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May 15, 2006

Comments

Friend One

Damn good post, TM. You're making me weepy.

Why don't you publish your non-fiction? Hello, Salon, here we come!

Marilyn

This is one of my favorite posts you've ever written...so moving and powerful. I realized something about myself when I read this: "We, all of us, want to believe that we're bigger than our fears..." I realized that it's quite simply never occurred to me that that might be a possibility. My fears have crippled me for so long, from such a young age. I can put up a good front--say all the right platitudes--and even convince myself a lot of the time that I mean it. But we all bring so much baggage to our grown-up relationships. I encourage you to not let your fear of abandonment overwhelm the deeply powerful love you feel for your man...and hope that he'll allow himself to be loved by you. Because if there's one thing I've learned in my 51 years, it's this: what can be shocking to realize is that that's the place where love ends up residing...between those two fears...that place where your fear joins his to create something powerfully strong and beautiful...at least that's the way it worked for us...

P.S. Thought of you when I stopped for lunch in your town a couple of weeks ago. :)

LynnKK

I agree, a very powerful post. As a grown up child of divorced parents, it sounds like you are doing a wonderful job of reassuring your children. I always felt like there was no one to take my side during the divorce, so it's great that you are letting your children have their emotions. Don't let the guilt kill you. I know both my parents were better off because of the divorce, but I was older, and I knew more. And I think, strangely, that my parents divorce both increased and nullified my fear of being abandoned. After living alone for awhile I wasn't so afraid of that. And then I met my husband.
You're a good mother. A blind man could see that!!

badfreak

Alright, you've earned the fanbase thing now.

Fear is something you swollow, beat down, shove aside, numb yourself against, ignore, and, occassionally, derive some thrill from in order to get what you really want.

Some might call that a great irony, suffering for satisfaction, but those people have no taste for life.

badfreak

By the way, Joan Didion ripped my heart out and stomped it to pieces with her intellect and prose.

All other memoirs must now stand down and be known as inferior pretenders to the label.

The new Welch record... not so much. I do love her live cover of "Black Star," though.

terriblemother

Hello all,

Thank you for the comments, and thanks for the praise. Freak, I just finished The Year of Magical Thinking yesterday and was left stunned by both its emotional content and the sheer beauty of its prose. Didion is fucking amazing. There is no question.

Lynn, it's good to know that someone out there turned out okay, post-parental divorce, and is now having a successful relationship, even if it is with a "middlebrow" (I love that name).

Marilyn, next time you're in town, lemme know. We'll have lunch together, or at least coffee!

Friend One. Friend One--I got all weepy today thinking about graduation. But then it was ruined when I saw a card that said "Congradulations!" I hate when they do that.

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