Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road
I love the lyrics/story in the song, Yellow Brick Road, by Elton John. It’s a story of breaking free from societal expectations and going back to your roots, regardless of how low-end they may look from certain vantage points.
It’s been 21 years since I met my ex-husband. Twenty-one years of confusion, disillusionment, fear, manipulation, complacency, codependency, and lies. Granted, there were good times and laughter, and I vacillate between being grateful for and regretting ever meeting him. My whole life, I wanted to be a mom, and with him, I was able to fulfill that dream. I couldn’t have ever asked for kids that are so multi-faceted, multi-dimensional, emotionally intelligent, empathetic, and just a joy to watch grow into adults.
My ex often tells me I stole his ability to parent from him, and in some ways, he would be telling the truth. My brother talks about the concept of nature vs nurture, the idea that even though there are genetic predispositions toward behavior, environment and experience can affect those predispositions. I call it breaking generational hand-me-downs. There are those of us who were raised in environments that weren’t ideal, and from that, one group believes that because they turned out “okay”, the way they were raised is perfectly fine to carry on through generations. Another group believes that just because you were able to (somewhat) overcome the way you were raised, is that really what you want to carry on? Why is it seemingly a joke to say you want to give your children something to need to talk about in therapy?
I didn’t want my kids to have additional baggage to carry through their life. I didn’t want my kids to need to wrestle with needing to cut me off to set a boundary. I didn’t want my kids to question whether or not they were fully loved, as they are, for who they are, and they weren’t required to think as I do. I never wanted them to fear telling me the truth, regardless of whether I agreed with it or not. We often lie out of fear: fear of getting caught, hurting someone else, or not living up to someone else’s expectations. Obviously this is not a one hundred percent, across the board reason.
It took 21 years to finally get the truth out of my ex, and I’m sure I’ll never know the full truth. I still find myself filling in the blanks and creating my own storyline as to why the relationship was so tumultuous. Maybe the stories I tell myself to fill in those gaps are true, maybe they’re just something, anything, to create a form of my own Kintsugi to repair the cracks created in my mind.
21 years later, I realized that he is a master manipulator. I confronted him about the fallacies he used when pursuing me early on, and later, in his pursuit of other women. The things he promised me that didn’t happen. The picture he painted of himself and a life with him that was false. In his own words, he replied, “I say things that I think will sound good to get a result that I want. I figure it’ll work and stick with someone. I pay attention to what they tell me in the beginning, and what I think women want to hear, and say those things”. Jesus Fucking Christ. Why was I so horrified to hear those words coming from him, knowing full well that there are many people who do the same thing? Because I’m idealistic. That’s it, full stop. If you tell me something, I’ll believe it, and even if I find out you’re lying, I will come up with reasons as to why you needed to lie. I want so desperately to see the good in others that I will contort my own mind to make it make sense. St. Thomas Aquinas once said, “I would rather believe pigs can fly, than that my brothers would lie to me”.
Just a few short days after I extracted the truth from him, he flipped on me. For days, I was inundated with texts berating me, and of course, putting his new person on a pedestal.
It stung, hard.
But so be it.
Because remember when Toto pulled back the curtain in Oz Castle, and revealed the Wizard, only to find out it was just a man using smoke, mirrors, and theatrics?
Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road. I’m taking my heart, brain, and courage with me.
