Away
“We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome.” —John Steinbeck
My father nicknamed me “The Bolter” after a character in a novel. Growing up I usually had an escape plan to disappear for a few weeks or a month, to leave home and often to do that alone. There was a need for finding unknown places and possibly to be surrounded by strangers. It wasn’t always easy or even fun but somehow there was a pay off for getting lost, for experiencing discombobulation and yes, loneliness.
photo by Anthony Tran
The culture of my family was intense, two Harvard graduates with the ability to spin stories that made them a fascinating thing to behold. However, as their youngest child I often felt outside and alone in all this brilliant repartee and then there was the threat of the drinking, that the wine at dinner would produce a whiskey-soaked terrifying display by my father, his anger leveled mainly at my mother, but the rage infused the house with danger. Often, I would clean the dishes and go outside to be really alone, not lonely surrounded by adults too self-involved to ever listen, outside where the danger would lessen.
This core loneliness, this desire to have an escape plan has manifested itself in things like always needing an aisle seat, requiring plans to have a firm start and a clear end, arriving at airports early and always being on time. Recently I have taken up Masters swimming and I leave the house at 6:30am, bag packed the night before to get there on time three times a week. Yes, there is discipline involved but it’s also my need to have order when so many things in my past were rarely predictable. While these habits might seem like the behavior of a control freak, I only apply these rules to myself. Other people can behave as they wish. When you are under the care of those who may or may not actually make sure you are safe and happy, you have to remain alert. Like my parents, I drank too much from the age of fifteen, but I combined this behavior with extreme control. They modeled extreme achievement with dysfunction. I graduated from college with a 4.0. Held a job that required my presence at 6am and never missed a day of work despite blinding hangovers.
Throughout I found ways to disappear. I lived in other countries, took trips alone, left relationships and frequently arranged to be in isolation, usually in someplace rural where no one knew who I was. Some interpreted this behavior as artistic. I remember traveling through Spain to visit a friend in Madrid. I was in a sleeper car on the top bunk with a Spanish family who spoke no English. I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of one of the children laughing in his sleep. I lay there listening to this and recognizing that no one knew me, no one knew where I was or where I was going, my identity was no longer fixed. It felt like absolute freedom but also alienation. For some people this would not be a pleasurable feeling but there is a part of me that needs to separate, to find an empty space and be alone or, at least, unknown. After all, I was a writer. Writers need solitude. But this was a lie. What I needed was to absent myself after ascertaining everyone else was happy, to walk away into the dark, alone but safe.
When a drunk driver killed my eldest sister, I met my father in the ER and we drove home to tell my mother she was not going to survive the accident. My first thought was, “I’m leaving.” I was tentatively sober and aware her death was going to crack open the seemingly wonderful life my family had projected. She was to me an anchor, the only person to recognize my drifting away, there to pull me back into the warmth of her love. As we passed Newark Airport on our way to Princeton, I saw a plane takeoff and thought about my escape. My father looked at me. “Don’t leave,” he said. “You have to help with your mother.” I was my mother’s special pet. No one comforted her better after a night when my father hit her.
This request signed my near death warrant. I would stay and try to help and become enmeshed in the chaos, the drama, the pain and yes, the love to a point I came close to committing suicide that Easter a month after she died and then proceeded to allow my life to unravel until I finally entered a twelve step program and found a therapist who believed me when I told her I fully intended to end my life. “You have to keep going to meetings,” she said. “And see me.” Those were dark days, but I recovered.
When my son was born, everything changed. Here was a love I could not compartmentalize or control. He was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. My attempt to remain separate , to keep an identity that allowed me to leave was no longer an option. Once I left him as a toddler to take a long postponed writing retreat and when we reunited, I saw how much I hurt him by leaving. He told me a long nightmare inspired story about a mommy going away and I promised I would stay, and I have. He grounded me forever and I accepted this as the price of a love I could not deny. Now, I have this family, my family, a wonderful husband, my son and his beloved and a fat Tuxedo cat named Rufus who demands consistent contact. At times I still walk into the night alone, stand and look back at the lights but then, always, I come home.
—Molly Moynahan, author and writing coach