Grief, Regret, Adoption, and Freedom
In The Passenger, Cormac McCarthy wrote, “Grief is the stuff of life. A life without grief is no life at all. But regret is a prison. Some part of you which you deeply value lives forever impaled at a crossroads you can no longer find and never forget.”
This was one of many sections that literally flattened me. I had to put the book down and lie on my bed as if a truck had run me over and somehow not crushed my head and squished out my brains. This book is breathtaking. I was lost until about the middle and then I saw what McCarthy was doing, and I started reading in teaspoonfuls because I don’t want to get to the end for many reasons. (One reason is I’m scared about what he has to say about the state of the world. Another reason is that I’ll never get to read this book again for the first time.)
Instead of continuing to read, I thought I’d take a break and write about what McCarthy had to say about grief and regret. Emily Dickinson said she knew a poem when the top of her head flew off, so those lines I quoted above must be a poem if what Dickinson said applies to all writing.
I realized I have considered grief a thing to process, to get rid of, a thing a person is not supposed to have in their suitcase or heart forever. I thought it was something you were supposed to process, learn from, and then move on to some other emotion, like, uh, happiness. I mean, how many people have asked me whether writing You Don’t Look Adopted helped me process my grief? More than one.
I came to believe it was my duty to process grief so I didn’t burden other people with it. I wanted to be the friend with rainbows shooting out her butt so people would feel maybe they didn’t need that trip to Disneyland after spending a little time with me. Being an adoptee taught me that one of my jobs was to be like an air freshener of happiness that got plugged into a household to make the environment nicer. Living with beliefs like this was confusing. Being adopted and feeling like my job was to be good was like feeding me a huge serving of cabbage and telling me farting is not allowed, only lavender scented puffs of air. My body and mind can’t always be what others consider good. I gotta rip one sometimes, you know?
Regret was something I thought I was morally obligated to feel. I thought it showed I was good. Like, I regret dropping out of college three times and costing my parents all that money. I regret messing up with my biological family and being a jerk. I regret the ways I wasted my “potential” when I was growing up. After reading what Mc Cormac wrote, I saw the timeline of my life, and I saw how the places marked by regret were like trigger points in a body, places of stored pain, places of blockages. Places where energy stagnated and maybe came to die.
If I were to flush out regret, think of all the energy that would free up! I’d bust out of a prison I’d been calling my life! My brain would not have to keep a grip on those fisted hands of refusal to move on. To live without regret could mean I know I tried and that I am free to fall and fail and try again without beating on the bars of my cell with my head. Regret could be like gas, something to experience, learn from, and pass.
Nothing like fart jokes to this 12 year old.
By the way, The Passenger is rife with really bad, crude jokes. I was so shocked at the first one I read it three time. Brilliance AND bathroom humor?? What more could I ask for?
