Sarah with an “H”

 

“I would rather risk my heart to the possibility of pain, 

than to never feel love again. 

To live without love is merely existing. 

There is no greater pain than that.”

Anonymous

My life didn’t get off to the best start. Born two months premature in the Spring of 1991 to starry-eyed teenaged lovers and made fatherless by my first birthday because of the first Gulf War, I didn’t know just how badly the odds were stacked against me.

 

My name is Sarah Elizabeth MacKenzie. My mom called me SarahMac. I once had a theatre teacher in High School call me MacBeth. But I prefer Sarah - with an “h”.

 

“It’s you and me Sarah - but that’s enough, we will be just fine.” was the oft repeated encouraging word spoke by my ever-hopeful mother. No matter what happened in life, we had each other. Being widowed at such a young age, it’s remarkable all that she did for me. Even as a toddler, I knew that I could count on her to come through! Somehow, she managed, like millions of other single mothers, to work a full-time day job, rush home to feed me my dinner, help me with my homework and get me into bed, then out the door again to work as a cocktail waitress in a local bar. She didn't make time for men in her life, she was too busy caring for me.

 

Mom died when I was five, she was only 23. She had a rare form of leukemia. I don't remember this, but I'm told that it was fast acting and took her in just over a month. That was over 20 years ago and I can still hear her fighting to get those words out, even as her body was surrendering to that horrible disease. The tears come easy to me, even now. I was so alone. No father. No mother. All that I had was a pair of reluctant grandparents whose plans had been radically altered by the death of their daughter. My mother's last words to me were: “Sarah, it’s just you now - but that’s enough, you’ll be just fine!” 

 

I took to heart those words and have built my life on them. “It’s just me now - but that’s enough, I’ll be just fine.” It was too painful to love, to let people in, so I isolated, I withdrew. I adopted a ‘me against the world’ attitude. In retrospect, I can see that there were people who really did care about me and tried to reach me, but I couldn't risk losing again. The possibility of pain was too much, I knew that if I were to open myself to love another human, that they'd leave me, and I'd be shattered. Again.

 

I chose to excel at academics. From early in the morning to late in the night you'd find me in the books. It was what I did. The rewards for this were great, as was the price that I paid. I graduated number one in my High School without ever attending a football game, a sleep over, or a dance. Boys my age were intimated, which was perfectly fine with me. I was “On top” but completely alone. 

 

University was a breeze and completely funded with scholarships. But in my four years there I didn't establish one single friendship of importance. In fact, I had nine different roommates, with all but the last one requesting a room transfer. The whispers in the dorms were painful but I kept up a tough external appearance, all the time dying inside. I began to see that this was just the way things were going to be for me. After all, they say ‘it’s lonely at the top,’ so I just figured that was my lot in life.

 

And now, I’m working in my chosen field. Doing well, advancing. A good reputation. Making plenty of money. I am rewarded on all fronts for my expertise, my competence, my work ethic and ultimately for what I contribute to the bottom line. I'm frequently the first one to the office in the morning and the last one to leave in the evening. 

 

I’m great at what I do, but I’m not great at who I am. 

 

I am not ‘just fine’. I am miserable. Truthfully, I am lost, I am lonely, and I just can’t take it any longer. So, in preparation for what I must do, I’ve sat down to pen these words, so that hopefully someone will read what I’ve written and they’ll come to know how very lost, how completely lonely, how totally empty I felt. I wanted someone to know why I’m making this choice. I don’t want to be thought of as crazy or nuts, I just don’t see any other viable options.

 

I realize that you cannot know that I arrived early and stayed late at work because my apartment was empty. Sure, it was furnished, quite nicely in fact, but it was empty of that which makes a home: life, laughter and dare I say it - love. I heard you share your stories of weekend trips, romantic dinners, home improvement projects, vacations and family reunions. I didn’t begrudge you your joy, I just didn’t have any sense that I could ever possess what you have. I'd happily go to your weddings and then the inevitable baby showers that would follow, all the while celebrating what was happening for you, but unable to imagine it could ever happen for me. 

 

Over time the ache grew. It gnawed at me day after day and especially night after night. When I finally went ‘home’ at the end of the day it was to a barren place filled with constant reminders of the walls that I’d built between myself and all others. I was alone. No one got in. I was self-sufficient. I could handle it. I was enough. I was not enough. I couldn’t handle it. I was not okay.  Countless nights, I'd fall asleep on the couch with the TV blaring and dirty containers of takeout food on the table next to me. Weekends became interminably long periods of isolation and anxiety where I had but one goal – survive until Monday.

 

Sure, I took up hobbies. I began to run. Initially it was short runs around the neighborhood, but as my skills and body responded to the regimen of running, it wasn't all that long before I had become a rather accomplished marathon runner. All of my life I knew that I could accomplish whatever I set my mind upon. But running long miles across the country roads doesn't fulfill and leaves me feeling even more lonely. There have been times when I've fantasized about simply running away and never returning. But would I be missed? Would it make a difference if I was gone?

 

Finally, the inevitable crisis occurred. I came to see that something had to change. Something would change. And strangely enough, I wanted someone to know. When they asked with shocked tones: “Why did she do it?” for once in my life I wanted people to know something about me. Maybe it was too late, but better late than never, they say. I want people to understand a little about what makes Sarah with an 'h' tick.

 

I started this by saying: “My life didn’t get off to the best start,” and maybe this wasn’t the best ending either, but I simply could not think of another. All I knew for sure is that I couldn’t keep doing what I’d been doing. It was too hard... too dark... too painful. I was at my wits end. There are no more options. I didn’t want this, but what choice did I have? Really, what choice did I have? I only hoped I’m was doing the right thing.

 

Hope is an odd word. Odd because at the end of what little hope I possessed, I suddenly discovered that I was too much of a coward to do what I had planned. I'd made a plan, got the needed equipment and was ready to execute my choice. But it was at that point that ‘something’ or ‘someone’ intervened. Suddenly I remembered another message my long dead mother had given me. It had been forgotten, buried deep in my unconscious mind, something that in my pain and in my solitude, I had blocked and buried. But when I remembered, 
I knew it to be true. 

 

What came to my memory was the look on my dying mother’s face as she lay in her hospital bed. Her beautiful and unforgettable face was filled with two powerful things: absolute love for me and a knowing anguish that she would not be there for me. 

 

Oh, God, how could I have forgotten that look? How could my memories have been so clouded? 

 

Oh, God? Did I really just say that? God, are you there?

 

In my heartbreak of remembrance, I saw something for the first time ever, in the midst of my self-imposed darkness, a new light of truth appeared. It was the most important message she tried to give me, and I had missed it because of my pain! I was blind to what was right in front of me! And that message was this: She loved me without question, and with great sacrifice. In her deepest sorrow and pain, she still knew how to love. I then realized that I had never loved another human being like she had loved me! My pain, sorrow and grief caused me to selfishly dig deep foxholes of so-called protection around my heart. I had desperately tried to protect myself by going inward and all I did in the process, really, was hurt myself! Suddenly it became abundantly clear to me. I not only pushed people away from me, but I pushed me away from them!

 

What I could finally see was that my biggest problem wasn’t that I had lost so much, but that I’d had never chosen to risk loving another human being! I had never reached beyond myself to another, I never opened my heart to let another person in. Could I change? After being so self-sufficient, was I even able to love like my mother loved?  Did I even know where to start? Could I let another person in? It seemed like too much. I had lived this way for a long, long time.

 

One thing I knew for sure, was that I couldn’t keep going the way I’d been going.

 

So, what was my choice going to be? What was the decision that I reached? 

 

The pills had been carefully collected. I’d google researched to be confident that the goal could be easily reached. Everything was in order. Explanatory notes written, my Will placed in an obvious location. Even a list of passwords was provided to make it easy for whoever would finish what I’d left unfinished.

 

Calling off sick from work, I’d planned this day down to the last detail. Taking a long hot shower, followed by special attention to my hair and makeup and dressing in a favorite outfit. I filled the glass with water and opened the pill bottle. I was ready.

 

But then I heard a sound. A sound that took me back to my childhood. It was the sound of bells ringing from a nearby church. Suddenly I’m four-years-old again, sitting with mother in the little community church we’d attend infrequently and I’m hearing the preacher say, “Jesus loves you and He is there for you, no matter what you are going through.”

 

It’s been three years now since I heard those bells, but on that day, Love reached down and gave me the courage to look past myself and my pain and to make a conscious choice to love others. 

 

Since that day, so much has changed.  Slowly, and with great amounts of fear, I begin to open my heart to some key people, people that I felt that I could trust at some level. A couple of times, I got hurt by people who didn't respond well to my sharing, but I found that being hurt wasn't the end all experience that I had feared. Strangely, even the feelings of disappointment made me feel alive! I discovered that I had an inner strength, much like my mother must have faced after my father's death, to overcome the pain and press into life. In a relatively short amount of time, I found that I was far more alive than when I was protecting myself from the fear of being hurt. 

 

As I opened up, I was genuinely surprised by the response that 

came my way. People enjoyed what I shared. People appreciated my vulnerability. My heart began to be filled with life and joy as I allowed people in, really for the first time in my life. The very thing that I had feared the most became small and insignificant by comparison to what I was receiving in return. To say that I was shocked by this turn of events is an understatement.

 

There is so much more that I’d love to tell you, and I'm sure that I will in the future, but I've got to go. My husband needs some help with our baby.  

 

My name is Sarah - with an “h” for ‘hope-filled’!