Welcome to My Breakdown
Page 24
I look forward and backward at the same time, grateful for the ferocious love my mother gave me, and confident that in loving my kids the same way, I am giving them what they need in order to live full lives. I know now that I’m strong enough to handle whatever life throws my way, and that I am worthy of a great life and don’t need to apologize for it. Although she’d read some James Baldwin, I doubt that my mom knew this quote he was credited with—“Your crown has been bought and paid for. All you must do is put it on”—but I’m sure she believed it. She had a vision for me, a belief in me that she didn’t have for herself. I’ve done the same with my daughter, Baldwin, pushing her, knowing that she had the ability not only to go to a great college like Sarah Lawrence, but also to succeed there, even though she wasn’t sure that she was able to do it. My son, Ford, now an adolescent, sometimes struggles with certain subjects in school. When that happens, I put my hands on his shoulders, look deep into his eyes, and tell him that I’m running his race right beside him, and that sometimes he’ll win, sometimes he won’t, but he’ll always pick himself up and try again. More than my words, I know that he feels the intensity with which I say it. He can’t help but know that I got knocked down for a while, but I got back up. I can finally say I’m better.
It’s not that life has stopped throwing curveballs. Cliff and I hit a terrible patch recently where I actually called a lawyer and seriously considered separating from him. I’d found a text message from a woman that was more than a red flag. I intercepted something about to happen physically with a woman he’d met at a bar. He admitted to an emotional connection and that it was an indiscretion. I was furious and hurt and put him out of our bedroom for several months. I went away to my friend Linda’s vacation house in the Hudson Valley. I continued my meditation practice, I went back to weekly therapy, and I got still. While I listened and talked with friends, I knew that the most important person to listen to was myself, and through that I came to the decision that I wanted to work on our marriage, which would also mean working on myself.
We are still working it through. Cliff has had individual sessions with McCurtis, and we see a couples’ therapist together. I had to own that I’d pulled away from Cliff years earlier, consumed by my grief and midlife malaise. I had nothing for him, and the more he asked of me, the more I resented him, and the more I moved away. I understand that finding that text was a gift. He promised to stop the flirting that led to the texting and what we’ve agreed to refer to as his “indiscretion.” He asked for my forgiveness, and I’m working on giving it to him. Together, we’re turning the tide, riding the rough currents sometimes, and sometimes turning against them.
Either way, I’ve taken control of my ship.
I’m remembering that the night before she died, my mother stopped talking. We didn’t know that would be the night, but in retrospect I should have known. Before Sonia left that evening, she’d looked at me and said, “Don’t leave her alone.” Sonia never said more than “Good-bye, Miss.” She must have sensed the end coming. Cliff and I stayed with my mother till late into the night. She was sitting in the chair we’d equipped with blankets and pillows and a plastic cover over the cushion in case her diaper leaked. I was on the floor, at her feet. “Mom,” I said, feeling like her silence meant she was angry. “I’m doing the best I can.”
She had put her hands up, almost as if to arm-wrestle. Her hands were covered in cotton gloves; she was always cold. I took one hand in each of mine, and we sat that way in silence for a long time.
I felt everything she could no longer say.
It’s okay now. I’m not mad. I’m happy. I’m going home.
Every day when I open my eyes, I see her face in the photograph that I keep next to my bed. It’s a picture that I took at the seventieth surprise birthday party that I gave for her. She was beaming. As I held the camera, I called her name. She turned around and I snapped the photo.
Every morning now, I say to the face in the picture, or sometimes I just think it:
I hope you’re still proud of me.
I hope you know I tried to do the right thing.
I did my best.
Family picture, spring 2013, at high school graduation awards program for Baldwin. (Photo by Mikel Colson)
Goofing-off Christmas picture, 2013. (Photo by Chester Toye@Toye Photography)
Family photo with our dog Charlie, Christmas 2013. (Photo by Chester Toye@Toye Photography)
Acknowledgments
There are so many people I would like to thank: my girlfriends, my dog friends, my family, who have provided me with various forms of sustenance and who have walked this journey with me, but if I were to include all my people, both those who have cried with me and for me, and those who, in passing, may have said one thing that kept me together for another hour or a day, and those who looked after my son or walked my dog or invited me over for a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, the list would be enormous. There are just too many of you kind souls to name. However, I know, I hope, that you know who you are and that you are etched in my heart.
There are a few friends who provided me with a crucial writing retreat, to whom I am forever grateful: Eleanore Wells, Linda Villarosa, and Monique Greenwood.
Like the path to writing this, the road to getting it into the public sphere has been fairly circuitous. For buying, editing, shaping, ushering—thank you to Carolyn Reidy, Judith Curr, Malaika Adero, Rosemarie Robotham, Greer Hendricks, and Leslie Meredith.
Thank you to my amazing agent and friend, Faith Hampton Childs.
Thank you to my sublime Baldwin and sweet-tempered Ford. It’s an honor to be your mother.
To my funny, supportive husband, Cliff Virgin, my partner and biggest champion; and to Mom, for giving me everything I need.
BENILDE LITTLE is the bestselling author of the novels Good Hair (selected as one of the ten best books of 1996 by the Los Angeles Times), The Itch, Acting Out, and Who Does She Think She Is? A former reporter for People and senior editor at Essence, she lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with her husband and son. Her daughter is away at college. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @blittlevirgin; read her blog, Welcome to My Breakdown, at www.benildelittle.wordpress.com; and visit her website at www.benilde-little.com.
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NOVELS BY BENILDE LITTLE
Good Hair
The Itch
Acting Out
Who Does She Think She Is?
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Interior design by Kyoko Watanabe
Jacket Design by Chelsea McGuckin
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Little, Benilde.
Welcome to my breakdown : a memoir / Benilde Little.
pages cm
Summary: “A chronicle of clinical depression from a bestselling novelist”—Provided by publisher.
1. Little, Benilde—Mental health. 2. Novelists—United States—Biography. 3. Women novelists, American—Biography. 4. Depressed persons—United States—Biography. I. Title.
PS3562.I78276Z46 2015
813'.54—dc23
[B]
2015001624
ISBN 978-1-4767-5195-5
ISBN 978-1-4767-5197-9 (ebook)