New Kids on the Block and Saturday Night Live

During my “on-my-way-to-work-jam-session” as I like to call it- New Kids on the Block came on to my iPod. Usually I would skip the song and go to the next, but today I decided not to. I downloaded the NKOTB C.D. onto my iPod with the intentions of taking myself back. The second the song came through the speakers  small memories started coming back, the memorabilia I collected, the time when I had finally saved enough of my allowance to buy the NKOTB picture I had been wanting forever at the swap meet, but those were drowned by one particularly beautiful memory. My mother bought me the NKOTB concert video, and I watched that thing a million times. My parents had JUST separated, my mother was working two jobs, and now, as a divorced adult myself, I am realizing she was probably beyond overwhelmed with the reality that life as we all knew it, was changing. My sister was only three, but I had personally decided I would take on the responsibility of raising her, and in my seven year old brain that was what I was doing. …… One morning my mother was cleaning up the kitchen from breakfast. My sister was playing on the floor next to her, and I was, of course, watching my NKOTB video. My favorite song on the video was, “Please don’t go girl”… mostly because I liked the melancholy-mullet-ness/rat-tail look they had going on during this sad and sullen interval of the show. Don’t judge me; it was early the 90’s. I asked my mom to dance with me to the song assuming she was busy and would say no; but she didn’t. She came over to the living room and had me stand on her feet and we danced. I was able to be seven, and silly, and laugh with my mom. I was able to “take a break” from raising my sister and being serious and I was just a little girl, dancing with my mom in the middle of the living room to my favorite concert video.

In the middle of all that pain, there was beauty.

My grandpa died the summer before I started my junior year in high school. He truly was my hero. I loved him in ways I didn’t know how. The day he died I just felt, different. I didn’t crumble under the weight of the loss like I always imagined I would; but I walked out of the living room where I had gotten the worst news I’ve heard in my life to date, and I just knew life was different now. That feeling of being my grandpa’s little girl, even at 16, was gone. The day I got home from the funeral I met the boy who would be my first love. It was the typical teenage relationship, but he was my close friend for a long time.

In the middle of all that pain, there was beauty.

When I came home after leaving my husband, I had nothing to my name but my dog, a box full of MAC, and a broken heart. I was a waitress and college student and had left every piece of furniture, candle, and picture frame I owned at the home I left. The first few nights I was home I was sleeping on a mattress in the middle of my old room;the  first room I had all to myself. The room was familiar, There were the seashells my mother had painted on the wall, (no two the same) and thecurtains I had picked out to match the bedspread that i was so excited to pick out when we first moved in to the house......... I knew I was home. I knew I was in a place that was safe, where I wouldn’t be told to leave should I do something wrong, get in an argument with someone, break a vase or get home twenty minutes earlier than I said I would. I was home. But I was alone. I was supposed to be living with my husband, but he had other plans, so my plans changed. I had been home three nights when I finally let myself cry so hard I literally thought I would die. I was on the same mattress I l fell asleep on countless nights, dreaming of my wedding and decorating our home, praying for his safety in Iraq and looking at our pictures, but it was on the floor in the center of my room now, and he was gone. Two days after I cried, I came home and my parents had put a queen sized bed in my room. There was a black bedspread with all my leopard pillows I had left there. My heart was still broken, but I had a bed.

In the middle of all that pain, there was beauty.

I don’t know where the fear of pain began to outweigh the search for pleasure, but it did. I guess I got my heart broken enough times, got excited to see my Dad and something would fall through...again, came home to pictures being put in dresser drawers, missed out on being invited to enough events; was excited over an accomplishment only to share it with someone who wasn’t as excited, was chosen second by someone I had chosen first, left one too many voicemails..and it changed me. I didn't become defensive as much as protective. I let myself feel things, enjoy things, laugh with friends, and fall in love; but the whole time I am smiling there is the voice in the back of my head saying, “enjoy this, it’s going to end soon.”  I am always running, trying to escape the bottom dropping out. What intrigues me the most, is when I am happy, I am assuming the pendulum will soon swing the other way and I will be sad again...but why is it when I am sad I don’t prepare myself to embrace the happiness that will soon come my way. Does the pendulum only swing one way?

In a conversation  I had with Shee about this very thing recently, I mentioned that the balance comes when there is no preparation for sorrow in the midst of the happiness; there is no “losing” happiness because sadness has crept in; but finding a balance between the two. Crying when you need to cry but knowing soon you will laugh again. Meeting friends for coffee on days I’d rather crawl in bed and hide; enjoying the beauty of the air in my lungs and the breeze on my face during my run on days the world is too much for me.

Of course my life will have periods of sadness! What a gift from God to wake up and realize I have survived this “sadness” before, and I will be able to do it again. I have been alone on a mattress in the middle of my room, sad and broken hearted, but laughing at an episode of Saturday Night Live. My life can be a real mess sometimes, but it's a beautiful mess; and it is my mess.  The people I love will be sad, will struggle and experience heart ache, but my responsibility is not to exhaust myself trying to shelter them from the world, but to simply lie on the floor next to them when it is their turn to be knocked down.

I will be sad many more times in my life, of this I can be sure, but I am not afraid anymore. I have a God who is always with me, soul mate friends that will walk beside me, a sister who thinks I can do no wrong, even when I have, parents whose purpose on this earth is to love my sister and I, I have strength and courage that has been tested, and I have a mother who will let me stand on her toes to dance with me in the middle of the living room.

And in the middle of all that pain, there is beauty.