I am innately a tribal person. I suspect this has as much to do with human nature as it does with anything else. I believe that it is quite natural for people to gravitate towards being part of a tribe. We become a part of a tribe at birth, one rooted in our immediate family connections. That in time it expands to include out maternal and paternal family's, friends in our neighborhoods, school chums, until such a time comes that we move into adulthood and venture out on our own. Looking back I had strong connections to my wider family during my childhood as I did with my neighborhood friends. Church was another tribal connection as was school and later into adulthood my work life, intimate partners, and long term relationships. Tyler and I created our own primary tribe that included furry kids. Vester was his childhood animal companion that came to live with us when his mom moved out of state. Some years after Vester had passed we adopted our own furry's, Larry and Sylvia. When Tylers and my relationship ended my primary tribe became my kids until Larry passed some seven months ago. This is where I seem to be struggling so deeply in this post Larry existence. I no longer have a primary tribe.
In a more expansive way I have been reflecting on how tribal connections seem to be at the root of our political life, that many within our society seem to be saying that they feel that they have lost their tribe and their hope for a better future. Or at the very least one that they knew from childhood. I am grateful for growing up in the Midwest as it has given me the ability to look at politics from different viewpoints. I can understand when one says that they fear for their future and that of their children. My father grew up destitute because his father had died in 1929 when he was four. I have pictures of him as a child literally clothed in rags. After grandpa died and especially during the Depression my dad's older siblings were the primary breadwinners for the family. More often than not when they had gotten married they brought their spouses to live with grandma or left only to come back with children in tow. That changed when the war came. Everyone who could work had a paying job. Despite graduating from high school my dad struggled with writing as he had dyslexia. He would have never been able to attend college. However, after coming back from the war my dad had the ability to forge a work life that gave us a solid middle class existence, one that provided a roof over our heads, clean clothes on our backs, and a place to call home ; not withstanding the childhood trauma I experienced. They were good at creating the logistics of home. What my father and so many others attained post war has't been available for the average high school graduate for a number of decades. Long gone are the days when a good union job with health care and a pension were attainable. They have been replaced with the modern amalgamation of what is now being called the "Gig" economy. Something that very nearly resembles what existed post WWI. Dad's pension and post work retiree healthcare were the only things that kept my mom and dad from being destitute. I get it when people say they are scared. And I understand how such fear and vulnerability can be manipulated by demagogues. We have seen it many times in our history. The Huey Long's and Father Coughlin's of the world playing on the fears and vulnerabilities of others. I see it happening all over the world today. Those in power playing on those very fears and vulnerabilities while promising a return to greatness. That old saying during the 1928 presidential campaign when things were rapidly heading downward just prior to the Great Depression. Hoover promising "a chicken for every pot. Wages, dividends, progress, and prosperity; Vote for Hoover. " One only has to look at the news coming out of Europe and Asia to see how prevalent that myth still is. Turkey, China, India, Russia, Hungary just to name a few are all in the grips of demagogues promising things that they can not possibly provide. But yet they seems to sustain their power by hook or by crook.
I get it when I hear someone saying that they feel lost. Most days I feel like I'm a ghost stealthily moving about a place full of memories, a place that is devoid of both life and breath. Larry was that for me. He brought both life and breath into our home just as Crook did and Larry's sister before. That is what I seem to struggle with the most: what is this post Larry life that I find myself navigating.
I was telling my sponsor last week that much of my work in recovery has been about coming to an accommodation with my childhood trauma. I explained that the fact of my trauma changed how my body functioned, how my neural pathways work. I said it was akin to losing one's limb. You navigate the fact of it while attempting to create a quality life. Historically, loss within all of its facets seemed to be the emotion that I am always trying to find an accommodation with and that is still fact. I know Larry will never be coming back. I know I can never recreate what I had with him, or Crook, or with Larry's sister Sylvia before Crook. I am also keenly aware that I felt for the most part content when Larry was alive. The fact of him being with me, that we shared a life together. That all things began and ended with him. We were our primary tribe, the one that fed and sustained us both.
The loss of one's tribe. There is a deep sense of powerlessness there. Of helplessness too. Facts that most times seems too overwhelming for me to surmount. Yet hope does exist there. I see evidence of it everyday. Extraordinary stories of people who have not only survived tragedy but have gone on to thrive. I see hope in our impending change of political administration not that I am naive enough to think that all things will magically come right. They will not. My sponsor said something last week when we saw each other that reinforced the message fo hope; sometimes things have to die in order for others to live. I would never presume to say that he meant Larry had to die in order for me to live. What I heard was that change is inevitable. That all living beings have a natural beginning and end and that I am subject to the same. I heard that what one feels may be unsurmountable is also subject to change. That not only can one survive what is thought to be insurmountable, one can thrive within that accommodation.
I have no idea what my post Larry life will be Or what continued accommodation I will be making to both my childhood trauma and my loss. I only know that I am on a journey, a journey where I am seeking clarity from guidance while attempting to live an authentic emotional life.
