Giving It All Away To Goodwill
Earlier this month, I spent nearly a week clocking time in my bedroom closet, slipping inside furtively for no other reason than to get “buzzed.” Not on drugs, mind you. The “high” I was indulging in was to have finally accomplished a goal long on my “to-do” list: the massive decluttering and renovating of our home’s immense walk-in closet; I’d called dibs on this spot some sixteen years before, when my husband and I married and moved in. It had been mine for all these years––and a mess the entire time.
Now, with the redesign complete, every morning I would flick on my closet’s bright light and inhale another hit of good feeling: a deep sense of calm that rocked me to the core. Though this was perhaps not so surprising (coming as it did for a woman who had been pinched as a girl to share every inch of space with her sister), this sensory overload fueled me with a desire to explore every corner of this room––over and over again. It was mine. All mine.
The only thing lacking now was the motivation to transport even one stitch of clothing from temporary storage in the basement. A growing sense of dissatisfaction developed as I schlepped downstairs each morning and rummaged through a carton labeled “Sweaters” or “Jeans.” Nevertheless, what I was in fact refusing to release was the continuing psychological lift. “This has been like getting an extra brain zap of Serotonin,” I’d cracked to Phil—“serotonin” being the word we psychologists use for the “happy chemical” in our bodies which boosts mood. Smiling to myself, I added another idea: I almost wish I had another closet to clean!
Another closet? an inner voice nagged. But what about digging into that emotional crawl space you created twenty-four years ago? My conscience was whispering now and didn’t stop with just that thought. That place where a metaphorical cardboard carton waits, overflowing with resentment—the one on which you’ve scrawled John’s name with a big black Sharpie?
Resentment? Au contraire, argued a competing voice, just as silently and just as insistently: it was not resentment I harbored toward my ex-husband. It was instead the justifiable moral certainty that he had been totally unfit as a parent. It was, in fact, actually righteousness on my part—for so many years, I was witness to the hot mess he’d created in his relationship with our daughter.
There was the afternoon John had drunk himself into oblivion rather than rushing to the emergency room, where I waited tensely with Grace—four years old, projectile-vomiting and with an undiagnosed renal disorder. And then there were the painful demands he put on Grace during her adolescence through to her early adulthood, when he began routinely phoning her when sloshed. She found herself unable to ignore those calls, even though it was a time when her own mental health was precarious; she pushed “accept” on her cell because she worried that if she didn’t answer she risked losing her Dad.
What kind of betrayal would it be, I reasoned now, if you hadn’t confronted John when he was in the middle of inflicting so much inexcusable harm on our girl? I ran my hand through my hair as the inner voice pushed itself into my consciousness even further and continued to argue with me: the anger I felt was vituperative. In my lifetime, I’d watched others forgive their ex’s, their friends, their parents, their brothers and sisters. Why is this so difficult for you? I wondered. Surely it was because you were fighting for someone other than yourself: your child. Forgive John when he’d been on parental duty? No way in hell. You’ve been more than fair.
But that wasn’t the whole truth: in fact, even before my divorce in 1998, I had begun compiling a private ledger in my mind of all he had heaped on Grace. Yes, I had mentally documented all the excuses and denials he’d used to elaborate on why Grace was upset or even angry when she returned from her custodial visits with him. Now, however, I forced myself to touch down upon how long it had taken me to leave him once he began to be such an inadequate parent. Perhaps those five years were a failure on my part, albeit a less intense one.
At some point long ago, I’d decided that it was probably best to lock up that crawl space where so many hurt feelings and hostilities resided; I’d resolved to look at it all some other time. Sometimes it takes a while to process an insight and find a conclusion that can help you sort through the different aspects of your life. As the weeks following the “finishing the closet” project passed without the required steps of trekking up and down with pants and tops slung over my arms, I also put off tackling the rest of what I had stockpiled in the basement. To sort through that one metaphorical box on which John’s name was written; to make decisions about it, as well as to confront its emotional debris; and then to give away anything that remained to a Goodwill that accepted grudges—or to put the past behind me––still didn’t seem an option.
But while shoveling snow late one afternoon, I found myself once again drawn to the image of that carton with the black Sharpie: What is the opposite of ‘forgive’? I wondered. The Toro whirred, like my thoughts, as I maneuvered the machine up and down our driveway. The antonym, of course, is “resent,” but until that moment I had not made the connection between these two words, particularly with regard to my feelings about John.
Jeez! I exclaimed, as the snow thrower threw another load over the pavement. Maybe resentment HAS been what I’ve been storing up for all these decades. Something additional occurred to me then: Maybe that also explains why I have never been able to call up any good memories of John. And with that, the scaffolding around what I now recognized to be my self-righteousness began to topple.
Later that evening, as I sat curled on a sofa near the fireplace, a recent conversation I’d had with a friend came to mind. We were talking about forgiveness, and she suggested that such was imperative for emotional growth. Without it, there can be no healing. Without it you remain stuck in the cellar, on your hands and knees, shuffling the same emotions from one spot to another .
As I stirred the logs in the fire, I remembered how adamant I had been in my assertion while talking with her: forgiveness, I had pointed out, shouldn’t necessarily be the goal when attempting to put a fractured relationship to rest.
“As a mother, I think forgiveness is overrated,” I’d said, with an edge to my voice. “There may be some wrongs, including those that are purposely perpetrated on one’s child, that just don’t warrant a pardon. And keep in mind, some wrongdoers don’t even perceive that they need to be forgiven. How do you forgive someone who is ignorant of the harm they’ve done?”
“Perhaps that’s the greatest test of all,” she’d answered with a smile. “And the most rewarding.”
Now, as I watched the flames, I sighed. Having identified my feelings toward John as ones of resentment, I felt hard-pressed to explain why forgiveness wasn’t actually a healthy goal. Who was benefiting by the way I had been holding so tightly onto my grudge? Certainly not the daughter to whom I had pledged my loyalty—though I had not been able to shield her from that emotional pain because it had taken me time to leave him behind and protect her. Certainly not me, the ex-wife caught in the trap of continually remembering painful emotions and events. Maybe it was time to finally let go of my grievances and move on.
This morning, after a night’s deep sleep, I discovered that what interests me now is doing the kind of emotional unpacking that might elicit a way of finding acceptance—not only for my former partner, but for myself, as well. And perhaps even to bestow some mercy upon us—mercy for all the ways in which we both had failed. I can see at last that this process could be as intoxicating as finally putting my clothes away in that newly painted closet.
