A Letter to a Friend

Hello My Dear Friend,

I have many things I would like to tell you, thoughts I have been trying to compose for some time, but just couldn’t put the pen to the page, so to speak.  In an effort to be more like the person I once was, the woman I was proud to be, and in hopes of, not only preserving but, building our friendship, I am attempting to do so now.Liam, first and foremost, I want to tell you how unabashedly proud I am of you for maintaining your sobriety for 4 years.  It is so incredible, you are so incredible.  I know that you see greatness in everything and everyone around you. However, I also know you do not look at yourself with the same lens.  You, like any human and especially any addict, see mistakes instead of grace, failure instead of learning, shame in place of pride.  You deserve so much more credit than you will ever give yourself.  You also know that I am not one to point out falsities or give compliments without just cause.  The awe-inspiring man you are is not opinion, it is truth.

It is almost impossible not to be drawn to the person you have worked so hard to become.  You have so many qualities that attract others. I am, and was, no exception to this.  It is why I reached out to you all those months ago, because you are incontestably one of the best fathers and because you are thoughtful, so kind.  You are filled with benevolence and class and you are also, typically, without judgement.  I immediately enjoyed our interactions and truly wish that we would have been able to come back together at a completely different time in each of our lives. As time progressed, I started to rely on you and your kindness too much.  Not only did this scare me, but it caused me great concern.  The last thing either of us needed/needs is a perfectly fitted, available distraction to take us away from our purpose. From the work we must do to better ourselves.  I could see the same hesitation in you, although you expressed it in a much different way.  You would be your true self at one moment and then, I think, feel the fear associated with such honesty.  It appeared that you would be upset for showing me a side that you were somehow embarrassed of, or maybe, more accurately, you were not prepared to share.  You would be open and vulnerable and then you would completely shutdown.

At one point, I became so frustrated with your behavior, I just didn’t understand what was happening.  Typically, I never would forget what another person is going through, I almost always put myself behind those that I care for.  But, for the first time in my life, I forgot about what you were dealing with.  This is a mistake I repeated with Kurt, before I came to the realization.  When you called me, sick, after trying to help a young man you sponsor, without realizing it, you had once again let me in and then shut me out.  Siennoi pointed out to me that, “maybe he is having a couple of bad recovery weeks”.  With those words I was reminded how much you struggle through.

Obviously, we were venturing away from friendship, towards something else and neither of us was prepared or certain that was a positive choice.  There are and were many reasons why we shouldn’t have started down that road, but being reasonable is not typically a concern of the heart.  I knew that if and when we saw each other, we would definitely cross into another area of our relationships. Frankly, Liam, I really like/liked you and I turned and ran from allowing myself to show you vulnerability and, therefore, give you an opportunity to hurt me in anyway.  The last thing in the world that I needed was to compound my entire shitshow of a life, with any form of a newly broken heart, regardless of the degree.Although this is not easy for me to write, you deserve an explanation and an apology regarding your trip to here.  I was in up North, dropping off my cat with Kurt, that first night you were here.  Thomas’s birthday was on that Friday, the 6th, and from the moment you told me the dates of your trip I was terrified by the coincidence.  I was a complete mess the night before and on Friday, maybe the worst I have been since Thomas’s death.  I was supposed to be packing on Saturday and in the process becoming homeless, because at the time I didn’t know where we were going.  My dad had already put down my dog, Tank. To be fair he warned me he would “remove” the animals if he found them there after the 1st, but he picked only Tank to be hurtful, and I was trying to find homes for my other dog and cat.  As I stood in the middle, once again, of what was left of my tattered life I tried to put the last ten years into boxes. I tried to once again move Thomas and my life and I began to breakdown.  I scanned the room, looking for any kind of escape, when my eyes landed on our cat.  Kurt had mentioned the possibility of getting his girls a cat, I called him, basically forced the idea on him, and was in the car with the baby and cat before I even hung up the phone.  I had to get out of that house, this town, away from those feelings and honestly, it was leaving or doing a bunch of drugs that I saw as options.  In that moment I had completely forgotten about you, until about 40 minutes outside of Kurt’s, I was talking to my best friend Nephi and she asked me, “Friend, what about Liam?”  My heart sank and I died a little in that moment.

Kurt and I had been talking/seeing each other at this point for about two weeks, I really like/liked him as well.  But he was much more aggressive at pursuing me than you were, he openly talked about his feelings for me, and expressed the desire to date me.  You never did any of those things.  As I sat there in silence, Nephi finally said “Friend, you’ve never been one to juggle boys.  You are not a player, or cheater, and never been a liar.  You need to make a decision and stop everything else.  You are almost to Kurt’s, it is the first place you thought of when you needed to run away.  Give Kurt a chance, let Liam go.”  Immediately I didn’t want to do that, but I also didn’t not want to do it either.  So I told her, and myself, that I would see how my second weekend with Kurt went, specifically how that night went, and I would make a decision.  In my head, I was always coming home, coming to see you, keeping the plans we had made so long before.

But then I chickened out, on all aspects.  I had an amazing weekend with Kurt, but that didn’t dissipate my excitement to see you.  I wanted to see you, regardless if it was purely to hug my friend, to thank a man who supported me when he had no reasonable expectation to do so. In all honestly however, I knew that if we were near each other, all my grand plans of friendship talks or hugs would fly out the window.  It was a blessing and a curse that my phone didn’t work while up there, because I didn’t see you called and didn’t get your voice mails until I drove half way home.  When I finally listen to them, Liam, I want you to know, that not only did I feel like the worst person, that I don’t think I have ever treated someone I care about so terribly, but that I cried most of the way back.  I didn’t know what to say to you. I thought I would give you some time and space, while also giving me some time to forgive myself for what I had done and be able to form an appropriate apology. While abstaining from contacting, you I started to feel how much I missed you, valued our friendship and knew I wanted you in my life.  I have tried to gently, forcefully, make you my friend again.

Kurt and I are not seeing each other anymore, and although we both have said we have feelings for the other, and want to be together, we both made some big mistakes.  Again, I am quite the mess and he had some ridiculous fantasy of me from high school.  He is also in recovery and, once again, I temporarily forgot about his needs and struggles.  But I am glad I took that chance with Kurt and thankfully our friendship remains intact. Because it is pertinent to me fully explaining myself I am including a portion of an email I wrote to Kurt;

 “Kurt, please take this with the absolute love and understanding that it is written with.  I want to start by saying I am so sorry.  Although my life has always been stalk full of crazy, this is the first time ever that I have forgotten, for a moment, about what the other person is going through.  I also want to preface this by saying, that I am completely ignorant to exactly what you do in Celebrate Recovery, that I am only familiar with AA.  Regardless Kurt, I know about addicts, specifically alcoholics, and I know about recovery.  You are doing amazing Kurt, but I think that there are just a few things I need to point out, maybe for myself, and clarify.  I hope you do not feel like I am acting as if I know more about your recovery than you, I do not.  I know nothing, just what I’ve studied, read and lived through being a child of an alcoholic. 

As an alcoholic, I know that fear touches every aspect of your life and is an evil and corroding cancer.  I do not know whether Celebrate Recovery follows steps like AA, however in AA a lot of people get stuck or derailed on step 10. The continued taking stalk of your emotions, whether you have hurt someone, if so immediately admitting it and apologizing for it.  It isn’t easy to watch for selfishness, dishonesty and fear at every turn, but you almost have to.  It is easy to rest upon one’s spiritual program, but as you know alcohol is a subtle foe.  I don’t think you’re going to start drinking again, I think you are just displaying traits of how I assume you used to be.  I do not make that assumption lightly, but it is how I have seen every addict, I have ever known or work with, behave around this time in their sobriety.  AA tells us that as an alcoholic it is necessary, even life depending, to stop fighting everything and everyone.  To stop depending on others ahead of depending on God, which is why my generosity makes you feel uncomfortable.  It has been an eternity since someone has treated you with generosity, or no one has ever done so, and you don’t think you deserve it.  Here I come and with me comes the fighting.  I know that drinking placed you on the wrong side of every argument.  I think that is the feeling you get when I start to disagree (and almost all of it is my fault due to the way I disagree).  I apologize, again Kurt, I hadn’t forgotten, but I had forgotten all you are battling. On top of that you know that it is necessary to hand it over to God and not fight me, but we do and it makes you so uncomfortable. I hadn’t even realized this until I went back and read through the post on Fifty Shades of Grey.  I wasn’t the only one disagreeing with you, but I was the only one to illicit such a forceful reaction from you.  It took my breath away, because I had forgotten every single thing I learned, in regards to how I am supposed to speak to you.  How I am supposed to be gently with you, as well.  I’ve know addicts to have one argument with a loved one and return to using.  I needed to be much more careful and not disagree with you in a resentful or critical manner.  I know all too well that the slightest sign of fear or intolerance can lessen one’s chance of remaining sober.  Seriously, one careless and inconsiderate remark can raise the very devil! I almost feel you rolling your eyes, because you are comfortable and “stable” in your recovery. Again, I don’t think you’re in danger of drinking, but addict behavior is as harmful as the drug of choice, and then there is the lying.  Maybe you weren’t exactly lying to me, or exactly lying to your mother, but you were far from truthful.  Lies, once started, slide out of the mouth of an addict before they even realize. AA also stresses being helpful to others, reaching out, doing all you can.  Which is what you were trying to do for me, but you need to be careful Kurt of mixing that with a romantic relationship.  You also can’t save us “damsels in distress,” it is not your responsibility.  Focus more on a struggling member of Celebrate Recovery.  My final point on this is how much (oddly it is usually me stressing this to the parents of the children I have counseled and not having to look into myself) cheerfulness is critical.  You need to be around happy people Kurt, smiley, bubbly people.  I guess you’ve always been attracted to that, which is one reason I didn’t understand your attraction to me, but it is something you need now.  I am not that girl right now.  I have been happy in the past and people describe me as smiley, never bubbly, but am just not that girl at this point in time.”

I swear I am almost finished, but I need your advice and I don’t trust many people,  especially with what I am going to say. I know I am safe with you from judgement or bullshit. I really would like to talk to you a little about my crap-ass decisions lately.  I haven’t been the most mature, sober adult.  I will not make any excuses for my choices, and obviously I am having, in the least, mild concerns.  It just seems like lately, I need something to keep me from completely losing it, from killing myself, I don’t truly know. I am trying to just numb myself, but I don’t want to continue it.  I just need to develop a different coping mechanism, besides drugs or booze.  I have periodically, throughout my adult life, done drugs.  I’ve had moments of being out of control, but one way or another I am always able to get it together. I guess I sorta “grow out” of these phases. Drinking was a bit different.  I drank way too much in college and a few years afterward. I stopped years ago, completely stopped about 2 1/2 years ago, there was no specific reason, I just did.  But I’ve been bringing it back.  I am currently a fan, but I know it’s because I only will have 2-3 wine coolers, and that’s enough. I know, better than most, that it is too easy to watch either (or both) take over your life.  Truthfully, right now, I would be just fine with that, except for Natalie.

Honestly, all of this started because I stopped sleeping.  I’ve gone about 60 days with getting on average 2 hours or less a night.  I can’t remember anything, I fall asleep on the toilet, or driving, or walking up the stairs, but only for a few minutes.  I am awake all night. This started after I the bank took the SUV, then the house, the animals, everything!

So, Liam, although I know this is a lot to take in, yet to summarize, I love you. I am so thankful to have you in my life.  I see how happy you are in your relationship and it truly makes my heart soar.  You deserve it more than most, you’ve earned it more than most and happiness suits you.  Your elation is all over your face, when you smile it lights up my day!  I am so sorry and I ask you to forgive me.  I also, as I have said, want my friend back.  I want a random text from you, or a chat on the phone every once in a while.  I want to know what is happening with you, truly, if you’re struggling or upset, if you’re mad or happy.  Whatever it is, it is important to me, you are important to me. You matter friend and I love you!

Love,

Me

September 28th, 2013

Hello everyone. It is 3:44am on Saturday the 28th of September, which will forevermore be known as the hardest day of my life. As I type this I am laying next to the love of my life, who is in a hospital bed in the I.C.U., while our 7 week old baby sleeps in the N.I.C.U., in a different hospital 20 min away.  My entire world is in those two hospital beds and for the past 6 days I have been constantly going from one hospital to the other. When I’m with him I feel like I should be with our baby Natalie and when I’m with Natalie, I feel as if I should be with him. However, after today I will not even have the luxury of spending 20 hours a day with the loves of my life at these hospitals, because later this afternoon, the critical care team that has been tirelessly trying to save his life, and therefore mine, will declare him officially brain dead, and by doing so taken the decision off my hands-legally we must stop supportive care.

The unbearable amount of stress that we have been under these last few months can not be described with words. I feel so foolish for thinking that I was at my ropes end then! With every breath the ventilator pumps into his lungs, I am reminded that he gave me the best 9 years of my life and how lucky I truly am to have this extra 72 hours with him! But then I’m reminded that his precious daughter only had her daddy for 7 weeks, and his greatest wish was she would be able to leave the N.I.C.U. Matter of fact the last time he and I talked to Natalie’s neonatologist, he had expressed to the Dr. how utterly unfair it has been that she had never seen the sun, feel the breeze, see grass or trees. Yesterday, in an amazing attempt to honor her daddy, her nurse took her outside and she was finally able to experience the amazing sensation of the breeze on her face!

I truly have no idea how I am going to live my life without him and I don’t understand why I have to. I am so thankful to everyone who has been so supportive and I’m humbled by the effort to help Natalie and me! I really need a place to bring Natalie home to, because the date to be out of our house is looming.  God how am I ever going to do this?

Christmas Without You

As I sit up and usher in yet another 3:00 am, I allow myself to feel the pure dread that engulfs my soul knowing that another Christmas is looming and I must face it without you. I’ve become quite masterful at faking my way through the the events I can’t avoid. Whether I ignore it or not, Christmas is coming and with it, the all too familiar feeling that I am failing yet again. I have yet to purchase a single present, all our decorations (and Lord knows there’s a disgusting amount) still sit in the boxes you put them in two years ago. Baby, I am once again asking for help, which is so damn hard for me. I need to muster the strength, I no longer possess, to fake and maneuver my way through the holidays! I love you and miss you more today than I did yesterday and I can’t imagine going through another holiday without you.  The year anniversary of your death hit me harder than I had ever imagined.  September is forever my enemy, but I was ill prepared for October and most of November to paralyze me as they did.  I was beginning to feel as if I may have found my footing when Christmas music began to register in my ears.  How am I supposed to survive Christmas, let alone participate?  How am I to give Natalie the type of Christmas we had talked about, laying together, you rubbing my pregnant belly as we dreamed and planned? It is too much for me, baby, I need you here! I can’t do all this without you, I remember a time I felt as if I couldn’t do anything without you.  Now as tears stream down my face, I have never felt more alone.

All Sold up on Crazy

I am educated, a college graduate even, but that rarely does me any good. This week however, I got to utilize not only my formal education but my personal experiences to help out two dear friends. Kitta’s cousin shot himself last week, a soldier. His 13 month old baby was murdered last September (why Kitta hates September, like me). Kelly’s mom tried to kill herself, 3 days ago, with a bottle of Zanex and a running car parked in the garage. Luckily, she tattled on herself in enough time to allow someone to save her. She’s currently in the local hospital on a 5150. It seems that every time there is tragedy, my friends look towards me. I guess I define it, somehow, encompass that which is grief, anger and maybe a touch of wisdom. But I am especially consulted whenever suicide is a factor. YEAH ME!

Four years ago my mother killed herself. She had tried more times than anyone cared to remember and one early July morning she finally succeeded. I won’t bore anyone with details of her addictions, my insane childhood, the truly hateful message she left me that day, as I was, once again, en route home to try and stop the chaos. But what I will say, is that I am more practiced than others at grief and loss (although no one really is good at such nonsense) and I have a very different view on suicide than most.

Marilyn Monroe is quoted as saying, “suicide, is a person’s privilege. I don’t believe it’s a sin or a crime, it’s your right if you do. Though it doesn’t get you anywhere”. I am not the one to consult if you are trying to be enthusiastically talked out of ending your life. I will not jump and wave and vehemently scream, “NO! Don’t do it!” This is not helpful, it is annoying and even worse, predictable. I will tell you, if this is truly what you want, then let’s handle it like adults. Do you have a will? Where is it? Who’s picking the kids up today? What do you want done with your body? These are questions that those so rout with despair, that they are contemplating death, typically do not think about. Mostly because it takes energy and planning. Those of us who are familiar with depression understand, energy and planning are two things rarely possessed at such dark times.
I have seen such questions stop a suicidal person in their tracks. Force them outside of the hell that is their minds, and make them think. Just a flash, just for a moment, but sometimes a moment is all we need. Kelly asked me what his mother might be feeling, laying in the hospital. Embarrassment and failure; that is what she is feeling. In her mind, she has failed so many times, and once again she has failed now. Failed at something so basic, she can’t even manage to take her own life. Kitta screamed, through her tears, that she had told her cousin to call her if he was feeling this way. She has no understanding that he was always feeling this way, that he tried, the boy gave it a year. A year, living without his daughter. A year, realizing that if this was life, he no longer wanted any part of it.

Regardless of your spiritual beliefs, I take true offense to uneducated people when they say that suicide is selfish. They have never seen the darkness that is depression, never been so destroyed that nothing is as it once was. Never truly been stricken by grief or loss, never looked so far into the abyss that they no longer recognized life’s beauty. It is truly selfish to know that a person feels such despair and yet want them to continue, for our sake. “Please live through hell, because frankly we are uncomfortable with you, your depression, and your right to free will.” I am not advocating suicide, such a terrible and destructive option, but I will never judge another for having reached their limits. I think about it, I sometimes wish I had the guts, but I do not. I will not do to Natalie what my mother did to me.

Where We Lay Our Heads at Night

Living at Peter’s house has been both our saving grace and a constant source of stress and instability.  All those months ago, when my dad decided that we were no longer welcome, that the few months we were there were plenty to grieve and begin a new, that he was done dealing with us and had did “more than enough”, Peter saved us from the shelter.  The dysfunctional family we have built is a family nonetheless.  We are comfortable here, we are welcome and we are loved.  With such an environment it isn’t hard to imagine that Natalie and I are not the only refugee’s that have been taken in.  In total there is 7 of us that live here, in a 3 bedroom converted double wide trailer.  It’s, well, cozy to say the least.  Being the only adult female is great and not so great at the same time.  There’s always laundry to do, something that has been torn apart by the children or some meal to make and then to clean up after.  Somehow I’ve adopted them as much as they’ve adopted us.  Peter’s boys are 8 years old and twin 6 year old’s, then Tim, Peter, Natalie and me.  I’ve never lived with such craziness, but am so thankful we are here.  It’s a house, a home really, but not what I am used to.  But I am so unfamiliar to myself and this place that the uneasiness has led to a strange calm within the chaos.

Tear Stained Pillows

Every night I lay awake as our beautiful daughter sleeps peacefully by my side. It is in these fleeting moments where I allow myself to truly feel my grief. As I listen to her snore, I let the sadness I fought all day wash over me and it is here where I allow the tears to flow. There’s something about the silence that falls before the dawn, where I feel closest to him. Some nights, if I try hard enough, I can almost feel him next to me. I would do anything to hear him call me baby one last time and I would gladly take his place so he could watch our daughter grow. But as the sun begins to peak through the window, I am reminded that neither is possible. I dread the morning, not knowing how I will make it another day, without him, trying to find strength when there is only despair.  Trying to piece together some semblance of a life, for her. Trying to remind myself who I am supposed to be.

Is This a Life?

Nights like tonight are almost unbearable.  It’s the silence more than anything. Sure the loneliness plays a part, but the silence, the deafening silence, it is murderous! It is the silence that forces me into my head, the one place I don’t want to be.  It is the silence that has led me here. It seems like an odd place to start a story, it’s not the beginning and it’s not the end.  Calling it the middle is just depressing.  It is here, in this non-middle, where I will chronicle the insanity that is my life.

I know that the unimaginable happenings of my existence are hard to believe, but I can not control the reactions of others. I can not even control myself.  I am the definition of a shitshow, Momma Shitshow if you will.  I have discovered throughout the last year, watching my life implode, that WE ARE ALL shitshows.  There is something freeing about admitting this, something that feels authentic and true.  John Keats wrote, “beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Unfortunately for Keats, and for me, most of my truth is a bubbling, sticky, ugly mess! A mess I’ve been trying to navigate, a mess that somehow finds me here looking in a mirror at a woman I do not know. 

I have vague memories of the woman my friends whisper about and my family insists is still alive.  They speak of her incredible strength and power, she’s fabled to be amazing.  The more I search for her, the more certain I become that she is no longer, if she was ever real to begin with.  She has perished, along with everything around me. She is part of a history I can not bare to think about, of a life that returns to me only in my dreams, of something that will never be.  They say she was me.