What the Stars See

Note: I wrote this piece some years ago for a small college writing competition – and won first place!

And an update: this piece just won First Place in an online competition put on by Story Circle Network  – thank you SCN for honoring women’s stories.

                    “We too, like trees can shake off our dead leaves and begin again.” ― A.Y. Greyson

     “I don’t want to do this, but I have to,” he said. He held me tight for a moment, and then the taxi arrived.

I watched him roll his suitcase down the driveway, greet the driver, get in the backseat. With the interior light on, I could see his strong profile, resolute, staring straight ahead. The light went off, and I wondered if, in the safety of darkness, he allowed himself to have one last look at me. If he did, what did he see? A woman standing in her nightgown in an open doorway at 1:00 a.m. Hollow eyes, wet cheeks, arms hanging limp at her sides. A woman he loved? A woman he hated? A woman he already felt no connection to?

The taxi started to roll, I could hear the sound of the engine diminishing. Through the leafy oleanders I could see the taillights disappearing. At any moment I thought they might flash brighter red as he said, “Stop! I changed my mind.” But they continued out of view. At any moment I thought the growl of the engine might grow louder as he said, “Turn around please! I’m not going.” But the night was silent except for the lonely calls of birds, and the only light was the vast ceiling of tiny stars in the sky. Stars that have seen it all.

In school I studied Erik Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development. I learned how the things that happen in our childhoods can impact us for the rest of our lives. How unmet needs for safety, attachment, industry and self-esteem can damage our ability to succeed or to form healthy bonds. Yet we have relationships anyway. We wear masks to cover our holes and leave only those for eyes, food and air. And when we come to our partners in those masks, with all the hidden voids just waiting to be revealed, the relationships can continue horribly, or end terribly.

Erikson’s message is that at each stage there may be human tasks that we couldn’t master. Because our parents weren’t perfect, they did it as it was done to them. They visited their developmental holes upon each other and us, however much they didn’t mean to. Raw sores with jagged edges and unhealed infections. And then we inherit their wounds and bring them to our lovers and children.

But I have to believe that there is hope. The only solution I know involves work. The work of healing ourselves, filling those holes. The work of tending to those ragged tags of emotional gangrene. It hurts. It can be ugly. It can mean picking off scabs, making them bleed again, sometimes letting the poison pus out. Magic can’t do it. Only work.

My lover who left is very smart, but not smart enough to know that he needs to do the work. He runs. Even when he stays here.

Work can mean different things. Counseling, sometimes medicine. Spirituality, nature. Meaningful labor. Helping those less fortunate. Choosing quality friends and lovers. Healthy care of our bodies. Nurturing touch. Talking. But the healing has to fit the trauma. If he did not attach with his mother, then his job is not going to fill the hole where that first loving bond should have been. If she were abandoned by her father, then sacrificing for her men is not going to give her the sustenance she has most needed.

I’m no genius, but I will be heading back to work, because learning and then trying are what have brought me the farthest in my quest to be better. As much as I want to, I hope I won’t ask him to come back, because calling him back when he hasn’t done the work would only end the same way.

I still ache for him, though. Just like in the songs, everything reminds me of us. That tapas restaurant where we giggled over chorizo and olives and too much wine. The time in Yosemite, the river so cold that he heated water and washed my hair. Earthquakes and rainy days. His hearty laugh; his brooding anger. His voice at my ear, my soft moans into his neck.

I know it will take time, but eventually the hurt will fade, molecule by molecule, like the lights of his cab slowly rolling away.

I know because the stars that have seen everything tell me it is so.