Finding the Self: Identity and Serenity

“If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” — Audre Lorde

Am I still a daughter after my parents have died? I am mulling this issue of identity with the new relationship, a granddaughter born to my only child. He is now a father, and I am still his mother, but that role has moved into the shadows while this new history is formed. I can remember the wonder of him, the shock of understanding my life no longer mattered more, the intensity of love I had never experienced.

photo by Bonnie Kittle

As a child, my parents seemed to use up most of the oxygen, which was fine with me as they were glamorous, brilliant, and frankly, dangerous. It was dangerous to hope for emotional support, it was dangerous to fail, it was dangerous to be uninteresting or to fall in love with someone they deemed unworthy. Their relationship was volatile and I often thought I wanted to exist in a vacuum because love hurt. And how I loved them, my difficult, powerful mother and my literary genius father, both of them channeling the strength and tragedies of their ancestors. We were never far from the Irish famine or the painful troubles of Northern Ireland in their collective memories.

I have been a wife three times, this time is the last with a happy marriage based on reality, the reality that nothing can fill the well of loneliness I apparently inherited along with the good hair and cheekbones, the bunions, and the love of books. Before that first marriage I had been a girlfriend dozens of times, quick to give up, motivated by a longing to disappear, a longing I accept as a part of who I am. I am a sister to a dead sister, a sister to a living one, an aunt, a cousin, a friend, possibly a role model to  students who I taught over the years, possibly not. In recovery I accepted the obligation to survive. Until then I hurtled towards the abyss, eager to turn off the lights, end the façade that I knew how to live.

I want to move through this part of my life with grace and good humor. The benefits of aging, self-acceptance, experience, perspective, outweigh the indignities of new lines, an awareness of my body’s transformation, becoming invisible, witnessing and experiencing great loss both global and personal. I understand why I briefly considered becoming a full-time Buddhist living in a monastery, cutting my hair, wearing robes and ceasing to strive for literary recognition, content to sit, chant and construct an identity based on non-attachment. But what brought me there, to that silent refuge was grief and longing, grief for the dead, and a longing to be desired by my Buddhist teacher, an awareness I might never know serenity.

I am very attached. To my cat, my husband, my son, my new grandchild, my sisters, my parents, my friends, and this flawed and difficult world that shows such brutality to the weak. What is most difficult is finding the means to accept my own humanity, my envy and fear, my reluctance to be honest, the longing for security, the fact that after four decades of sobriety I can still crave obliteration, still reject my need to be connected. But with all the flaws comes the possibility of renewal, the discovery that I am enough as I am while self-improvement, better swim time, less sugar, more gratitude, is always possible. And to that little girl I say, “I will be here for you until the end of my life, no matter what.”

– Molly Moynahan