Originally published Feb 2, 2009
I recently ran across this post and decided it was worth a re-post.
Recently as I've been writing about my miscarriages again, it's gotten me to thinking about loss of innocence. Not in the dirty sense (geeze, what do you take me for?!), but in the sense of a specific event that was a turning point--a point at which you changed, and could never go back to who you had been before. An event that made you older in a way that the simple passage of time cannot.
For my mother it was losing her baby to SIDS. It's easy to pinpoint if you look at photographs--in that year her face aged. She began to get wrinkles. Her eyes showed that she knew something more. Her body lost it's youthful resilience. She looked more tired.
One might credit those changes to the fact that she had 4 other small children, or that she turned 30 that year, or that after a 5th pregnancy the body just doesn't bounce back so well anymore... but I can attest that it was not those things; it was the loss of innocence. I know, because my loss of innocence occurred when I was only 22; it was my first miscarriage.
What was yours?
Or are you still innocent?
I'll have to think back in a few years, but I'd say my experiencing PTSD after giving birth was a turning point for me. In a sense my eyes were opened to just the sort of societal pressure that mothers face. I wonder if it has made me jaded. I'm sure some think I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist.
ReplyDeleteEdit my previous post.
ReplyDeleteThere was another time in my life where I did exactly what you described your mother doing after her baby died of SIDS.
It was when I was 14, and I moved out of my parents house to escape my father whose bipolar disorder was out of control. I saw a picture of myself from that time a few years later, and I look haunted and much older than my years. I had seen a level of suffering in life that had changed me in some fundamental way.
I don't know that I've had a pivotal moment that has aged me. In my adult years, getting a child like my oldest who was just 100x harder to parent than my youthful mind pictured parenting to be may be my moment though. I went through 3 years of hell with him. Then, 3 years of heart-breaking infertility before getting G.
ReplyDeleteBut my Jr year of highschool, I lost 3 friends in tragic accidents. That was definitely the end of innocence for my childhood.
Without a doubt it's been infertility. Not even motherhood has changed me as profoundly as infertility has. Even now that I've had children for almost 8 years (the same amount of time that I was childless and "trying"), infertility really defines who I am. Still. I remember going through a time where I hated who I had become and longed to return to the relatively carefree woman I was before. Luckly that phase didn't last too long, and now I can see all the growth and the new insights that I have on life and motherhood because of infertility. But there are still times when I don't know how to quite get past the "jadedness" (thanks for that term, Jenne!) that it has brought to me. I know that quality infuses alot of what I'm about these days. "Innocence Lost" is a perfect way to describe it!
ReplyDeleteI lost my innocence at 24 when one of my 2 best college friends died in a car accident.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was 22 and my father killed my BIL. Both of my parents were arrested. It happened in my apartment and I saw it happen. THAT was my loss of innocence. I haven't been the same since then either.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if I was ever innocent. I can remember things that damaged it back to early elementary school, and it got a big-time kick in the pants when my adult daughter spent a couple comatose months in the ticu last year. So I have my share of wrinkles, inside and out. But I also have hard-earned self reliance, a great faith in tomorrow, and the knowledge that life is good.
ReplyDelete