Everything we learn, I think we learn retrospectively. We live forward, but we learn backwards. Rarely, if ever, in the midst of something, do I appreciate, or even contemplate the point, or the purpose, or the real "why" that underlies it. I never know those things until later, because time changes everything. Then again it might be that what you thought in the moment is as accurate as what you think about it later - both are accurate, they just aren't the same.
I mention it only because I left a comment on another blog the other day - that I immediately felt bad about. I said that I had married my boyfriend because I thought no guy would ever want me again after having breast cancer. That is the truth. That is an accurate assessment of what happened in those weeks after I was diagnosed. But I didn't know that at the time - I didn't mean to sound like I had plotted that out - I didn't. I don't think in the midst of it I was even able to appreciate what was happening. We just did what we did because the circumstances were what they were - and the reason why was something altogether different than it appears to be now. What I thought in those weeks, what I believed to be true, what I felt - those are things that I can't even access at this point because all I know is what I know about it now - I see it only through the lens of time. I have had a year and 4 months to contemplate it, dissect it, undo it, reinvent it - that's why I know what I know to be the truth.
I felt bad about it though - I felt bad about how it sounded. I didn't set out with that intention - to settle for someone out of fear and to alter the course of his life. And it was altered - so was mine. I have to realize that he participated willingly and is responsible for his part, that's true, but just how much falls on me, I'm not sure. I wondered - do I apologize for that, even though at the time, I didn't understand that to be the reason? Do I go back and say why I did what I did, even if that wasn't why I thought I was doing it at the time? Maybe it doesn't matter. I think his version of the story is quite unlike mine. And neither is really accurate at all I suppose. What once appeared supportive and loving and caring, now appears sick and manipulative. Which one was it? I don't think he set out with the intention of taking advantage of my financial situation, but by the end, it had started to look that way.
What was the truth at the time - I'm not even sure. Did I love him? Probably not - but I didn't know it at the time. Does that make what I felt in the moment less real, or more wrong? I can't tell you what I actually thought because I don't know anymore. Like I said, I can't really access anything about those weeks - it is all colored by a different perspective. Sobriety has changed my perception of everything. Nothing looks the same as it used to. I struggle sometimes with that - what is true or not true about the past - how accurate is my memory - how clear is my perception. I used to worry that I remember things incorrectly - like my childhood - was it more or less bad than I remember it, or just exactly the same? When my understanding of it changes - what it was changes also. Time changes the character of everything.
2 comments:
You've captured in this post the fluidity of memory and meaning. Nothing is ever truly over.
There's a line from a song that I think about all the time -- something to the effect that, while the future's there for anyone to change, sometimes it seems, it would be easier instead to change the past.
And it is easier to change the past, because the past is indeterminate. Even if we can agree on what happened (which is hard enough to do), what it means is constantly shifting, reworking itself.
There are so few anchors in the past and the things that we thought meant so much turn out not to have mattered, or at least not in the way that we thought they did.
I took something different than niobe. I was thinking does it matter? Decide what it means to you, what meaning you can live with and stop feeling badly about what you can't change. That's what I am trying to do anyway.
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