Struggling to Find My Identity in the Face of Major Change

Who am I without the people I love?

It’s dawn. I’m walking east, into the muted light. It’s beautiful out here, but it’s hard for me to focus on that.

I’m uncomfortable. I feel like I’m thrumming on the inside, and not in a good way. Like I can’t bear to be in this body another minute. Like I’m going to pop right out of it from the sheer force of my nervous trembling.

I’ve never liked the mornings. This goes back to my teenage years. I’d wake before dawn to catch the bus and walk, just like this, to the bus stop, the pink light reaching out toward me.

Mornings meant I had to leave the safety of my home and confront my tormentors. Mornings meant I had to face whatever the day was going to throw at me — which always meant emotional and psychological torture by my classmates, but also often physical altercations and sexual assault.

All these decades later and I am still that little girl on the inside who associates early morning with terror.

Am I destined to be this person? Someone who feels terror and anxiety when she wakes up in the morning every single day? Is this just who I am?

Or can I change my identity?

I don’t know. I’m not hopeful as I take another trembling step toward the eastern horizon.

I recently received some terrible news. My sister and her family are moving 200 miles away. Maybe you’re shrugging right now. That probably doesn’t seem so terrible to most people.

But let me explain.

My sister and I lived together in our mid-twenties. We were going to be Sally and Gillian Owens, living together forever, these “two old biddies with all these cats.”

One day, at 24, she declared she’d had enough of being single. She said she was miserable and tired of waiting to start a family.

So she set off to find a man and was engaged soon after.

I wanted to start my family, too — I was 26 at the time — but it was almost as exciting to walk beside her on her journey while I waited to meet the right person.

Her first child, Ben, was born on my 30th birthday. They lived 150 miles away at the time, but I drove down there every month to stay for a few days and help care for Ben. I adored him.

To my delight, they moved back to town just before Finn was born and I was invited to watch Finn’s birth and later, Baby #3's. I even got to cut Kai’s cord and I still remember the way blood squirted all over my face.

When I met a partner in my early thirties, we moved into a house just four miles from my sister’s and I would bike over there every few days to play with the boys. I taught them how to make giant hats from newspapers, I dressed up as a dragon to make them laugh, I chased them around the backyard, and made them stuffed elf dolls for Christmas with names and stories that matched each of them.

I couldn’t wait to have my own little brood.

Who I am?

There are two things that are strongly tied to my identity: writing and aunthood. I’ve called myself a writer since I was 10 years old. I always knew that would be a major part of my journey here on earth.

I thought I would be a mother, too, so I admit, I really latched onto aunthood at the age of 30. I loved kids and wanted to play a big part in my sister’s kids’ lives. Even though I was certain I’d have kids of my own someday, I knew these particular children would play a huge role in my life.

I guess you could say my life came to revolve around them.

My sister gave me two nieces in the years that followed: Brynn and Keira. I wasn’t there for their births, but I was waiting outside the moment my sister announced she was taking visitors. I couldn’t have been more excited to be a strong female influence in their lives.

And then something really unexpected happened: little Alex came along in March 2019. He was born with severe heart defects that were so bad his doctors weren’t sure they could fix any of it.

That was the first time I ever pulled back as an aunt. I didn’t want to get too close to this little being. I was terrified I couldn’t survive the pain of losing him.

But he had the last laugh. I fell in love with him harder than I ever fell in love with any other human being. Ever.

I spent so much time with him over the past year that I literally felt like he was a part of my body. When I’d go home, it was like an arm was missing — where was that appendage that was always curled against my chest?

He was bottle-fed, so I was privileged to participate heavily in his feeding schedule and we’d stare at each other while he drank, both of us mesmerized, his hand tugging at my necklace or playing with my hair.

Whenever he was sick, I rushed over, spending all day holding him and cuddling him so my sister could keep up with the laundry and pick up the other kids from school without worrying about a screaming, miserable baby in the backseat.

When he fell very badly ill last fall and had to be rushed to his doctor, 15 miles away, I went with my sister even though I had a lot of work to do, because I couldn’t bear the thought of her having to go alone with a major snow storm predicted. I’m convinced the angels orchestrated this, because we got stuck in that storm for over an hour, and Alex screamed for so long that he began vomiting uncontrollably. In the pitch darkness inside the car, I scooped the vomit out of his mouth with my fingers over and over again to keep him from choking while he was strapped in his car seat.

I’m convinced he would’ve died that night if my sister had been alone.

I never became a mother. I never became a wife. I never realized those aspects of my identity that I thought were inevitable.

I don’t mind that.

But I think I became increasingly involved with my sister’s kids because of it. I really did want kids. I really wanted to take care of someone that way. I really wanted a family.

I learned to be very happy with aunthood, though. Most of the time, I could go home if I got tired. I had the luxury of not having to deal with them 24/7. I gave them so much, yes, but let’s be fair — I didn’t have to stay up with them all night, clean up their barf when they got sick in bed, or deal with their absolute inability to aim for the toilet bowl while peeing.

So maybe I was their Auntie-Mama.

Few people in my life have ever really understood this. None of my friends are even half as involved in their nieces’ and nephews’ lives. Some of them think it’s a little too much. That I should spend more time on myself.

But that’s what they don’t get. Being an Auntie-Mama is for me. Those kids are, in some way, mine. And I am theirs.

It’s sunset now. I’ve just gotten home from a visit with the kids — socially-distanced and totally unsatisfying. There is no torture like that of not being able to squeeze my little demons.

While I was there, I kept thinking about Halloween. Now is the time we usually start planning our costumes and they remind me that I have to do their makeup. I wanted to ask them so many times, “What are you going to be?” and “Aren’t you excited?”

I had to remind myself that for the first time in 13 years, we aren’t going to spend Halloween together.

“You can just come over, you know,” Kai said, casually.

They don’t seem to understand what’s happening. Even Ben, who is 14 now, is more fixated on his new high school than on the fact that he won’t be able to spend time with Auntie, Uncle Jack, or Ya-Ya like he used to.

“Honey,” I reminded him. “It’s three and a half hours away. I won’t be able to pop over anymore.”

“Oh,” he said, in his nonchalant, almost-10-year-old way. “That sucks.”

It was a surreal visit. None of this feels real to me.

I literally don’t know what I’m going to do without them.

And Alex…I can’t even think about that. How could the universe let me fall so hard in love with that child only to take him away from me at an age when I can’t explain to him why this is happening? Will he think I don’t care, anymore? That I stopped loving him? Or will he even notice my absence? (Heartbreaking as it is, I’m voting for the latter.)

Who am I?

Writer still, yes. Someone who doesn’t like the mornings, who feels scared and anxious in the early hours, someone who carries around a wounded teenager inside her.

A steward of the earth. Yes. A gardener. A creative soul. A daughter and sister and friend.

Not a mother.

And…?

Who am I without my little army of beloved trolls? What will I do with myself without them? How on earth will I fill the days? What am I even doing on this planet if I can’t be there to help when they are sick, pick them up from school, leave them secret notes in the Owl Post box at their front door? What does my life mean without them?

I don’t know.

I’m uncomfortable. I feel like I’m thrumming on the inside, and not in a good way. Like I can’t bear to be in this body another minute. Like I’m going to pop right out of it from the sheer force of my nervous trembling…

And just like on my morning walks, there’s nothing I can do but keep going.

© Yael Wolfe 2020

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