Costing Your Old Life

It’s a weird thing, making a new life. Maybe more so realizing that you have made a new life.

There’s a meme that makes the rounds on Facebook. I always like it and often share it when I see it because I do think it is true. It is a quote from writer Brianna West, “Your new life is going to cost you your old one.” I had this in my head as I was celebrating with my parents and my kids on Christmas morning, eating breakfast casseroles after opening presents, just like we used to at my Grandma and Grandpa’s house when I was younger. When you were all still alive.

I have a Spotify playlist called “XMas”, full of less traditional Christmas songs, or at least songs sung in less traditional ways by less traditional artists. I was playing this on repeat Christmas morning when the Jill Sobule version of “Merry Christmas From The Family” came on that you had liked so much. It was on that CD I bought at 14 of Christmas songs sung by alt rock artists. After a childhood of buying my mom Christmas tapes and then CDs by artists that she (or we) liked every year, this was the first one by artists I listened to. I had really bought it because I read that Tori Amos would have a song on it. I was excited to share it with you because of that. Honestly, neither of us liked the Tori Amos rendition of “Little Drummer Boy,” but we loved the Jill Sobule song. Sung by her on this album, it seemed a bit sarcastic, slightly making fun of her mildly trashy, mildly racist family. I wouldn’t find out until years later that it was originally written by an alt country artist. When sung by him, it sounds a bit more proud of his trashy family than hers does. I still love that song and listen to it every year, often sharing it on Facebook during the Christmas season.

The choruses about running to the convenience store for stuff they have run out of remind me of a specific Christmas years before I bought that album. My parents and I were still living in Chicago so we were celebrating at my dad’s parents house for Christmas eve. As per usual, we escaped the family by making our own convenience store run. You would get Diet Coke as always but I really wanted to find a place that had Crystal Pepsi. I must have been 10 years old because that came in out 1992. You would have been 21. All that was on the radio was Christmas music, old fashioned Christmas music. You were so tired of Christmas music by then. I’m sure we must have put a tape in at that point, as we had to drive around town for quite a bit to find a convenience store still open without the aid of google maps. I couldn’t tell you exactly what was said or if maybe we did eventually find a radio station with regular music on. But it is one of those memories for me that both makes my day and breaks my heart at the same time, now that you are gone.

To have this life, I had to give up my old one. Even if it wasn’t exactly my choice. If I hadn’t lost you, and Grandma and Grandpa, I might not have had to do the work on myself that I did, the work I had to do just to survive it. I wouldn’t have had the desire to create a bigger family that lead to my kids. I wouldn’t have had the skills, gained in therapy after your death, to be able to slowly but surely get to where I am now. This Christmas that I am so proud of doing on my own (-ish) with my folks and my kids (all in masks because of Covid) in the apartment that I love wouldn’t have happened without all that. I wouldn’t have been able to make and keep the 2 romantic relationships I have and cherish now, or the close friendships that mean so much to me. I wouldn’t have this life that I am trying as hard as I can to live on my own terms.

Some of the memes continue the quote, “It’s going to cost you your comfort zone and your sense of direction. It’s going to cost you relationships and friends. It’s going to cost you being liked, and understood. But it doesn’t matter. Because the people who are meant for you are going to meet you on the other side. And you’re going to build a new comfort zone around the things that actually move you forwards. And instead of liked, you’re going to be loved. Instead of understood, you’re going to be seen. All you’re going to lose is what was built for a person you no longer are. Let it go.” I am finding all of that to be true and yet I’m not quite sure I can ever do that. You and that history are in the music and the traditions and the food. I just hope to find ways to integrate that into the new life that I build that is mine, that is what i want it to be.