Waiting for Abysses

It is still often strange to me how far “off the rails” my present-day life has gone, at least in comparison to where younger me imagined that I would end up. She had planned her life very carefully. She was supposed to be a college literature professor, married to her high school sweetheart, with six adult children who all remained in the Mormon church and who all produced grandchildren for her to dote on. She would be planning now to head off on a senior Mormon mission. Yes, she intended to be a writer, but she was supposed to write “morally good books” that were more or less about Mormonism and designed to bring “people” to the “gospel” (ie convert people to Mormonism).

Not only are those not things that I want to do anymore, but they are things that I am actively embarrassed about and wish I could undo, though I’m aware that even that wish is a bit Mormon in its perfectionism. Present-day Mette is happy with her life right now. Genuinely, truly happy, if also aware that happiness is never a guarantee and that at any moment you think things are at a good place, the ground can be taken out from beneath your feet and you can be thrown into an abyss. I’ve hit bottom in abysses before and I wish that didn’t happen again. I would pay a lot for some kind of abyss insurance, but I don’t see any for sale that I would actually believe in. So, waiting for abysses is where I’m at. But also, truly enjoying the not-abyss I’m currently in.

My five adult children have all left Mormonism and I am single with no interest in dating again (for now). My sixth child died at birth and there are days that doesn’t bother me and days that I wonder how grief can still be so bad after twenty years and I’ve accepted this is how grief is (though I still hate it a lot). I will not be going on a Mormon mission or any kind of mission to save other people. I’m mainly working on saving myself. I briefly considered other kinds of “good work,” such as being a foster parent. Maybe I will want that again at some point, but for now, I am still trying to rebuild a broken life and a broken psyche.

I have decided that I am allowed to be that kind of selfish, the kind of selfish that prioritizes me having at least enough happiness that I find life more than tolerable, and at least some parts of life that make me thrilled to hear my alarm go off in the morning because I get to do things that I love doing (playing with baby Harry or working out or writing, for instance).

I care both more and less about financial security than I thought I would. More in that I know a lot more about what financial security means and less in that I find I don’t need a lot of the stuff I used to imagine I wanted to accumulate, from cars to vacation homes to an indoor swimming pool in my house. I wouldn’t reject those if they came to me, but I don’t really care about them, either.

But yes, it is still very strange to remember that if baby Mette were to encounter present-day Mette, she would be very judgmental about the choices she/I have made. She would not think that she had achieved her goals. She would be disappointed in me. And I try to be at peace with that. Sometimes I think that baby Mette was forced into a too-small box and tortured into giving up who she really could have been in order to serve others and the institution of the Mormon church. Other times, I think that she led me to exactly where I want to be now, so I should thank her for all that hard work.