Don’t tell me how proud I should be

I know a few things.

I know that, as a society, we don’t talk about the bad stuff. Facebook and social media has made this 1000 times more apparent. But it was true before social media. It was true before the Internet. People ask how you are doing and you are expected to respond in the positive. No one REALLY wants to know how you’re doing.

And I know that, because we don’t talk about the bad stuff, we can feel pretty isolated. First because it can feel as if we are the ONLY ones walking through a particular struggle or pain. But also because, if we open up, no one knows how to respond.

Last weekend was college dropoff for the first child of mine to leave for college. It’s been hard for me, probably mainly because I have always been confident that it wouldn’t be. 🙂 I raise my kids to be independent. I don’t latch on, enable or baby. They can make food, do laundry and clean up after themselves as soon as they are able. They are expected to learn and work independently in our homeschool. They have college experience through dual credit courses so they aren’t new to college campuses, course expectations, homework load, etc. By all measurable means, I’ve spend years actively preparing them for this very thing. It never occurred to me that I would be sad. Maybe when the baby flies the coop I might get a little misty on my way out the door to travel the world. 😉

But I’ve never known anyone whose openly expressed more than a little sadness when their child has gone off to college than maybe what’s akin to your child’s first day in Kindergarten. A bittersweet day that comes and goes. So when I came home from our family vacation and shifted gears to prepping for The Big Move, no one was more surprised and off put than I when I felt thrown into crisis.

Wait. Wasn’t I supposed to feel pride? Excitement? After all, everyone kept telling me how proud I must be. And, to be fair, pride is what punctuated nearly all of the years I spent with this kid. Pride at his first steps, his first words, his first time as goalie stopping the ball in soccer, his academic accomplishments, his crazy puns, the bravery he faced scary medical situations in the last few years. SO much to be proud of.

So why do I want to punch everyone who dares suggest that I should replace my grief with pride right between the eyeballs?

As it turns out, no one warned me that the grief I might experience wouldn’t be concern about my child. It wouldn’t be worry for how he would do in school or whether he’d make friends or make it to class or party too much or have his stuff stolen. It may have looked that way as I busied myself with the preparation Mothers do to ensure the most success possible: the right school supplies, bike lock, dorm insurance and late night snacks. But the anxiety and grief I experienced came from somewhere else entirely.

It was all about me. And my loss. The loss of something I loved and held dear to my heart. Familiarity and the comfort of family and our routine. Even though this kid, in particular, was fiercely independent and spent most of his time in his room connected to friends via Skype or gaming at friends houses or running on his treadmill and I rarely saw him when he was here, I always knew he was here. He was a door knock away. He was always at the dinner table, bringing a smile to all of our faces with his goofy jokes and sarcasm, with his silly stories and random trivia. I didn’t want to lose that. I didn’t ask to lose that. I took for granted that it would just always be that way. I never stopped to consider that he might some day really be gone. That, as a result, the dynamic in our entire household would shift. I never once considered that the brothers who grew up thick as thieves, that share all the same friends and spent all their free time together, would some day live 500 miles away. I never thought about how it might affect the littlest family member who struggles with abandonment issues. I didn’t really think about the permanency of the situation. That he would be VISITING over holidays more than “coming home”. That he was launching his own life, separate from ours. While I was busy spending 17 years preparing him to do all of this successfully, I entirely forgot to prepare my own heart.

So while I know that people aren’t used to openness with regard to feelings in general and that they don’t REALLY want to hear anything other than “Great!” in response to polite queries about how I’m doing, I really really am so sick of hearing how proud I should, as if pride makes my own less less painful. I’ll spend the rest of my life feeling proud. For two seconds, I’m going to feel sad that my family has changed so dramatically, seemingly over night.