The Gift

When I was a little girl, getting gifts confused me. So much expectation -- I think I hoped those brightly colored boxes would hold what I knew intuitively was missing -- though I didn't understand at the time that what was missing doesn't come in a box.

As a result, I couldn't wait to open them, and often I didn't wait. My sister reminded me this weekend that I used to find the Christmas presents my mom had wrapped and hidden, unwrap them, look at them, and wrap them back up. Inevitably, after I opened presents, whether at the appointed time or before then in secret, I felt let down. Even when what was in the box was exactly what I'd wanted, I would feel the emptiness return after I opened it.

I feel so fortunate to be in a stage of my life where gifts have both taken on less importance and seem to match better with what I am feeling and experiencing inside. Case in point: my (then) boyfriend got me a present this year that was too big to wrap, so when he brought it over, he put it in the basement. I could easily have snuck downstairs to see it, but I didn't peek, and it wasn't even that hard for me to resist. I was hoping it was a road bike, but I also thought it might not be, so I just reminded myself not to get my hopes up. That wasn't hard either -- I already have so much more of what I want than I did when I was a kid.

Turns out, it was a road bike, a wonderfully fast bicycle complete with a seat selected especially for my comfort. Climbing on that bike, I felt a perfect symmetry between the birthday gift I'd been given and the way I (and my ass) were generally revered (nearly) every day of our relationship. Far from the familiar feeling of let down I'd experienced in my youth so many times, this felt reinforcing, affirming, comfortable, GOOD.

I'm not gonna lie, it's a little tough that the day after my birthday, my bicycle bequester was no longer my boyfriend. But it isn't because he doesn't love me. Nope. And I'm going to be reminded of that every time I jump on that saddle.

The perfect gift indeed -- check out Annie as herself and as the Diva with her take on the mixed emotions that follow us out of childhood and into relationships and sometimes ultimately drive us out of them, regardless of our desires or intentions:

Darling don't you understand, I feel so ill at ease
The room is full of silence and it's getting hard to breathe
Take this gilded cage of pain and set me free
Take this overcoat of shame, it never did belong to me

It never did belong to me...

I need to go outside, I need to leave the smoke
'Cause I can't go on living in this same sick joke
It seems our lives have taken on a different kind of twist
Now that you have given me the perfect gift

You have given me the gift...

And we have fallen from our shelves
To face the truth about ourselves
And we have tumbled from our trees
Tumbled from our trees...

And I can almost...
I can almost hear the rain falling
Don't you know it feels so good
It feels so good...
So let's go out into the rain again
Just like we said we always would

Why

Yesterday I had the somewhat surreal experience of sitting at a cozy coffee shop in front of a fire explaining why I got divorced to someone who herself went on a couple of dates with my husband while separated from her own husband, to whom she has since returned. Yes indeed, that was one complex sentence -- but modern love is pretty damn complex.

Why, she asked, did we decide to split up? There were a couple of levels of discomfort for me in this conversation -- one of them being the difficulty in finding authentic words with which to answer honestly but not in a way that villainized my ex-husband -- and the other being the difficulty in hearing another woman say: "I just couldn't leave my child(ren)."

In response to the second, I said, simply: "I can understand that. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do."

And in response to the first, well, I tried to explain that what it came down to, for me, was the fact that when we were first together, he SAW me -- in that beautiful way that enabled me to be an even better version of myself -- and then it seemed to me that he wanted to keep seeing that exact same person, and when that wasn't what he saw -- when I changed -- he, out of fear, disappointment, old wounds -- who knows? -- but for whatever reason he stopped being able to really see me in a way that felt life-affirming to me.

This song was huge for me when I split up with my husband -- and apparently I'm not alone -- Annie's introduction in this video talks about how this song resonates with people who've been through a divorce.

I love all the lyrics to this song and have, on numerous occasions, screamed them, tears streaming down my face, usually while driving in my car -- but this part of the song contains the real emotional catharsis for me:

And these are the years that we have spent

And this is what they represent

And this is how I feel

Do you know how I feel?

'Cause i don't think you know how I feel

I don't think you know what I feel

I don't think you know what I feel

You don't know what I feel