When you have reaced a certain age, and your love has not come back to you in quite the way that you expected, you enter what can only be described as a looking-glass world. Having invoked this metaphor I do not know that I can sustain it, but then that is part of the point of this musing. We form our alliances and judge each other based on the degree to which our interactions match the master narratives in our minds, and when someone's performance fails to adhere to the character progression and through line that we have assigned, we feel betrayed. We experience cognitive dissonance, and we have to abandon either the narrative or the relationship to keep our world whole. Either way, there is a price to be paid, both in the weight of broken dreams and the distance between you and the communities of functioning people in which you once felt yourself to be a member.
I should be clear, before I go further, that the love of which I am speaking is not necessarily romantic love, although that, too, can be part of the picture. The failure of a marriage, with or without the actual bill of divorcement,casts you into your own unreality show, even though it happens every other wedding day. No, I am speaking of a deeper disconnect -- the sense of isolation that comes when those closest to you reject your vision and values -- or worse yet -- can't see you past their own pain over what your illness has made of you.
Mothers supposedly go through an identity crisis when their children come of age, because they have to redefine their place in the world beyond that of baby-raising. Men, traditionally, are thought to experience a similar crisis when they retire, because they were taught to measure themselves by their work.
But what is the name for the crisis that ensues when you still have the responsibility of supporting and nurturing a family, and the skills to earn the money to do it, but each day, your body loses the ability to function independently? And let's say you come up with a creative solution, right out of Kate and Allie or Full House, and you co-house with a friend or two who are willing to help you raise your children so that you can maintain some independence and dignity instead of going on disability and putting yourself on welfare, the way the social worker told you you would have to before you could get affordable housing. Well, now, you've stepped outside the narrative for your life, and the world must find a new way to construct you.
Did the writing staff at Kate and Allie ever consider doing a show about the possibility that neighbors, landlords, employers, relatives might think they were lesbians? (The point here not being the nature of their private relationship, but the need that the world's need to categorize and sort, accordingly.) Would their newfound realization of the straitjacket that is heterosexism turn them into activists, or push them inward from the world, lest they find themselves even more directly targeted?
Or perhaps Allie could become partially incapacitated -- you know, a semi-IN-VAL-ID, so that neighbors could decide that Kate was her caretaker, or her mother or, or, what exactly? And what toll would it take on their friendship, and how would it change them?
And what would Allie's children do as they struggled to translate her example on to their able-bodied lives?
And how would Allie age -- what would she look forward to -- she who had read "Goodbye, Mr. Chips," as a child, and who had imagined old age in a quiet cottage on he edge of some campus, filled with the delights of reading, and accented by regular visits from friends and some timorous new student full of awe and shining with possibility? What would happen when crooked spine made people think her decades older than her real age, and the only cottages in her financial reach were in places where even the able-bodied fear to tread? How would she maintain character, hold fast to her connections to life and community?
Perhaps she herself would become the Cheshire Cat, her presence marked only by her cryptic voicings and the shadow of her ephemeral smile.
Labels: health, life, relationships
