Since this blog is fucking depressing as hell, I’m going to add one more depressing thing to the mix because I want to. And then I’ll add something hopeful, I hope. For now, this.

A confession, of sorts.

Once, I was dating a boy and I stayed at his place a lot. We weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, we were just friends with benefits.

One night, he called me and asked me if I could go home or at least sleep on the couch for the night, because he was bringing another girl home.

Once, I was dating a boy, and he gave me a key to his house. And one day I walked into his living room to find him having sex with a girl on the couch. I noticed that her feet were dirty.

Once, I was dating a boy, and we went to his friend’s new years party. I had just gotten out of the hospital a couple of days before that, for asthma related problems. The boy’s friend had a dog that I was allergic to and the boy had to drive me home. And he got mad and wouldn’t talk to me. And then I found out he had been text messaging another girl (that makes me sound so young, doesn’t it?) all night long, anyway. And then he got angry with me when I asked about it, and he drove me home. But I forgot my keys and no one at my house woke up, so I waited in the snow for two hours for another friend to come get me. If you know anything about asthma, you know how stupid that is.

Once, I was dating a boy, and he told me he just didn’t want a girlfriend, it had nothing to do with me. And then a few months later he called me and said “I really like this girl. She’s my girlfriend now. Can you make the bed before you leave? Leave your key in the mailbox.” I had just finished making pancakes for us.

I could keep going.

The point of that isn’t to illustrate my terrible taste in men, although it does, or to make you feel bad for me, although you might. It’s not an attempt to make all men look like pigs, although some are.

My only point is to say, do you see all those stories up there? Do you know whose fault they are?

Mine.

Because I am a big girl, and no one forced me to stick around for those dudes. End. Of. Story.

I read Kate Inglis’s blog, www.sweetsalty.com, regularly. For me, it is one of the most beautifully written pieces of writing on loss ever written. I’m not kidding or exaggerating. The best, to me, perhaps because it’s written in the moment and it’s progressive, and really truly honest. I feel like a fraud reading her, though, because I’ve never lost a baby. I’ve never even HAD a baby. But the way she writes, it keeps me connected to my own head and my own emotions. I used to find myself constantly thinking “I can’t even fathom how that must feel”, taking into consideration how deep in the hole I felt with my own losses. Now, I try not to do that. I try to just take it as is, and appreciate it as it is. And it helps, not because I know how she feels, but because she inspires me to try to wrap my brain around what’s going on with my heart. And just recently, in a post, she wrote this:

“I don’t think it matters what we believe. All of us need to feel some sense of accompaniment, witness, restoration.”

She’s written other things that have struck me a lot harder than this, but just today this holds quite a bit of meaning.

Witness. That’s the hardest part, for me. I have no one to remember her to, and it’s like she wasn’t a real person at all. I start doubting my sanity sometimes. Did I make her up? Was she a figment of my imagination? I’m used to people I know dying. It is an unfortunate fact of my life. I lose people constantly. And this isn’t bad luck; it’s that I choose to befriend broken people. It’s just what I’m used to, what I’ve grown up around, and it’s my choice and I get that.

What I’m not used to is complete isolation from anyone who knew the person who passed away. There is no one left who knew her. Not that I know of, anyway. No one to whom I can say “Do you remember her favorite band? Do you remember her clothes or that bad haircut she got that one time or the way she laughed? Or how about how she would always add an S to the end of people’s last names for no reason and it drove me UP THE WALL!”

It’s hard when you don’t have anyone looking in the same direction as you. (For me, the direction is usually behind me as I’m tripping over shit in front of me, but whatever, I digress).

I guess this vent session is really about two kinds of people I’m lacking at the moment. People who knew her and could reminisce with me and help me feel a little less on my own, and people in my life willing to let me sob it out.

I think my friends are almost completely desensitized to my constant loss.

Me: “Sorry I can’t make it to the movies… I’m going to a funeral.”

Them: “Oh, ok well give us a call after if you wanna go to the bar or something with us!”

Me: “Ok, yeah, I’ll do that.”

And I do go out to the bar, because I don’t want to be alone, and I sit all night and talk and laugh and I swear to God, I am on the verge of tears the WHOLE time. And no one sees. And no one says “Who passed away?” No one ever asks.

I need someone to ask. I feel completely stark raving mad sometimes, like I want to interrupt a perfectly normal conversation with someone, look them in the eyes, and ask them. “Can I please tell you about my friend and how she was here and she’s gone now, and will you promise to ask questions that I can answer and I can laugh and smile and then cry about it? Can you please do that for me, because no one wants to hear it and she’s slipping away a little more each day, and I miss her so so much? Can you help me?” I want to say “You would have loved her, ya know? You really would have. She was a trip.”

I need someone to be interested, and not speak and not say “You’ll be fine.” I know I’ll be fine. Shit, I AM fine. At this very moment, I am fine. I just want someone to nod and say “Really?” and laugh at the funny parts and listen at the sad parts.

I should preface this post with a couple bits of information.

1 – I dream nightly and I remember quite a few dreams each morning. When I was a little girl, I started getting these really terrifying nightmares and I had night terrors on top of that. It made bedtime pretty stressful for all involved. My mom thought that by making me write down my dreams as soon as I woke up, we’d find a pattern to what was freaking me out so badly, and we could adjust accordingly. It never worked as my nightmares were pretty abstract and weird, but it did cause me to develop the habit or remembering more dreams than the average person does. At least, I think I remember more dreams than the average person.

2 – I have nightmares every. single. night. They’re not as weird as they used to be, but they’re freaky nonetheless.

So now that we have that out of the way…

I have two different nightmares that seem to happen quite a bit. The themes are always the same. The first type is a dream where something bad happens, usually one of my friends overdoses on some unknown drug or drinks too much, and no one wants to call an ambulance or help out at all, and they won’t let me help either. And I’m screaming at everyone to quit being so selfish, because our friend is dying and they’re going to let it happen because they don’t want to call the police. And then various chaotic things happen and I wake up feeling like I let someone die.

The second type of dream is one where I dream that I am 9 months pregnant. I give birth to a healthy baby after a long and exhausting delivery, and everything is very normal. The way my childless brain imagines life would be after having a baby. Exciting, terrifying, pretty much in awe. Nothing out of the ordinary or strange happens in the dream. I have a baby, I feed it, hold it, stare at it for a really long time, smell its head, etc. You get the picture. In this sense, it’s not a nightmare. The nightmare doesn’t happen until I wake up.

When I wake up after one of these dreams, I’m confused. I feel like I should be in a hospital. Then I realize it was a dream and I’m all “Oh thank God. No baby. Just a dream.” My brain fully recognizes this was just a weird dream I had. But… I still feel off. I feel off for the rest of the day. I FEEL like I really had a baby and now it’s gone. It’s not here anymore. Oh my God, did I leave them at home? Is he/she still in the car and I forgot to drop them off at the babysitters? It’s a vague feeling, not an outright panic. Like I said, I KNOW it didn’t really happen, it’s just this sort of emotional response that I can’t control. All day, I just feel “off.” Like I’ve forgotten something really important, or that I’m being really irresponsible somehow. I feel like I should be holding something, but I set it down and forgot to pick it back up.

I had the first type of nightmare the night before last, and the baby nightmare last night. It’s been a stressful couple of days, my brain is going a mile a minute at all times, and my dreams are a response to that. It’s annoying as hell, because they just continue the cycle of being stressed out.

Seriously dudes, I am all sunshine and rainbows, aren’t I?

Wednesday was the last stop, the big goodbye, the end of it all. And if you’ve ever lost someone, you know that this is where the hard stuff really begins. The shock has worn off. The whirlwind of preparing and notifying and keeping busy is over. Everything is quiet and still, and there is ample time to realize the weight of what just happened.

It’s only been a couple days and I’m already not handling this stage well. And the fact is, I have to work today. I have to be here at this desk answering the phone. I can’t stay home in bed even though I want to. I can’t just stop everything. I’m trying to hold it together because I can’t do my job if I’m hysterical.

There are certain things about her that are still crystal clear to me. What her face looked like, the exact way she left her make-up scattered all over the bathroom, and the way she smelled. The sound of her voice. Sometimes I feel like the phone is going to ring and it’s going to be her. That’s one of the strangest things. Remembering so vividly that it’s like she’s still here.

But there are certain things that are already fading away. Things like exactly how tall she was and what color nail polish she always wore. And I know they seem trivial, but nothing is trivial to me. And it’s only been over a week since she’s been gone. These things are slipping away so quickly. I keep wondering what will be the next thing to slip.

I can’t bear the thought of not remembering her completely.

Getting drunk is not a very effective way of dealing with severe grief and depression.

Today isn’t looking too good to clarify yesterday’s post.

All I can think today over and over and over is - why is it that no one can ever tell me why? No one can ever fucking explain. Everywhere I go people just tell me “I don’t know why, Ashley, these things just happen.” But that’s wrong, it’s not right, these things don’t just ‘happen’. These events, they aren’t freak accidents. They don’t happen overnight. And still, no one can tell me why. Why it’s always the best people, why it’s always drugs, why every single fucking asshole on the whole planet will live through hell or high water, but the amazing people that you love with all your heart, they’re always the ones to die.

I just wrote about my tendency to rehash old memories constantly, and how I remember things people rarely do.

And one of those things is every first thought I ever had upon hearing that a friend had died.

And now, today, I have another one of those first thoughts. And I thought that I’d write about it now, when it’s fresh but before it’s really hit me. In a an hour, when I’m driving home from work, I know I’ll be inconsolable and unable to tell anyone how I’m feeling without wailing. Right now my job is holding me together and keeping all of my emotions frozen. It’s a very strange place to be, here, totally disconnected from myself, on autopilot.

(more…)

There are some people in this world who can be graceful and tactful and not judge others when they make insensitive comments; comments that most likely tumbled out due to being unsure of how to react to another person’s tragedy.

These diplomatic people can say things like “Well, some days are worse than others” in response to someone who says “I saw her the other day and she didn’t seem upset”; this, of course, subtly implying that the person being discussed is “over” whatever grief they were trapped under, or in my case, that if the person could smile then nothing ever happened. They were right. She was obviously lying.

(more…)

After two days spent with him, two days that dangerously resembled the good old days, I’m left thinking about war. Or really, thinking about us in relation to the war, what it’s done to us. Who we were before it finally got to us. The stupid war that has never meant for me what it meant for everyone else. The politics were left behind in favor of “But what about me?” I couldn’t think of it in terms of right and wrong anymore, just in terms of “I want him home and he’s not and now I’m going to cry about it.”

Now that he is home, safe and unharmed, the fact that everything has changed irreversibly is too obvious to ignore.

At first, we were a united front in the face of the ridiculous war. We laughed at it. We both prided ourselves on being different, being stubborn, not letting other people’s agendas ruin shit for us. We were tougher than any stupid war that anyone could come up with, and the world would be sorry for doubting us. That’s what we told ourselves and everyone else. That’s what we wanted and needed to be true. And everyone we knew was behind us, hoping we were right.

The reality of it all is that I was sick every single day while he was gone and he wouldn’t tell anyone how he was really feeling or what he was really doing because he didn’t want us to worry. We weren’t tougher; we were just determined to stick to our story. And that is just what we did.

Then our world was blown open. My world was blown open and I dragged his with it.

And if I could have left him without a single word of explanation of what happened and why, if I could have let him think I was just some selfish girl that he never really knew, I would have done it. I would have broken him in one swift move and he could have hated me and told his friends I was a cunt and every girl within a 50 mile radius would flock to him like moth to flame.

He could have told them “I’m sorry, I just can’t be in a relationship, I’ve got trust issues now, my ex-girlfriend really did a number on me, ya know?” and they would have eaten up every last bit of it and his number of sexual partners would have quadrupled in a matter of months.

But I couldn’t. I knew him, I knew he wasn’t that guy, and I didn’t want to turn him into that guy. Mostly, I was too weak to make him hate me; I couldn’t muster up that one deep breath that would have let me take that plunge. And too many people already knew the truth before him, he’d find out somehow, and we would have been so much more broken after that. Confused on top of it all, and I’d have been unable to adequately explain my lies, or why I never told him or let him help me.

And so I told him the truth and unwillingly let him get pinned under the grief with me.

The world was so big after that, so empty and chaotic at the same time. I couldn’t make sense of anything or anyone; everyone was speaking a different language. I needed him to translate for me, because he’s the only one who ever listened long enough to know me. I was stuck here and I was totally alone.

So what’s the war’s part in this? God, I could blame it for everything. But mostly, it’s because it made it so that he wasn’t here. It took me a long time to realize that the reason I couldn’t be with him is because I resented him for not being here. For not being able to help me. And as ridiculous as that is, because he couldn’t help it and I know he would have sold his soul or cut off his own leg to be at home with me every minute until I wasn’t crazy anymore, I couldn’t help it. I knew my resentment made no sense and that he had no say in any of it, and I didn’t blame him and I wasn’t angry with him.

I was just so far away from him. We had a whole war between us. Two wars, really. His and mine. And we couldn’t fight them both at the same time. We were simply outnumbered.

And then the distance just piled on after we were apart, the gap kept growing. I didn’t just resent his absence, I resented all of the people who looked at me in a way that said “Yeah yeah, he told us what happened but did you have to break up with him? What does he have to do with it? I mean it just doesn’t make sense.”

Or even worse “Yeah, well that sucks, but he fought a WAR. People DIED. Why are you punishing him?” As if it was my choice, as if the only reason anything had happened is because I wanted to punish him.

I found myself comforting people we knew or somehow feeling a need to prove myself as Really Fucking Damaged, I Am So Not Kidding. I was broken into a million pieces and somehow still holding other people together. I was feeling guilty for finding the ability to laugh at a joke or feel for 5 minutes that my life may return to normal at some point because everywhere I turned it seemed like people were looking on thinking “See? She’s fine. I knew it.”

And he was left trying to explain to people what had happened, everything seemed so perfect, no she isn’t an asshole, really, shit just happens. The distance was too much. Shrug shoulders, move on. Try not to violate my privacy while trying to figure out who to tell. Who could help? We never saw this coming. I guess no one ever does.

That’s what war did to us. It made us into victims of someone else’s agenda. Instead of being young rebellious kids, drunk punks in the face of authority, it made us into people who just had to sit there and take it. Instead of standing up and saying “Fuck you” to the bullshit someone heaped into our laps as both of us had always done, we just had to sit down on the curb, hands cuffed behind us, heads hung low, waiting for our parents to come pick us up.

And now we force our days. Like soldiers suffering from shell shock, we’re still fighting those wars in our heads. I find myself trying so hard to get back to that place where we couldn’t be touched, where all we did all day for hours was laugh and laugh and laugh. We were completely bulletproof. Untouchable.

What I wouldn’t give to be those people again. Those people, in relation to each other, are casualties of war as much as any poor soul who never made it home.

Remember. That is probably the word that means the most in my life.

“Do you remember that time when we….”

“Remember how he used to…”

“I remember she used to have this…”

It’s all I do all day long. Remember. My memory is my most important thing. I mean, I’ll never remember to finish all the mail in time or print out the copier logs on the right day at work; that kind of memory isn’t my strong suit. But I’ll always remember what Peter was wearing the first time I saw him. What dress I was wearing when my brother was born. The smell of Katie’s house, the taste of Nan’s cooking, and the first time Dan Rumianowski ever touched me. The shoes I was wearing the first time I saw Chris Connor which was also the first time a boy ever made me feel like I was going to throw up all over those shoes. The exact taste of a menthol cigarette mixed with Kiwi-Strawberry Snapple. My complete inner dialogue from the night right before my 8 month old cousin died. Every first thought I had upon hearing that a friend had died.

I could recite to you every single infinitesimal detail of those times. My own tiny mythologies. An effort to make sense of the uncontrollable and unforeseen events of my life. My best effort at making sure no man is left behind. The whole world could forget these things, these events, these people, but not me. I single handedly take their weight on my shoulders and drag them around with me to make sure they don’t slip away forever.

Most of those people aren’t even gone, they’re still here and living and breathing. But they’re different people now, whether they’ve moved forward or taken a few steps back, maybe just a few steps to the side. Different nonetheless. And I think it’s important to remember who they were when I met them. When we were friends, and not the kind of friends who have to ask “So, what have you been doing with yourself lately?” People change and grow constantly, and the road from ‘who you were’ to ‘who you are’ isn’t a straight shot. You can’t just turn around and see miles behind you. You have to try and make the trip back, and it’s never an easy one. It’s not a trip that most people even consider taking. Even if you do, it’s impossible to see yourself accurately. To see yourself the way you really were. And that’s ok, because I remember. Those times were never lost on me.

Still, I don’t want the people I know to be the people they used to be. I just really enjoy knowing where they’ve been and seeing where they’re going and who they’re becoming. I like the before and after.

I’m just so aware that if I let go of the memories of them as they were, if I let them slip into the useless jumble of faded recollections from “The Year When” (as my grandma says), then the people they were are gone forever. And I loved those people. I really did. I still do.