All Write, Already!

In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When, in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the Causes which impel them to the Separation.

Back in high school, when I was living with my mother, I looked forward to my 18th birthday like it was some sort of perverse pivot point around which my life would do a perfect pirouette, turning me precisely 180 degrees away from how miserable I felt at the time, towards some undefined happiness.

My mother and I had a tenuous, uncomfortable relationship. She didn't know what to do with me - a straight-A kid whose biggest troubles were lack of friends and disdain for the lack of academic rigor in my school. My sister - a midling student with an alcohol tolerance most college binge-drinkers would kill for and a penchant for calling from the police station (though in fairness, usually because she accompanied friends who'd been picked up) - she was more mom's speed. Mom had been there. She knew how to handle those kinds of problems.

I couldn't respect her. On top of the not-knowing-what-to-do-with-me thing, she was addicted to a variety of substances, a couple in the legal range but most not even close. There were nights (and hell, days) I'd be afraid of her - either because she was acting threatening, or because her behavior on the cocktail of drugs and alcohol she self-prescribed caused her judgement to be potentially fatally lacking. I woke up in the middle of the night once to find a sinkful of vomit and both electric skillets plugged in and up, full blast; she could have burned down the house, no joke. One fourth of July, I didn't hear from her until four in the morning. She called, tearful because the police had caught her fighting in public with her boyfriend, and she was very high - if they decided to arrest her and drug test her, she'd be in deep shit. I drove the fifty miles to pick her up, and it was stiff-upper-lip time for me while she cried, either too high, too embarassed or too sorry for putting me through that to refuse my questions about her addictions.

I didn't respect her, and yet she was in a position of authority over me. That fact drove me completely insane. I remember, about a month before my 18th birthday, my mother said to me, "You're going to be 18 soon."

"I am," I told her, and rattled off the specific number of days until that would be the case.

She suddenly looked wounded. "You don't have to sound so happy about it," she said. The air was suddenly very heavy, and so was the subtext. What have I ever done to you? her eyes asked. And I know I just looked back at her as if to say, Are you stupid? You can't be surprised that I'm happy to be leaving.

I needed to be free of her, and if I'd had to write a formal declaration of my grievances, I could have at any time. And she knew it.

That summer, after I graduated from high school, I went to live with friends. I returned to live with her to get my affairs in order before college, then ran off less than a month later again to a school far, far away from her. Because of the way all of the college funding options work, though, I was technically still a dependent of hers.

Until four months later, when I got married.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in GENERAL CONGRESS, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connection between them and the State of Great-Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which INDEPENDENT STATES may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of the divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

But I wasn't really independent then, either. I got married a month before I turned 19 - almost to the day. Looking back on it, the beginning of my relationship with my husband was sort of a train wreck. This time, the problem was me. I hadn't had a great friend - someone I could really count on - since elementary school. I'd never had an in-person date. My ideas about sex all came from the one previous experience I'd had. I was co-dependent as hell, completely insecure, and so unsure of myself that I appeared to many people to have no personality at all - I was so scared that if my husband (or anyone else) saw anything real about me, they'd leave.

These things take time to work through. My husband helped me get through that, my biggest fear - that I could scare him off by showing him who I was, or at all, for that matter. He stayed. I grew. It was good.

But at the same time, I started doubting the choices that had lead me to him. I knew I'd been co-dependent. I knew I'd been desperate for someone - anyone! - to accept me. I also knew that the path that I was on was not the one I'd chosen for myself before I'd gotten married; college plans were on hold, my job was dead-end, I wasn't pursuing anything I really wanted.

"Sam," I told him, one day, "This is going to sound terrible, and I want you to know it doesn't mean I want to leave you, but... I sometimes wish I'd had some time before I met you to get a little bit of me figured out."

I think I remember him being hurt, on some level. In all honesty, at that point I was at something of an emotional low because I wasn't pursuing any of my long-term interests; I did think fleetingly that leaving him would be nice, for some alone time.

I was wrong.

Somewhere along the way, since I've been out on my own and started taking responsibility for pursuing my own goals, I've figured out a few things. The first is that you don't always have to cut and run. My mother and I get along well, today. She's made a lot of choices that I think were bad, and a lot that I think were particularly bad in the light of her responsibility to her children, but that's a long time past, now. She's just a woman, now - great personality, tough as nails, too many scars and just enough self-awareness to keep her out of trouble.

The second is that being independent does not mean being alone. I sometimes wonder how different a person I'd be today if I'd never met Sam, but the idea that I could be better without him is one that hasn't occured to me in years. He's only enriched my life.

Independence can be had, even when your life is intimately intertwined with that of others. All that is required is strength of conviction, willingness to speak, willingness to act, and most of all, willingness to recognize when not to compromise.

It's more often than you think.