the life you thought you would have
on mourning
There will be two songs today: the ones that have helped loosen tenderness stuck in my chest lately. One here, and another I’ll land later in this post.
There was a brief period during college when I identified as Christian. It unfortunately brought me far more pain than it did healing. I came to it as someone deeply depressed, a naïve casualty of flirt-to-convert, who was seeking a god—something, anything—that could help me find meaning in a life that felt meaningless. I came away from it even more depressed, a victim of emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of a student leader of a Christian fellowship, and certain there was no god and there was no meaning after all. I started low and ended lower.
But I will concede that I had moments of community, of understanding, of care. Some of the people I met during this period I still hold with the utmost regard for their kindness and loving nature. And there are certain bits of sermons that stuck with me over the years.
One was a sermon from Reality SF, a church service I attended with other Berkeley students. I couldn’t tell you who gave the sermon, or what book of the bible it was about, but what stuck with me was this question:
Have you mourned the loss of the life you thought you would have?
This question stayed with me throughout the years, torn from its original context. The life you thought you would have. As in, where am I in a different timeline, also at 29? I noticed I don’t really think about this question in the context of if I had pursued acting or if I had gone to Georgetown. Stated another way, I have not thought about this question in a framing of my own agency. Rather, when this question pops into my head, it always comes back to the trauma. Have I mourned the loss of the life I thought I would have before I was hurt at the hands of others?
I feel deep sadness and anger at the loss of what my life could have been like if those things had never happened. I’ve wondered so much:
Would I have maintained more friends from college, because I wouldn’t have isolated myself so much while suffering in silence?
Would I have gone to medical school like I planned, because I wouldn’t have done so poorly in my pre-requisites since I was staying home from classes to avoid bumping into my abuser?
Would I have learned how to actually enjoy sex sooner, instead of just seeing it as a tool wielded for power?
Would I be able to ride BART without having a panic attack? To see a green Honda Civic without my breath catching in my chest?
Would I have gone to more parties, because I wasn’t afraid of what would happen if I didn’t watch my cup closely enough again?1
Would I be able to celebrate Halloween, instead of avoiding being reminded of the night I was raped?
Would I?
Would I?
Would I?
The Would I’s eat me alive.
There has been no the life I would have had if I had chosen differently, only the life I would have had if this external thing had not happened to me. This is reminding me of just how much power I am putting in the hands of others.
When I try to think of this through the lens of my own decision making, lately this feels like a weird concept. I’m willing to take ownership over the choices that I’ve made. Life happened the way it happened, and I cannot change it. Sure, there are things I ruminate on and regret, like the aforementioned Would I’s, but I acknowledge it’s not very useful to do that. Instead, I think of the future. The operative question nowadays is closer to:
Have you mourned the loss of the future you thought might come to pass?
I’m always keeping salient the finitude of life. My finitude manifesto will be for another time, but the crux of it is that I constantly think about the fact that I have so many possible futures, yet I am only able to have one. I must be intentional with my decisions—with what I do, where I go, and who I share my time with. I’m cognizant that everything requires sacrifice. Spending an hour tufting a rug is an hour I cannot spend reading a book. Spending an evening with my best friend is an evening I cannot spend with anyone else.
Because I’m always thinking about tradeoffs, I try not to fixate on hypothetical futures that won’t come to pass. But I’ve come to find that, much like with the past-tense question, things that are out of my control or in the hands of others are the ones that hurt me, the ones I have a tough time letting go. The idea of a lifelong friendship with someone I had a major falling out with. The fantasy of a life with someone who ended up with a different partner. The dream of having more time with someone who has moved away. These are the things I need to mourn, to grieve, to figure out how to live with.
And perhaps it makes sense for a past-tense verb to be conjoined with a past-tense concept. Mourned the loss. But to me this speaks to mourning as a destination, as an end goal. As if there is a finish line you can cross, to finally wring your hands of the thing and say, “Yes, hello, I have done it! I have mourned the thing! I can now let it go!”
I’m not convinced this is how mourning works. Sure, we speak of a mourning period after a loss, some bereavement time. But I think mourning is a process, a journey. I think when you let yourself hope deeply, love deeply, care deeply, the wounds of loss may never quite heal. I still carry the tenderness of lost friendships, lost loves, regardless of if they were 10 years ago or 10 days ago. These memories lose their sting over time, but their impact remains.
I felt reaffirmed in this belief in reading
’s latest post on :Some things stay forever tender. I am reminded so often that some of my aches will never fully go away. They will get tugged at and resurfaced throughout my life, in different seasons, in expected and unexpected ways. I spent so much of my life desperate for the pain I carried to suddenly disappear. I spent so much time in therapy trying to fix it, cure it, turn it into something else, deny it, become bigger than it, conquer it, contain it, control it, erode it. I thought eliminating it was the goal.
I know now that the grief I carry might always linger in some form. So now, when I sing Landslide to my daughter and feel tears forming in my eyes, I don’t try to force them back. I know they need to be let out, to be felt, to be integrated into an experience of deep love, to be met with presence.
And so I think I’m ready to once again reframe that question:
Are you giving yourself permission and space to mourn? Both the loss of the life you thought you’d have by now, and of the loss of the futures that may never come to pass? To grieve what comes up, even if you have already grieved it in the past?
It’s clunky. It’s not some pithy quip that can be used in a sermon. But this is closer to the kinds of questions I’d like to be asking myself. Life is a process, not a destination, so I’m unconvinced that I should be treating things within it as a destination either.
So right now, I’m letting myself mourn when it comes. Letting myself get lost in writing poetry. Letting myself cry in a stairwell when I should be in a meeting. Letting myself sob listening to “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac or “One Summer Day” by Joe Hisaishi. Letting myself stare at the leaves rustling in the wind, feeling wistful. I am not turning away from the pain, from myself.
And you? Are you letting yourself mourn too? I hope you are. I don’t want you to get trapped in Would I’s like me.
A remnant from my self-victim-shaming. I want to be clear—me not watching my cup is not why I was raped. A man choosing to rape me is why I was raped.