelings LOOK LIKE. I wish I was more of an artist. I imagine standing at a crossroads. Behind me is a cemetery of all the people, places, dreams, pets, ambitions and experiences in my life I’ve had to say goodbye to. Around me are the people in my life right now, who are trying to welcome me into their community and world. But just ahead of them I can see shadows of headstones, and on these headstones are the names of these people–because I have been down this road before…and it always leads to death and loss. These people keep saying this experience will be different. They keep telling me that I am safe with them. I can choose to stay. I can attach to them. I can trust their care for me. And I want to believe them…but I don’t. I just don’t. And this cemetery of past grief and loss…it folds up and fits into my suitcase so that, where I go, there it is…reminding me that ultimately I am nothing more than a memory in these people’s lives, and up until now a memory that most everyone has forgotten.
The next question she would ask me would be “and where is Jesus in that picture?” I don’t know. I think growing up I sort of thought Jesus was the grim reaper, standing in the sidelines in his black coat holding a huge knife, causing the end of these relationships for some higher purpose that I was not privileged to understand and that I wasn’t allowed to question. Now, I see that the ‘right’ answer is that he’s probably right next to me. But I don’t know what that’s supposed to feel like or how that affects the scene.
So that magazine I was reading about Grief, with articles by other Third Culture Kids…it says that this struggle is just part of the reality for us. That means it’s not necessarily anything that is unique to me, but is a genuine and real result of the life I’ve had. On one hand, this is good news because it’s not exclusively about me and my deficiencies. But on another hand it means that going through it is likely unavoidable. This is all coming up now because I’m finally in a place where the external chaos is fairly non-existent and these folks around me are challenging my core assumptions about myself and about relationships. So the cries for help from the inner me…the ME that has been buried underneath all this grief and loss…are finally being heard.
The problem is I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know how to FEEL all the grief and loss without being buried by it. All I can do is cry and try really hard not to run away and hide in the familiar wilderness of non-emotional, achievement-based survival. Just don’t feel stuff, Michelle. Get out of your heart and back into your head. You’re safe there–with your intellectual maturity and spiritual wisdom. That’s how you will prove yourself worthy of the cost Jesus paid for you. It’s not about friendships and relationships, Michelle. That stuff doesn’t matter as much as doing what God wants you to do. Jesus was willing to walk away from his family and friends for the sake of what God had called him to do. Don’t you think you should be willing to do the same? Just stop needing people and relationships. All you need is God.
And just like that, the tears are drying up.
BUT THAT’S NOT TRUE!! That stuff DOES matter. Having friends who are genuine and real MATTERS. Having a sense of safety in relationships MATTERS. Trusting people to not leave you MATTERS. Feeling valuable and beautiful when you’re 10, having clothes that fit and make you feel good about yourself MATTERS. Being able to have a birthday party that really is about celebrating YOU MATTERS. Wanting your parents to show up on time for stuff like games, concerts, awards assemblings and parent-teacher conferences MATTERS. Knowing you’re important to be someone’s CHOICE for a friend MATTERS. Being okay with giving and receiving hugs MATTERS.
It’s okay to be sad and angry…those are APPROPRIATE ways to feel:
- When friends die or have to move away;
- When your parents drop you off at school and aren’t there when you break your arm and you have to spend the night in the infirmary by yourself;
- When you’re crying because you just want to be with your mom, and your dorm mom tells you to stop crying because your mom is serving God and doesn’t need to be distracted by your sadness;
- When dorm dads cross boundaries and make light of very real changes happening with your body;
- When school rules penalize you for things you can’t control–like growing too much before vacation when you mom can get you dresses that meet the clothing code;
- When adults who say they care about you dismiss the struggles of junior high social life as immature and unspiritual;
- When your parents drop you off at school so your mom isn’t there to help you navigate the changes in your body and the drama of middle school relationships;
- When chapel speaker after speaker asks you to analyze what sin or deficiency you have yet to turn over to God, thereby adding to your belief that you’re a burden to everyone…even to God
All these writers who write about the reality of grief in the life of TCKS also say that there’s a chance for healing. So, with that, I offer this quote from an article in that magazine:
Where did I get the message that if I felt sad, it was because there was something wrong with me? Boarding school as a child seems like a likely place, or my parents’ attitudes, or the Christian missionary culture around me–hency my question about how God thinks and feels about my pain (and therefore about me): is it okay for me to feel this bad? In my evangelical Christian family I was taught that it doesn’t matter how you feel, it matters what you know (which I now recognize as coming from Neoplatonic dualism, not from the Bible). This has been a very destructive attitude in my life and is, I think, largely responsible for my shame about grieving. When you’ve been violated, or you’ve lost your mother or your home and all your friends, it matters a great deal how you feel, because sometimes there are few thoughts and no words, just really deep pain.” (Anonymous, “Waves of Grief,” Among Worlds, June 2013).