My hub is reading Stephen King’s latest novel, “11/22/63,” which is about a guy from the present who finds a way to travel back in time. He goes back and forth for a while, finally lands in 1958 and decides to stay for five years and prevent the assassination of JFK.
He believes this will right history, that things will be better if he can accomplish this. The catch is that he can’t go back to his present time once he has, since that will “reset” whatever he has changed.
This idea is especially interesting to me, since I have often thought back on my life and wondered “what if?” What if my boyfriend had married me in 1969 and we had kept our son? What if I had fought the powers that were and found a way to keep my baby, even if all on my own? (I had several plans for that, but never acted.) What if I had stayed with this or that guy, taken this job or that one, majored in something else in college, taken a different path in any aspect of my life?
Some of these became regrets, which I have fought hard to overcome. Lately, they have become simple wonderings.
Because we can’t go back and see how things would have been if we’d made a different decision. There’s no point in trying to change the past. Can’t be done. It is what it is.
Oh, how I struggled with this when I first met my son in 1996. I loved him so much and was so saddened by how troubled he was. As I wrote about in: Second-Chance Mother, I obsessed over the “what if’s,” imagined that he would have better off with me instead of his adoptive family, even though I couldn’t prove it. He might have even been worse off, a clueless 19-year-old with no family support. Although I have never wanted to believe that, which led to more regrets.
A few years ago, I stopped beating myself up over what I did or didn’t do. In the midst of my son increasing his beating up of me on that issue.
Perhaps if his beating up had stopped at the same time, we’d still be in touch and seeing each other. I’d always had a hard time setting and sticking with boundaries. It worked fairly well with my mother. Not so with my son.
How will I know when he’s truly let go of the past, accepted what is, and wants to move on from here?
I am still very cautious.
2 comments:
Oddly this posts reminds me of the concept of our shadow selves. I may blog about it as I think you may have given me a writing prompt.
What I mean, in summary, is that when you were beating yourself up, he wasnt. When you stopped, he started. Dark and light psychological shadowing going on here. Very interesting to me.
Fascinating, Suz. I'll look forward to reading that post.
My relationship seems to me very push-pull. I wonder if shadowing is somewhat like that.
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