"A Couple of People I Used to Be"

Courtesy of Joan Didion

"I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be."    Joan Didion

How easy that is to do!  Those former selves were long ago. Didion goes on to say “We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.”

Read that again. How true that is!

It would be fascinating to me to meet up again with that 17 year old girl who used to live in me. She was the self who was finishing high school. She was the one who, in my memory, was eager and excited and not scared at all about leaving high school and going on to college. Her eyes were wide open, like the proverbial kid in the candy store. Was that true? I don’t know since I’ve lost touch with her. 

I used to know the 19 year old girl who jumped into a marriage because that’s what you were supposed to do and, oh, that’s right, no one else would ever want to marry her. Really? Did she really think that or was she just too scared of the world?  What happened to her? I wish I could talk to that girl now but I’ve lost touch with her.

There was also the 25 year old young woman who had launched herself out of a marriage and into an independent life. I remember her well but I am not sure how accurate my memory is. And we all know about memory. It is selective. “We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.”  I think that is true for me, especially the self that existed in me during that decade but I don’t know because I’ve lost touch with her.

A few years later the 29 year old self and I had intimate conversations about the man she had met, the man she was planning to marry.  I wish I could meet up with her today. It seems to me now that that woman had untethered confidence. Not arrogance, but confidence. I want to ask her, “How did that whole thing work out for you?” But I can’t because I’ve lost touch with her.

That 29 year old was soon sitting up at night alongside the young mother who nurtured and gave her all to her two small children. She built her life around them and I’m sure, as mothers do, she worried about everything. The children mattered more than anything else to her. Did she know how precious that time was?  I think she did but, since I’ve lost touch with her, I can’t know for sure. 

Have I lost touch with the working mom of teenagers, the mom who lived in my house and tried to make everything more than okay?  Oh, yes, she is only a thin memory. I cringe because I feel the tension that she carried. It, that is to say life, had to be done perfectly. I know there was a relaxed, fun-loving person there too but she was overshadowed and I have lost touch with both of them.

Wait. Why do I even want to talk to these people? What is it that I want to know? Or it is that I want to tell them something?  First, I want to talk to them because I want to know the truth of those years. Was it as delicious, or as scary, or as overwhelming, or as lonely, or as awesome as I remember?  Like Didion says, I still have the scenes but I no longer perceive myself as really being present in those days. I am curious. That’s all. 

Wait. That isn’t all. I want to meet them again because I want to see if there is any part of me there that might be worth resurrecting or perhaps reinventing. Pieces of the self get buried and it could be provocative or perhaps refreshing to exhume them. I am curious about that. 

Didion advises us to “stay on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.”  She cautions that if we don’t, they might show up unannounced in some dark soul of the night and surprise us. They might demand to know who betrayed them, who abandoned them, who is going to make amends. I’m in the thick of that night right now.

Since we’re meeting up anyway, I would love to be able to advise them on their future. I want to give them the benefit of my knowledge and experience but two things stand in the way.  First, what younger person ever wants to hear about the elder’s wisdom? It is the purview of the young to think they know what they are doing and that is how it should be.  They will learn in their own time and in their own way. And, secondly, I suppose it would be cheating. It would be like giving them the answers to the homework.  Would any of those people that I used to be want to be part of a cheating scandal? I’d have to ask them, I guess.

At any rate the quote does haunt me. It summons a poignancy that can be felt slightly behind the eyes and in the deepest chamber of the chest. The poignancy deserves attention.  Perhaps that’s all it needs.  Perhaps that is all it can have.  I'll give it that then, for now, and see how the people I used to be respond.