The Unbearable Loss of the Lightness of Being

My son, in his junior year, absolutely hates high school. I think he has always hated school but never really verbalized it as strongly or as much as he has this year. He feels “imprisoned” by the size of the school (3,000 + students), the curriculum and, as he calls it, “the hypocrisy of attending a ‘blue ribbon’ school that shows no care for students who struggle.” My son has struggled in school since he began the public school system in the 7th grade. He received straight A’s his first year in the system (but apparently hated every minute of it he tells me now). In the 8th he began a slow but steady decline into ennui, resistance, and lying to avoid a system that he feels is failing him.

We had him tested this October to see if there were any processing problems going on that negatively affected his grades, and hence his struggles in maintaining a positive self-esteem and consistent motivation for school.

Now let me just say that as parents, we KNOW our kids even when the school doesn’t or even when our child can’t latch onto who they are. I have always known my son is intelligent, intellectually capable, but with the declining grades (mostly Cs, a few better, a few worse) I wanted to know…

What is Going On??

At the assessment results meeting, the school psychologist and learning specialist announced that they have never experienced testing a child with my son’s level of intelligence and knowledge before. They suggested he test out of school and start college immediately.

Not very helpful. But clearly there IS something going on.

If my son has that many talents and gifts what are the reasons for his lack of achievement and, more importantly, his unhappiness, lack of passion and desire????

It reminded me of a dream I had a few days before my first marriage. My mother and I were sitting in the back pew of the huge Gothic Catholic church where the marriage was to take place. My mother looked beautiful, and I was all decked out in my Priscilla of Boston wedding dress. Funny thing was, the wedding was in progress. My mother was nudging me. “You have to get up there now! GO!” I looked at the altar. The best woman and best man were there. The priest was there. My almost husband was there. Check, check, check and check. And there I was. Kinda sorta. I was an outline of my body, a dark solid line, but there was nothing colored inside the lines. I was not “in” my body.

I could barely look. It was, for me, the first recognition that I was a part of life, but I was not “in” my life. I experienced the unbearable loss of the lightness of my Being. I was there, but not there: I was empty, an outline, a shadow of who I was.

And I was perfectly fine getting married that way.

I turned to my mother and said, “I’m staying right here.”

I got married a week later.