The Empty Nest

Erin Rhodes

Birds fly away from the nest when they are ready. However, the birds do not know they are ready. They just fly. They just do it. Their readiness is innate, in their bodies. Their flight away from the nest is like clock-work and probably doesn’t differ much from the flight of the other birds. It’s so simple and yet so unfeeling.

Human nature is another story. A complicated, emotional story where nothing is certain and no happy ending guaranteed. There is no happy ending guaranteed to a bird, either. But how they feel about that, we will never know.

I’ve been planning my departure from home all my life. I had imaginings of my apartment and my things and my life. I have none of it yet, which is often quite depressing to me. But the dreams and imaginings are still there, whether for good or for bad. People say that if one has the capacity to visualize something, then this person has the capacity to make that imagining become a reality. However, I might just be too much of a dreamer, or just one of those people who dream in order to escape their own reality. One of my favorite lines in a movie goes something like this:

Man: What do you do when your real-life exceeds your dreams?
Other Man: Keep it to yourself.

We all have dreams of moving on to bigger, better things. But what is better? It’s too subjective a term, really. There are general definitions of success: money, status, power, autonomy, marriage. But success is something different for each person. Sometimes when I feel like things are really bad for me, like I’m not really going to achieve all of the goals I once set for myself, suddenly this feeling of relief falls upon me that says: “It’s all going to be okay in the end.” But what the hell is the end? When I die? When I have children? I want things to be okay now. What I do now is what affects the end. So at this rate, my end doesn’t look too good... at least not according to my standards.

But enough about me. Let’s talk about me... indirectly. A bird leaves the nest. Flies off and suddenly finds herself having sex with another bird. Before you know it, she’s sitting atop a bunch of eggs from which will erupt a bunch of slimy, too-cute birdlings who will follow her around everywhere, making her believe she has finally achieved something, and then, before she has had time to clip any wings, they’re gone. She’s alone in the nest, left with a lot of twigs, dirt, and rocks to clean up. The nest is empty, and she can’t even find the damn bluejay who knocked her up.

Which brings us, of course, to love. What should you do when you want someone so much you can taste it? What do you do when you think you need this person even more than you want him? Like your heart will literally burst if you don’t have this person. The reason I say have is because sometimes we mistake possession for love. Our hearts are empty, and we want to fill them up — with people, with objects, with food, with drugs, with sex. With whatever feels good and puts us in the control booth. Do I want to control the person I love? No. No, that is not what I would do. No one has each other. In that sense, maybe your heart has to be full even before you end up with the person of your dreams (who, by the way, doesn’t exist anyway, and you’ll probably find yourself surprised when you realize the person you should be with is not the person you dreamt about when you were 13 years old, but instead, it’s someone who makes you happier than anyone you’ve ever met... just by being who they are).

So don’t be afraid of being alone. The emptiest of hearts can exist inside a relationship. Sometimes there is just no more affection to give. No more of what you thought was love in the first place. A lot of people my age have admitted to being in love. Jeez, I talk about it like it’s a crime. Anyway, I think they just think that they were in love. I wonder, how can these people have been in love? It doesn’t make sense. Love takes time. Love requires sacrifice. These people are just posers sent here to make me feel inadequate and lonely. They don’t know what love is, and the fact that they think they know what it is infuriates me. But then again, maybe I’m just jealous. Jealous that I’ve never had what it takes to be in love.

I’m one of those pathetic people who crave love but rarely give it. I mean, I love a lot of people very much — my family, my friends. But as far as romantic love goes, I’ve been selfish and greedy. You know that term hate-monger? I think that I might be a love-monger. I horde all of the love I can get, because I feel I deserve it for some reason, and I just keep asking for more. I’ve learned a lot about myself and about relationships in the past couple of years. It’s amazing, looking back, to realize how oblivious I was of so many things. I always thought I was wise and knowledgeable in the ways of the world, but I was wrong. I’m still probably just as screwed up as ever, but life has made me a little more weary.

So does my realization that I was an ass mean that the end is going to be any better for me than for the next person? I doubt it. I mean, I suppose that now I should know better about certain things and not do them again. But if one spends too much time avoiding making one mistake, she’s going to make an even bigger one in the process. And according to journalist Joan Didion, “We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.” We lose sight of our former selves, whether that’s a good thing or bad. But there is one true identity that you always keep handy in some pocket of your self, and the people that still appreciate that identity while you’re busy migrating in and out of your other selves are truly the most important people in your life.

Joan Didion has said some wise things, so I’m going to quote her again. We’re not necessarily talking about the same things, but I think the quote is appropriate.

“It is all right only so long as we recognize that the end may or may not be expedient, may or may not be a good idea, but in any case has nothing to do with ‘morality.’ Because when we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there.”

So what does this stuff have to do with the empty nest? Nothing, really. Except that in some ways, we have all joined the ranks of “fashionable madpeople,” confusing our needs with our wants, and in the process of acquiring all of the wrong things, losing the most important things. That bird left alone in the nest, remember her? Do you ever feel like that? Abandoned, left behind, lonely? Maybe others have made you feel that way. Perhaps it’s self-inflicted. Maybe you’ve worked so hard for something, and then it’s gone. It flies away, takes on a new life of its own... but only because you have given it life is it able to do so. I think that people are afraid to breathe life into things, to create. As cheesy as it sounds, fear is why we fail. A human’s empty nest is his or her empty heart, and no matter how much you want to rid yourself of the pain of relationships, you always end up in one again, fighting for what you think are your rights. But hopefully in the end (that oh so wonderful place), you won’t have to fight for anything. Your heart will be full.