Tonight, I dropped off an invoice for a prints order to one of my photography clients on 12th avenue in Page, Arizona. Next, I thought I'd shortcut to my brothers house off of Sage Ave. by taking Grandview, Glen Canyon, and 10th avenues.
As I drove, I was hit with memories of all of the times I walked this exact route as a 15 year old sneaking out to go and see my 28 year old boyfriend.
I was all too familiar with tales adults would tell about their teenage years and how they believed they Knew it All, but life handed them a cold dose of reality as they grew older: that they did not, in fact, know anything.
I believed I was the exception to that rule. I believed I did know it all, that I was fully capable of making my own decisions and leading my own life unassisted. It was true that I had lived through an awful lot by then, very little of which was self inflicted.
I longed with every fiber of my being to turn 18 and fly from my mother's coop, to prove to all the unbelievers that I could live my own life. It was a day that felt like it would never come. Three years seemed an eternity to wait.
I have already been living in my trailer next door to my mother for three years as of today, and in three more years, I'll be turning 27. I have a three year old son, and he's my second child.
How small a timespan three years feels now.
I think the reason time feels faster and faster as we age, is because any given segment of time represents a smaller and smaller fraction of the amount of time we've been alive. The 5 hour drive to my Grandmother's that felt like torture when I was a toddler represented a much bigger fraction of my 4 years of life and memories than it does now at 23: it feels like a mere pleasure cruise to go visit her.
As time would have it, that day of freedom did come at last: and what happened next would prove all of my unbelievers absolutely correct. And as irony would have it, they were the very people I would run back to to begin repairing the damage done, with their assistance.
I never considered him to be an abuser, and myself to be a victim. I just thought him to be a deeply troubled man, and myself a strong young woman trying to renew his belief in things good and beautiful in this life.
A lot more time has passed, and I find more and more each day that I still don't know a whole lot. Though the landscapes of this region are my center, it's roads contain a very troubling past that likes to haunt me occasionally, and without warning. It's moments like these that I start imagining going some place new, and building a new life. But I suppose that's likely coming from the same naive voice within me that longed to turn 18 and do what I want.
One thing I can be absolutely thankful for is that the people in my life I was abusive to in my teenage state of "I know everything" forgave me, and took me back in. Perhaps they had gone through such a cycle themselves in their lifetime. If so, is it something most adolescents go through?
What can I do as a mother to help my someday-teens feel content in their needing more time to grow up?
How can I instill in them a sense of humility about their inexperience?