Inner Workings discussion

I just want to be ok, be ok, be ok
I just want to be ok today.

-Ingrid Michaelson

Driving to pick up my kids from various friends’ houses yesterday, I heard the song Be OK playing on the radio. The repetition of the lyrics – the singer wants only to be “ok” – reminded me that during immense change in life, sometimes all you can really ask for is to be okay on any given day.

The last time my life changed radically – as in, became difficult, it was not of my making. I had to figure out how to roll with huge punches, month after month, year after year, as my parents went through a painful divorce. My father left my mother; my mother did not want the divorce, and by the time any dust had settled my father had moved in and out of our house 13 times that first year as they tried to figure out what they wanted. I was 14, head spinning at the sidelines as my life changed radically on nearly a weekly basis.

There are things I know I learned during that time, and as it turns out, things I didn’t know I was learning, too.

Most importantly, I think I learned to lower my expectations of what any given day might bring. I learned that to just get through the day, to just survive, was an accomplishment. That when you really strip it down to the bone, that’s just about all you can ask of yourself.

I learned that life marches on even in the face of tremendous change. You still have to do homework, eat, sleep, have time with your friends, even laugh occasionally. To give up – to resign oneself to not treading water in your life is to sink, to die, to choose defeat.

I learned that sometimes, the very doing of those daily mundane things can help to pull me out of resignation, out of pain, out of believing that life is horrible and can never be good again.

I learned how to be strong, I learned how to survive, it could be said.

I learned that love can live and love can die, and that it can die for one person but not the other. (I learned that one over and over again, actually.)

Then, there are the things I didn’t know I was learning. I was learning that my bootstrapping attitude was a really effective way to avoid facing how I was really feeling. I learned that it is easier to tend to the problems of others than it is to face your own. I learned that taking care of other people is so satisfying that you can fool yourself into believing that the doing of it is to take care of yourself too. I learned that no one could take care of me but me, and I learned that even me taking care of me is overrated. I learned that to keep my feelings inside is safer, because feelings are messy and hard to deal with, especially when you only have yourself to rely on.




So here I am, 22 years later at a crossroads of my own making that is, at its core, about me facing my real emotions and feelings – really facing them -- about love dying, about fundamental personal change, about a different kind of future.

I never thought I would be here, in this place – for so long I have worked to have a peaceful personal revolution without affecting anyone else. I am the peacemaker, the hugger, the soft place to fall. I keep everything on an even keel. I take care of everything, keep everyone happy, keep life humming along. And now, I have gone and created a situation in which I have to work that much harder to play my role – the always okay one.

While I can and will be the okay person everyone needs me to be right now because I know I am strong enough, I do see that, once again, life is stripped to the bones of simple, reflexive, bare function. Once again, when I am alone at night, it is the struggle to simply be okay with myself. Oddly, it is at those moments when I am most at peace.

There are differences, though. This time, I have people around me to support me, challenge me, love me and get me through it. This time I am an adult, taking responsibility for the effects of my choices, and completely comfortable in that. I am stronger, not afraid -- ironically, because this time I’m not hiding from how I feel.

This time there is the knowledge of what lay on the other side. Not greener grass, not an easier life. Just a different one.

And so it is, every day, I only ask that I be okay enough to get through whatever that day brings. For now, that’s enough.

"The last time my life changed radically, ...I think I learned to lower my expectations...

...this time I’m not hiding from how I feel."

When you go from believing you don't deserve anything good, to knowing that what people think of you doesn't matter, you are really beginning to live your life as it was intended.

Without change, there can be no growth. And with growth, there is usually pain. But you'll always be happier if you're doing what you love the most.

That's sad, touching, and inspiring. Beautiful.