Fallacious Truths: The Girl who Brought Me Back to Life

Makela, you saved my life. You gave me purpose. You gave my life meaning. But most of all, you healed me from a pain and downward spiral of misery that up until the day you were born had been inescapable.

From the time I was young, I've been attracted to the tragic. Why IS that? Well, I have my theories. First, I need to digress a bit.

The best songs and movies to me are the saddest ones. The ones where a loved one dies at the end. Or the ones in which the protagonist suffers a loss of some kind. Some examples are:

Music:

Here Comes Goodbye - Rascal Flatts
The Freshman - The Verve Pipe
All We Ever Do is Say Goodbye - John Mayer
Bulletproof Weeks - Matt Nathanson
Expensive Love - Gavin Castleton

Movies:

What Dreams May Come
Life is Beautiful
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Notebook
Shutter Island (a thriller by genre, but also an intensely sad love story)

Loss. Perhaps it is this aspect of these things that attracts me so much to them. Loss is something with which I can relate. It is something that evokes emotion, and therefore helps in a way for me to deal with some of my past.

Sometimes, in my moments of weakness and self-pity, I admittedly allow myself to feel cheated. Out of having a Mom to help raise me and to be there for me when I needed a stable and constant female influence. Out of having a normal childhood which didn't involve living in Motel 6 or dropping out of school and selling or giving up literally everything we owned to start a "family band". I feel cheated out of having a dad during my adolescent years - one who could be there for us, to meet our needs physically and emotionally.

...But I digress.

It is tragedy and loss that shaped me as a young and impressionable child. In fact, I came to expect it. It wasn't necessarily that I was a pessimist. I just had grown so accustomed to people leaving or dying, that I had no reason to expect anything different. After Mom passed, my dad began to date. A lot. In his defense, Mom had specifically asked him to find a new mom for us, as her dying wish (I couldn't imagine even being half as selfless as she was). Every time he brought another lady home, the impression we got was, "Meet your future mom!" so at first, I allowed myself to get attached much too easily. I craved that motherly influence, and my dad was always much less strict and easier to get along with when he had a woman influencing his decisions (example: for the longest time I was not allowed to wear nail polish to church, but after a girlfriend of his told him she always wore nail polish to church, it became okay from then on). But shortly after I would allow myself to get attached, she would inexplicably be out of the picture and a new woman would come along. This happened more times than I care to recount. After a while, I treated each one that came along exactly the same--I was a BRAT. I was rude. I was callous. No one could break down the walls I'd built to keep them all out. I figured that my attitude would scare anyone away who wasn't completely serious about my dad.

Then Tiffany came along and began dating my dad. My experience with her taught me more than my experiences with all the other girlfriends prior to her. She and my dad got serious. Then they got engaged. And then they were married. I then opened myself up to her and let her into my life. She was nice, she was beautiful, and I looked up to her. I allowed myself to get emotionally close to her because I thought, "They're married now. This one isn't going to leave like everyone else has." I'd never even considered the possibility of divorce. When it ended abruptly and without warning less than six months later, I didn't know what to feel. I'd been tricked. Betrayed. I had allowed myself to get close to someone, and she deserted us just like everyone else had. After she moved out, I never saw or heard from her again. I came to the realization that she had never really cared about us at all.

So why trust anyone at all? I thought. Everyone in my life will just leave at some point or another. Every time a good thing happened, it seemed to be followed by some horrible loss--and I just couldn't take another one of those.

So when my dad got back into the dating game again, I had had enough. I refused to even meet any of the women he brought home. Then Suzanne came along. I was distant, to say the least. When they planned an ice cream outing so that my brothers and I could meet her and her kids, I refused to attend.

But again things got serious and the two of them ended up getting married. But I wasn't fooled. I was once bitten, twice shy. I now knew that not even marriage was enough to keep someone in my life. I could only expect the worst, based on the past I'd experienced.

Then something happened that none of us had expected. In May of 2003, we found out that there would be a tiny new addition to the family, come December. Suzanne was expecting a baby. Although I wanted to be excited, I just couldn't allow myself to be. I couldn't take another disappointment, another loss. If I'd allowed myself to be excited, and something were to go wrong, I just knew that I wouldn't be able to handle it. I figured out that if I expected the worst, I could never be disappointed (again, I realize as I say these things that it all sounds incredibly pessimistic. But I think it was the only way I knew how to protect myself from getting hurt again). As horrible as it sounds, I convinced myself in those early days of Suzanne's pregnancy that she would miscarry. I didn't want her to miscarry. I just "knew" it would happen. Months passed and this little miracle of ours just got bigger in Suzanne's tummy. Ultrasounds showed it was a girl (!) and she was perfectly healthy (I am now getting all teary-eyed as I write this). With some trepidation, I allowed myself to get excited when i distinctly felt something move as I put my hand on Suzanne's eight-month pregnant belly. When I began spending hours and hours of my day looking for baby name ideas to suggest to my parents, my subconscious admonished me, reminding me not to get my hopes up too much, as things could still go wrong.

December 7th, 2003. Suzanne's water broke early that morning. The day had finally arrived when we would finally get to meet this new, sweet addition to our family. Suzanne asked me if I wanted to be in the room during the delivery. I hesitated, wondering if that would be awkward or weird, but my curiosity got the better of me. And it made me feel important that she wanted me there.

By this point, my inner-ten-foot-cement-walls had already begun to crumble, but only slightly. I was beginning to allow myself to have hope, if nothing else, that everything would be okay.

The labor took a long time. We were at the hospital all day. It wasn't until late that evening that the baby was ready to come out. When she started to crown I began to cry, marveling at the miracle I was witnessing. I was watching a human life come into existence that previously wasn't there. I also realized in that moment that things just might turn out okay for once. Of course, in the back of my mind was always a jumble of all of the common ways that infants can die unexpectedly, such as SIDS (always expecting the worst possible outcome).

The moment she was born, she became my everything. She was my Makela, my KayleeBug, the sister I had always wanted but had never had until that point.

When she was a year old, I could finally accept that this little one was sticking around. She wasn't as "breakable" as she'd seemed before. I wasn't worried anymore about her suddenly being taken from this earth without warning by some scary infant cause of death. Because of her, I could finally heal and trust that sometimes good things can and do happen without being taken away. And I thank God every day for bringing her into my life.

She doesn't know it, but Makela's birth and life has saved me. Simply her existence kept me grounded during the times I wanted to fall apart. She is the reason I didn't keep driving as far south as Highway 101 would take me when I wanted to run away from my life in California, change my name, and never come back (a story for another time). She makes me want to be a better person, because of the example I know I have to set for her. If it weren't for her, I know I wouldn't be who or what I am today. I would have moved far, far away and stayed there forever. I would have grown up to be a bitter, miserable person always expecting the worst--because I never would have learned any other outcome.