YET MORE CITADEL

.

Getting back to Andrew and the Citadel, and looking back on this time, I realize now how much anxiety I was having. On the surface, I was looking forward to being an empty nester. Marnie was already living in DC and working at the Federal Reserve. Eileen was a rising junior at University of Maryland and spending her summers living and working in DC to meet her residency requirements. Andrew was also ready to get out of the house. He often said he hated being the only focus of parental attention and often chided us to take care of ourselves. To me he would say, “Talk to Dad—he’s your husband”.

I had started seeing a Jungian analyst and attending a Jungian seminar group in 1997. I was reading and studying about my conscious vs. unconscious self. I felt a great deal of satisfaction in beginning to understand how much of my life was directed by aspects of me that were outside of my cognitive sphere. In addition, I was learning how to bring more of myself into the bright light of consciousness. That was the good news. The bad news was that I became acutely aware of how little insight I had into how our family dynamic worked. What were the implicit goals? Explicitly, with Andrew getting ready to leave for college, my life was changing and on the surface, I longed for the freedom I expected to find with everyone out of the house.

 I say on the surface, because I am unclear about how my needs merged and conflicted with my children and their needs. I did not then and I do not now completely understand my feelings or needs. I am frequently bouncing day-to-day, acting out my feelings, displacing their source onto my near and dear.

My feeling at the time of Andrew’s acceptance into the Citadel was joy. I thought, “Great; this is just what he needs”. I did not really consider what was happening to me. Some part of me believes that I was not ready to let him go. If this was true, it was unconscious at the time. I felt like I was more than ready to be an empty nester.