**

I am reading (listening to) "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" by Kim Edwards. I'm not really fond of the narrator but, putting her performance aside, it's a pretty good story so far. Reading it, however, some things in the story strike close to home. I listen to it in the car on my way to and fro and usually I'm alone. This gives me pause to reflect.
I've been thinking about legacies. I like to think of myself as I was when I was 25. That's the me I see in my mind when I think of things that have happened in my life. I know. It's totally natural and, in their minds, most people see themselves when they were young, in shape, virile ... whatever. Truth be told though, a lot of water has passed under the bridge of my life since I was 25. I'm not a dottering old fool by any means ... well I'm not dottering, anyway. I'm 45 and as I look back I realize that a lifetime has passed since those halcyon days of my youth.
What did I dream my life would be like at 45? I don't know. I never got past 38 in my thinking. I turned 38 in the year 2000 and I remember doing the math and coming up with that figure and thinking to myself that it was impossible. That date was so far in the future that I couldn't hardly imagine it.
Now, seven years on the other side of that ancient benchmark, I consider what my life has been ... my legacy, if you will. I have come to the conclusion that my legacy is a legacy of pain. From the first instant of my birth I caused pain for my parents. I was breech. I tore my mother to shreds. Not to mention I was about 8 pounds, which was big for babies back then, even if it seems to be the norm now.
I was carefree growing up. I had everything a kid could want, but I was an empty little fuck. Full of rage. At what? I have no idea. I continued causing pain with drugs, alcohol, running away, getting kicked out of school ... yeah I was a stellar child.
Later there was pain for others in my life ... the wife I cheated on, the kids I was never around for when they were growing up, more pain for my parents as they had to bail me out of one financial mess after another, the pain of losing a child and crawling into a shell, leaving his mother to get comfort from a stuffed rabbit we had bought as a going home present. Pain, exquisite pain.
The pain of friends who have breezed into and out of my life only to realize that I don't really know how to be a friend. A marriage ruined, pain for the wife who I ran off, the disappointed families, the kids who have to start their adult lives without a mother around. The pain in realizing now that I am faced with the job of being there as both mother and father when, in fact, I don't know how to do either.
I realized something today. I was standing on a pier with a dozen people or more, everybody chatting and laughing ... and I was on the outside looking in. I seemed to stand outside my body and watch as I came to life, the smile came to my face, I looked them in the eyes, shook their hands, laughed, joked and did my interviews. When the last sentence was recorded, the automatron shut down and it was just me on the pier ... again, the outsider looking in.
I used to think I needed people to be around. People who I could be close to, love, cherish, make happy ... and you know? I really do. I DO need people, I just don't know what to do with them when I get them. They always end up seeing through the charade. And then they are gone and I'm painfully comfortable in my aloneness again. But I do need people ... and I'm trying to figure out how to be real and be me around them. But it's hard, because through the pain, I can't see who I really am.