ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching
Book Two, Chapter 275: And Thus . . .
It’s a Sunday in October, and it’s raining. The rain mimics my tears — or perhaps stimulates them.
I’ve dropped the heavy load of guilt and shame I once carried because I understand why I was the way I was, and this knowledge has enabled me to forgive myself, yet I do feel great sadness. Some moments I repeat Beckett’s words: I can’t go on. I go on. Or, I remember what Nancy, a friend in my Grief Connection group, once said: “I trudge forward.” Today I also remember Andre Gide’s words that Marlena quotes to Fernando: If one desires to discover new lands, one must consent to stay a very long time at sea.
Be patient, I tell myself. You were a Siamese twin for a very long time, the two of you joined in an unnatural and unhealthy way. You are just now learning to breathe on your own. Practice patience. You are a beginner.
It’s a chilly evening, and for the first time this season I don my trusty leather jacket — hanging next to Ernie’s nearly matching leather jacket — and head outside, but I turn back before even going a block. I don’t have the strength to endure the pinging and pelting of the cold rain.
Back in my kitchen, I fix a cup of cocoa. Perhaps the cocoa will lift my endorphins so I’ll feel a little less sad.
He felt lower than a snake’s belly button, Ernie wrote of Crinklestitch Cricket, lead character in the only children’s story he ever wrote. So Ernie drooped, too. Probably he felt depressed, but I didn’t know it. Or, maybe I just didn’t want to know it. Surely it showed on his face and in his eyes. But I didn’t really look at his face or into his eyes, did I?
So much I didn’t do. So much I withheld. It’s the irony of our life together. We were Siamese twins yet so far apart from each other.
Many people would envy me my present life. I have time, money, and energy. I can set up my days any way I want. But I envy any two people who are separate and distinct yet also share an honest, trusting, respectful relationship.
Rather, let me not envy them. Let me congratulate them. Let me practice what they practice.
Fernando says to Marlena: “I wish I’d been around people who loved each other when I was growing up. Even if they didn’t love me, it would have been comforting to know that there really was love.”
Yes, love exists. And if our parents didn’t love each other or love us, we adult children can find people who can show us, it. And give it to us.
And thus, we learn what love is. And thus, we learn to love ourselves. And thus, we are able to love others.
