I've just finished a novel by the Australian crime writer Gabrielle Lord, in which the key character is living under an assumed identity as part of a witness protection program. He has to deal with the constant stress of keeping his story straight, remembering that he's not supposed to have a son, or that he's not supposed to be a doctor. In the course of the book this cover unravels, first to his friends and eventually to his distant enemies.
It's curiously analogous to the shifts in my identity since Jen's death. There are the obvious changes - I'm not married anymore, but single again; we live in a household of three not four; I'm a single parent. I'm still in the middle of adjusting to Jen's absence and the many consequential losses, especially of adult company. There have also been subtle but definite shifts in all my friendships in the last two years. In many cases I've stayed in touch with people who were more Jen's friends than mine, and a few have been really impressive in their continued commitment to me and the boys. But even among the people who were primarily my friends rather than Jen's, there's been a change - perhaps at times it's because I'm now single, or because I'm a single parent and sometimes perceived to be in need of more advice. It saddens me to say that a couple of important friendships have crumbled in that change.
At least those who knew us before don't need to be told the story of Jen's last year. But now I am meeting, in the normal course of life, more people who know nothing about my situation. Here I begin to feel like Gabrielle Lord's character: when do I choose to open myself to questions, and when do I instead choose to have a 'cover story' that discourages inquiry? I don't mean for a moment that I say anything untrue, only that I hide the truth. To take an example, I was chatting to some university students last week, and mentioned in explanation that I was a single parent. Now no-one asked me the next question about why that was the case, but they might have reasonably assumed I was divorced, and I didn't try to disabuse them of that notion. Those who are divorced sometimes have a similar experience, where they know people are immediately making judgements about who might have been to blame for the divorce, but they don't want to have to explain at that level of intimacy.
It's not that, under this new identity, I don't want to talk about Jen. I do, but I also need to ration my emotional strength as I cope with people's reactions when they first find out. At times I'm reluctant to mention Jen's death because I know it will cast a cloud over that person's day (reminds me of the old activist slogan - "One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day"). Yet in terms of getting to know who I am, Jen's death is the T. Rex in the room. If I haven't talked about Jen, I know that I'm so far content to keep that person at arm's length.
It's strange to realise that recent friends have come to know Jen through me, and that I determine the way she is now perceived by them. Jen's death was cataclysmic for me, but only reported history for them. I worry that the centrality of Jen's life and death to my current identity might in the end push people away from me - who after all wants to see grief close up?
I hope the redeeming side that they might also see is love.
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i have found your post coming back to my musing mind time and again over the last few weeks. i hear several themes in it (1) the question of what identity is (2) the issue of feeling some amount of responsibility for how other people feel (and giving other people a certain amount of power over how you feel) (3) the issue of privacy and storytelling and what it means in relation to intimacy.
ReplyDeletei once again salute your honesty and directness in addressing these fundamental issues of fear, openness and vulnerability in relationships. it's so touchingly fitting (and a sign of veracity) that such issues keep coming up in a website that is essentially, implicitly, a tribute to your and Jen's marriage.
In the same spirit in which you write (trying out different ideas as a way of expressing and bringing to the conscious mind, experiences you or we have) (i.e. There's no rights and wrongs with this only the way things are) i write whatever follows.
my first thought about your post as that it shows how certain moments and experiences in life (such as, and especially, loss and grief) reveal the cracks at the edges of illusory identity. the basic idea being that a large amount of identity, probably much the larger part, is constructed, contingent and environmentally dependent, and it changes and adapts as life's slings, arrows, swings and roundabouts affect us. this sounds like an attack on identity but it isn't. saying it's so, is like saying human bodies are "only" made of carbon (largely). True in essence but not in any way a diminution of the preciousness and importance of human bodies. by the way this is basically what i think about ideas like the self (a total, and totally necessary, illusion for members of our species given that our evolutionary trump card has been development of consciousness) and God (another necessary human creation), but let's not go that far as it's getting too vague and far away from what you've written about here.
on identity: yes, in essence, all identity is assumed. It's what works for us. That's partly due to the circumstances around us, but the repetoire of what's an acceptable personality-element choice to make at any given point of development is also constricted by more fundamental elements of character, seemingly inborn or as they used to say, organic or elemental. Eg are you choleric, sanguine etc. Or an earth, fire, water or air person.
key relationships in our lives strengthen or confirm certain personality choices we've made, while also influencing us to make some changes and adaptations in personality too (if we're going to stay in the relationship). so when a central relationship ends, small wonder if personality and identity is affected. Not saying this at all properly, but too late and too tired and comment already too long (what's new).
but your post is evidently more about identity as (a) other people might see it (b) you might think they might see it (c) other people might imagine you think they see it etc.
ReplyDeleteanother of my "famous first thoughts" on your post was, people who feel depressed or socially obligated to express distress or who feel some kind of a pall cast, when someone reveals that their beloved wife, husband, child or parent recently died, evidently has not seen much of life nor pays much attention to the lives of the billions of people living all around us. Death being of course as normal as eating breakfast, except that it happens only once in a life, and grief being a common experience for all who love, which is all of us. But famous first thoughts aren't worth much.
a slightly more helpful second thought was something to do with the giving/taking emotional responsibility thing. Basically that, if someone acts immaturely, strangely, condescendingly, excessively "sagely" (me? i hope you don't think that, i'm just plodding through the bog and occasionally tripping lightly through the daffodils and wafting gaily among the wattle along with you and everyone else) in relation to you - at this stage in your life and experience, as well as in every other eg when you were a kid, a teenager, a new father, and later when you're an old, old feller dreaming your afternoons away in a walking frame by the nursing home window) - unfortunately or should i say, realistically, it's because they are immature, insecure, fearful, human.
What i'm really trying to get to was foreshadowed above, that your post seems to be mostly about intimacy and the common feeling that, when we are who we are (such us a man who, among other things, loved his late wife very much, and the love they shared will always be an important part of who he is), people will not like us.
From my own experience, this is more about self acceptance than about others. When I am glad to be whom I am, I don't fear rejection or take undue responsibility for others' emotions. And it happens in its own time, which in my case is not fast. But the slow life, like the slow food and slow bike movement, is a good thing.