Surface Tension

Goddamn.

I just deleted several paragraphs of not-funny, not-particularly-well-written updates on my friends. Despite what I'm sure are top-notch prayers and good vibes from you all, things aren't well. One's husband is dating, not quite two months after moving out. The other is having a miscarriage of a longed-for pregnancy. I feel sad and helpless and guiltily lucky, but also like the membrane separating my (currently quite good) life from their (currently quite awful) situations is very thin, indeed.

I don't remember feeling like this before. When I was younger and I'd hear about awful things, I would lock right into catastrophic thinking and have horrible fantasies about it happening to me. But at the same time, I also had this deep-down belief that it wouldn't, couldn't happen to me. It helped that I only heard about these kinds of tragedies on TV or in books or second-hand through a friend. At 25, I'd never been to a funeral other than an elderly grandparent. I'd never been struck in anger by a parent or partner. I was healthy. I was loved. I was white and middle-class, too, which couldn't have hurt in terms of sheltering me from some of life's ills.

While my anxious nature always imagined the worst and could whip me into a panic just by reading an installment of Reader's Digest "Drama in Real Life" (which, really, I should have known better), I never really felt fragile. My uneventful life, full of love and stability (and, to be fair, very few risks on my part), plus what was probably some youth-fueled sense of invincibility, combined to make this wall between me and tragedy. I understood intellectually that I couldn't protect myself from Life, I also had faith in that wall to do so. I guess you could call this innocence. Or naivete. Or stupidity. You know, depending on how mean you wanted to be.

I don't have that anymore. Not long after I turned 25, a lot of things happened. In a 15-month period: two co-workers lost children (one, an infant, died of congenital abnormalities, the other was 11 and hung himself), 9/11 happened, my mom was diagnosed with stage IV cancer, a friend's five-year-old daughter who had been in remission with leukemia relapsed and died, and a 4-year-old in the day care center (for kids who were HIV+) died of AIDS.

Well, Jesus. When I see it written out like that, I guess it's no wonder that that's about the point I remember feeling that wall start to crumble. I haven't even mentioned the panic attacks or the bike accident or when I broke my foot. Of course, good things happened in there, too. I got a dog. I got married. I found a day job that changed my life and steered me toward what would become my career. I don't remember that time in my life as being particularly sad or dark. It's just that I can look at that time as when I stopped feeling like "Eek! What if this Bad Stuff happens?!" and more like, "Yes. This stuff is going to happen." Not in an Eeyore-y, doomed way, but more resigned. Less innocent.

I no longer feel like there is a wall between me and tragedy. I feel like there's a soap-bubble membrane and right now I'm on the good side, the side where I can be a good friend to those on the other side that need me. Where I can count my blessings and remember that I'm lucky to have a loving, supportive, faithful husband (even if he gets weirdly proprietary about his washcloths) and a healthy, smart, laughing dancing walking baby (even if he has decided he can go down to one nap a day, parents' needs be damned). But I know that it wouldn't take much for me to fall through to that other side.

I don't mean to sound depressed or passive and resigned. That's not it. But neither is it some carpe diem, live-life-for-the-moment thing, not for me. It's more about the realization that life is brutal and beautiful and you have to have both. So instead you just accept the risks and go forth anyway. Not always boldly, not even always willingly, but because that's just how the game is played. And you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have....no, wait, that's The Facts of Life theme song. My bad.

I guess for me it's just about being wildly, quietly grateful in these moments and doing what I can for people on the other side, knowing that inevitably we will some day switch places.