When Solitude Becomes Bittersweet
Analyzing a life I'll never have.
She took in the expansive sunrise alone, and began to cry.
On the phone, her mom reminded her to take it all in. How in comparison, sometimes sharing moments with others makes you lose the moment itself.
When you explore this world–and yourself–in solitude with no one you know around, something magical can happen.
You’ll have to sit with your own company. You get to choose to make it meaningful, however uncomfortable that may be in a world that glorifies otherwise.1
One can only hope this type of solitude helped build your life. Before you met your partner and had to start thinking about contorting your lifestyle and compromising your habits in the name of love.
Before you scolded your roommate once again about the spoiled leftovers they left in the fridge for over two weeks…
In those small pockets of time you were able to spend by yourself before life expanded and acclimated beyond just your own world, I hope it helped you become a person you’re proud of today.
Because as of writing this, I don’t know if I myself have changed much.
I mean I know I’ve changed, but I feel behind when I think of peers that are around my age.
Your 30s seem like the time when life moves more at your speed instead of you lustfully chasing after it—tripping and falling as you learn about yourself along the way.
I’m definitely not saying anyone’s life’s perfect and that your 30s are when you magically stop fighting your inner demons, but you can spot the specific energy of a 20-something college student when you run into them at the bowling alley or as they walk down the grocery isle before The Big Game.
And although my energy’s smoothed out since my 20s, I don’t feel quite as whole as my peers that are in their 30s.
And I wonder if that’s because I never got extended time to be alone and learn myself.
Maybe that’s why I teared up when Jenn Im’s mom spoke to her over the phone during her solo excursion–leaving her family behind at home.
Her mom’s voice came through wise and knowing, despite its electronic, but subtly distorted texture:
“We should think about each other for strength. I’ll think about you for strength, and you think about Lennon [Jenn’s son] for strength. We have a purpose to live. A reason to live. Let’s continue to try our best. Okay, I love you.”
Let’s continue to try our best.
I wanted a chance to try my best with my mom. To develop some reason or purpose to live. But it was difficult to do with a mom that was always around and always knew best.
Jenn’s mom thought of her daughter that day as they both lived their own lives. She worried about her daughter’s safety, but not enough to chase after her. Hunt her down. Tell her how awful an idea a solo trip is in an attempt to hurt her, and keep her safe, so she’d never do it again.
There was a mature trust between them that I wish I got to experience with my mom, but there was rarely ever any time I was able to exercise independence away from her, nor do I think she even really wanted it. Defaulting to keeping me safe, near, and “failing” test after test if I didn’t match her reactions or choices exactly.
It all was in the name of love, but at what cost?
At 25, South Korea was the furthest and longest I had ever traveled away from my mom. It took some coaxing from my whole family to let me go for over two weeks with two friends for a $500 roundtrip ticket, but it was done(!!!).
During one of our days in Seoul, we all went our separate ways to do our own thing. My destination? The Trick Eye Museum a few subway stops away.
I don’t remember our conversation. I don’t remember who called who, but I remember where I was during the call, and how it made me feel.
I was underground in our subway station. I remember the green. I remember the number “4.” I remember walking laps around small strings of people that reminded me of a much slower-paced honeybee’s “dance.”
I remember picking at things I saw in the subway to distract myself as the phone call made me more and more frustrated.
But I don’t remember how it became so one-sided. I think the conversation boiled over because of a growing concern for me traveling by myself.
I think my mom wouldn’t just listen to me. Hear that she was upsetting me with her conclusions about what was going on.
I remember jabbing at the phone to hang up. I remember feeling so much worse than before the call.
Mom went into Mama Bear mode, and nothing can snap her out of that protective mode. She knew what was best, and there was no talking around it, or compromising for any other point of view. Especially–I can only guess–from her own child.
And that made me feel stunted in a childlike state, never to be viewed any differently not only in her eyes, but mine as well.
I remember mom always telling me how I reminded her of Jenn Im—the YouTuber from the vlog I’m referencing. It was how she’d imagined I’d be.
She’d also tell me how she could easily see me living with the hippies and creatives in our local bustling urban area.
And I hate that she never got to see me bloom in any pocket she had placed me in, in her mind. She never got to see me bloom into, well, anything while she was alive.
Our lives were too closely-knit together. All we could see was the hazy idea of one another.
If only we had a chance to step one, two, or even thousands of feet away from one another, we could have seen the parts of each other that had grown and changed.
One of my biggest dreams was to have a transformative relationship with my mom like the ones I witnessed my online friends have.
The stories were almost always the same: a daughter straying from their mother’s ideals for them and their lives, eventually leading to a complete 180 of the mom’s acceptance, beliefs, and even participation and learning from their daughter’s uninhibited lives.
I dreamed of having my mom change her mind about me. Having a voluntary willingness to want to learn from me even if my lifestyle wasn’t anything like hers.
It was something I never thought would happen anyway, but I held onto hope. Because I knew my peers dealt with similar situations with their moms. Even if it hurt to not be accepted by their mothers, they would stay in their lane and keep evolving in their own way. Eventually, their moms would grasp, understand, or respect the lives their daughters built for themselves.
Or, the daughters would grow as young adults on their own, and be able to come back to their families to build better relationships than before.
And I truly believe that all came because they had that space away from their moms to explore themselves.
The journey may have been complex and layered, but part of growing up is learning to stand on your own. Even if you fall down (and back into your childhood bedroom) several times while doing so.
I dreamt of finally having that experience with my mom, but that required distance I never got.
And now she’s gone.
I am grateful–in the most bittersweet way–that I got a glimpse of her, actually seeing me and how much I’ve changed (and grown!), in her last months.
Her last three months of life were the most I felt we bonded since I became too old to be molded into exactly what she wanted me to be.
Before I no longer could cradle my head into her waist to let her rock me to sleep.
Before she stopped waving her mini hair dryer back and forth across my face to make me laugh as she painted my tiny nailbeds at her station in grandma’s basement.
Before she declared WWIII over the territory of my hair, over my desire to stretch my ears, get a tattoo, or shave my head.
Once I started coming into my own as a pre-teen, something about our relationship shifted and never was quite the same again.
But toward her end, she actually listened to me. Something I had wanted her to do for years and years. I hate that such a revelation for us had to come when her walls of control and “strength” crumbled because of disease–not willingness.
And she was proud of me when I’d tell her my thoughts on real-life issues those last months. She empathized with me over moments I had shared with her previously, but had brushed off as insignificant. It was bittersweet.
I didn’t want life to turn out like this. There are blessings and sweet changes that have occurred since mom passed away, and I wanted to be able to come back home to share them with her. Not from a separation so permanent.
I grieved a lot of moments and experiences I felt I lost the chance to have with mom while she was still alive, especially once the pandemic came. And I knew she was frustrated by all her limitations, too.
But now, I grieve the moments I know I won’t ever get to experience with her.
Not marriage, not a wedding, not kids… none of those traditional things are even on my radar…
I instead grieve her never getting to experience me showing her that not every prosperous and happy life has to be lived through just prayer and the Bible.
That healing can come from tools and practices that can supplement both prayer and the Bible.
I grieve not being able to open her mind to things I truly believe would have benefitted her…
But I thought we had time for things to change. We all do, I suppose.
After witnessing a loved one die, everything about “they’re up in heaven now” leaves me skeptical.
Especially when I experience something I find myself wanting to show my mom. I immediately wonder:
Wait, do you even need to be shown this? Aren’t you omnipresent now without your body?
Aren’t you supposed to be in an “eternal sleep”? You sure visit us quite a bit to be “asleep”…
… What really happened to you?
I don’t know; I truly don’t think anyone does. I keep saying that no one’s taken a whole 24-hour tour of death and lived to tell about it.
So since we’re all out here defending and embracing concepts around death, I decided to do the same.
I’d like to think I now get to experience the world and my future with mom in a way we never were able to when she was alive.
Nothing holds her back anymore. Not only disease, anxiety, pain, or immune system… but visas! Airplanes, oceans, steep stairs, long walking paths… they’re all no longer obstacles for her anymore!
We both finally have the freedom we desired so deeply, and in a way, we get to meet each other whenever, wherever, and share our lives without any limitations.
We both get to live better lives now.
She gets to witness what freedom is like for me, all while experiencing the beautiful expansion of her own.
I may never get that grounded and motivational phone call from my mom as I travel somewhere away from her line of sight, or even one more fear-fueled one. But I finally get to learn who I am with my mom being a comfortable distance away.
What a blessing.
When I wrote this, YouTube videos sharing solo dates and living alone came to mind, and their accompanying comments of “omg I can’t imagine doing that alone!”, but Rayne Fisher-Quann helped me see the other side of glorified isolation. A good read!