The Second Child - Session 5

(Beep. Music fades in)

I understand you better than I’ve let on. Or not. Maybe I was being up front with you. Or more up front than you would have liked me to be. At the end of the day, I really can’t be sure how you might have interpreted some of what I said to you. Or I could be if I looked harder than I have or would like to. But I won’t do that. And it’s nothing against you, really. You are a great person. I would have loved to be around you more or for that to have even been a possibility. I know it couldn’t have been. I don’t know why it couldn’t have been. Or I don’t know the full story. But there are bits and pieces that speak volumes. 

There is a family trauma that no living soul fully knows that I have only caught glimpses of. I was then asked to keep them to myself. He was genuine when he asked me. Or I think he was. And I guess that raises any number of questions or concerns about what comes next. If it would be easier to lie to the living once you’ve passed to on, assuming there would ever be a need to, assuming… (sigh) well, assuming a lot of things. But I don’t think we should assume that the opinions of the dead are more important than those of the living. The world we have now, the world we have inherited from them, is vastly different than the one that they knew. 

And yet, there is a temptation there, is there not? It would be easier to let them decide. Simply because it means a decision would have been reached without effort on our part. Without real expenditure. Without the same understanding of the risks involved. That’s what leads to fear. So without the fear. And without the sense of culpability.

But what do I think about that story? Well, my opinions are irrelevant. I don’t know enough of this story that is not mine to decide. But then again, I am a part of it now, aren’t I? I’m part of the next iteration, the epilogue that would never be recorded. Not all stories end when the book is closed, assuming the book is ever written.

And that makes both of us uncomfortable, right? This reality that pain and heartache can extend far beyond our sight and scope. On one hand, it means we cannot control the burdens we carry, and on the other, it means we could inflict far reaching and immense damage whether or not we ever meant to cause it. No one in your life has ever meant to hurt me, but there has been hurt. And I tried, genuinely tried, to protect your sister from so much of the hurt in my life, only to have it seep out and sting her all the same. And when I look back, it feels like a Greek tragedy, that so much heartache could be borne out of the act of trying to run away from it. In trying to escape, we created it. We created our own monsters by trying to slay them in the cradle. You could express it any number of ways, couldn’t you?

(Music fade out and new music fades in)

You know, I took a few classes on that subject, and you know what never came up that I was always kind of expecting. How predictable human nature has to be. If that wasn’t the case, how could the fatal prophecy hold, right? Or maybe I’m misunderstanding. The alternative to predictability is to think everything was inevitable, and that just feels so much worse. Because what’s the point then? What’s the point of gathering or holding or anything if it’s just going to fall away long before we can get ready for it. I understand our lives our finite but not this finite. 

Then again, we as creatures aren’t great at coping at all. Fight, flight, or freeze–that’s the main crux of our toolkit. And we might repackage any one of those things in any number of ways, but ultimately, if we want more, we have to learn more. We are not granted it at birth. And worse yet, no matter how hard we study or learn, we can’t automatically refer to some deep lesson in a moment of distress. We aren’t guaranteed the wisdom we gathered. The only things we will ever be guaranteed are fight, flight, and freeze.

But you might be thinking, “my self-loathing and inability to trust my own intuition is how I cope. It’s how I’ve always coped with any bit of stress, and that doesn’t fit your map.” But it does. Because you’re fighting yourself. You’ve made yourself the villain of your own tale, and you grow to resent yourself as a result. You grow to resent any small positive achievements or moments of joy because you think this will tip whatever cosmic scales are out there counter to whatever is right or just. And in that way, you’ve made your joy the author of all the miseries in the world. So of course you would fear it. Of course you would resent it. You attached a different meaning to it than it ever should have had, and now that habit is embedded deep within you. In your habits and frankly in your soul. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

But saying that won’t change much. Saying that won’t make you reimagine the world you have built around yourself. So no, I don't know what to do for you. I never really did. I offered you the same comforts so many had before all while knowing they wouldn’t really work. But it gets worse than that, doesn’t it? Did I present myself as the model to guide you out of the storm? Did I make you think I could show you some sort of map to navigate out of this mess? I don’t know. I knew you would find one appealing. Because I would have. I know you would have expected one because what else could you have expected? I let the silence mislead you, I think, though maybe I misled you outright. I’m sorry. But for once, you’ll blame a conflict on someone else and not yourself. You will blame me. And maybe that was all I could ever offer: a scapegoat, that for once in your life you will use.

Regardless, I am happy for you, about the things in your life that are worth happiness. Progress professionally, in finding a new job, and personally in a new home within the walls you’ve always known for a while and the small step I presented here. The rest of it, I assure you, is grief, and you can certainly hold these things simultaneously. I’ve done it. And I don’t think that was the source of all my problems. I think that was me. Just me.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

I used to think there was no way to be less broken, which is an odd way of phrasing it but hear me out. I used to think that everyone was born put together and would be put together until their were. Until life broke them. And no one would make it through life unscathed. But then there was you, shattered before your first breath by the trauma of your bloodline and then slowly pulled back together by your own will and the love of an actual support network. 

I had a support network. It was small but strong. And I’m stubborn, always stubborn. So maybe you would think I would be alright. Or there was a chance I would be alright. You could have shown me the way. But you didn’t. Not because you did anything wrong but because simply put, there are no simple narrative, no carbon copied stories. Especially not for me. 

(Music fades out. Beep)

The Oracle of Dusk is a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. It was written, edited, produced, and performed by MJ Bailey. And if you like the show, tell friends about it or the quasi-friends that are still on your social media feeds because social norms evolved before words did, am I right?