Whenever I'm alone with you, you make me feel like I am free again

You can't go back. All yesterday this thought was running through my head. DH and I actually went out to dinner alone last night, finally getting to use a gift certificate my friends gave to me as a birthday present back in April. (This is a huge thing as one of the things I have been terrible about is setting up times for DH and I to go out by ourselves. This of course means getting a babysitter or some other form of childcare, one of the more difficult aspects of parenting as far as I'm concerned. Just think about all those TV shows you see where there are supposed to be children in the family. Somehow it never really keeps any of the characters from doing exactly what they want when they want it. There's a nanny or an ultra reliable babysitter or family around ready and willing to take your babies whenever you don't want them anymore. Oh if only that were true. Listen up those of you without children: This is a fanatsy!!!!! Finding a reliable babysitter is not easy and they cost a ton of money and most people I know have no family around to help them. But anyway, this is beside the point and just my particular rant for today. A good friend of mine, as part of my birthday present, came over to watch the kids while we went out and I am very thankful for good friends like these.) And for the most of the afternoon and throughout this dinner date DH and I talked about times and places we had been in our lives where things were easier or more fun or were just plain times we wish we had again. But you can't go back.

Yes, you say, of course you can't. We all know that. Really? Do we? Or do we spend our lives trying to relive that one perfect moment or series of moments? Recently I have felt myself fighting this tendancy a lot. I would love to go back to a time where I just KNEW my marriage was wonderful, healthy and thriving and I didn't have to worry about it so damn much. I would love to go back to a time where I knew nothing about the world of Autism. Knew nothing of therapy and special education, perseveration and sensory integration. I would like to be able to be free occasionally to read a book when I wanted, grab a cup of coffee at a Starbucks and talk for hours, or take a moonlit walk in a garden. None of these things are possible right now. That's not to say I'll never be happy again. Or even that I'm not happy right now. But it is to say I could spend significant portions of my day trying to live back into a time when those things were possible and become frustrated and bitter that I couldn't go back.

And it is so easy to become stuck. If I believe in a "devil" at all, I would say the devil is that spirit that tells you to think, agonize, daydream, and cry over what was and can never be again. There is value in doing this to some extent. I am a champion wallower when the spirit strikes me. You have to go through the stages of grief to get to the other side. You have to be angry, feel despair, feel your fear, but in the end you have to let those go if you are to move on. And truly moving on often means you have to think outside of the box you've been living in. The box that tells you that you CAN'T do something or the box that WON'T let you begin to see another life where you can in fact be better, just as happy, or even happier than you were in that time of place you so desperately want to get back to.

I know DH would often like to go back to thise days when we were undergrads or graduate students. Times when we had all the time in the world to just think and play and BE. With two kids, a career, a house, and everything else, it just doesn't seem possible to do those sorts of things. And there are ways in which it is not possible to do these things. And so you could easily get lost in simply wishing you could go back to that place in time. You could spend time trying to recreate that exact time and place and those exact feelings only you would NEVER succeed. For nothing is ever how it was. Nothing can ever be exactly experienced again. No moment, no matter how beautiful, can be captured to live again and again. You can only make more moments.

And it is the making of more moments that is most difficult. For you need to let go of the old moments, taking the beauty from them that you can, and think in a new way. This might mean something as simple as finding some reliable childcare so you can get out once in awhile, or as difficult as changing homes, finding a new job, or letting go of a relationship. It isn't easy. But if we try to go back, we will only be dissapointed.

"I never thought you were a fool
But darling look at you
You gotta stand up straight
Carry your own weight
These tears are going nowhere baby


You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment
And now you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better
Now you're stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it"
-U2-