Completed

My mothers sister killed herself in November.  I spent part of my Thanksgiving week traveling to view and claim her body.  Of all the horror I have witnessed; this was one of my more disturbing moments.  I went in alone and I still wish that I had not.

She is number three.  My sister.  My mother.  And now her.  They are a group of three while I am on the outside looking in.

I wish people would leave my life without forcing themselves, by their own hands, through that narrow tunnel of death.  Forced is never easy.  For the person dying or the one left behind.

I try not to imagine what their final moments might have been like.  I walk that fine edge of looking but then ripping my eyes away.  I want to know but at the final moment I turn away because I am not a part of their sacred group. 

I wander into another kind of group that is supposed to support people like myself.  Those left behind to answer all the questions that never have an answer.

There are six of us.  A group of six with little in common except a forcible death in our lives.

Completed suicide.  That's the phrase they use when introducing their loved one. 

When I think of the word completed, I think in terms of... completed 1st grade... completed a project... completed a task. 

Completing death?  Creepy.  And a nice way of dressing up the fact that there are some people who off themselves because things suck really bad for them.

The circle stops at my chair I say my name and rattle off my group of three.  The leader repeats back my group of three and it suddenly sounds so much worse.

The circle begins again as each describes how their loved one completed suicide.  There's that word again.

In graphic detail... three gunshots, a hanging and an overdose.  Blood... eyeballs bulging... vomit... brains and walls.  If completed didn't sound strange before it has certainly become the fucking understatement of the evening now.

The circle stops at me again and I stare.  I finally just say no thank you and the circle keeps on rolling down  the steep descent.

Now it's time for the grief and feelings.  The other five members have all lost their children.  I'm the only one who has lost a parent, sibling, and an aunt.  I tell myself that doesn't matter.  Grief is grief.  Feelings are feelings.

But as I listen to the parents grieve their children I am stunned as I hear their words.

... anything to take their place...

... I would have taken their pain...

... miss them so much...

I hear their words but hear my mother's louder as she wished aloud that it was me instead of my sister lying in that hospital bed.  And once again speaking her wishes once my sister passed away.  Quite the contrast.

I break out in a cold sweat.  I shiver as my stomach lurches.  My head is screaming as the voices gain momentum.  I try to gather a few feelings to speak but they are drowned out by the frantic pitch my mind is at.

It's once again my turn to share.  My heart is pounding and the room is spinning.  I know what comes next.  I grab my keys and excuse myself.  I get sick in the parking lot and then I drive away.  My head hasn't stopped screaming yet.

I completed my first attempt at a support group and that was the only time that evening that word was used correctly.

Celebrate

Today is the fourth.  Every fourth of June we used to celebrate my sister's birthday.  But now the fourth is filled is guilt.  Hurt.  Anger.  Sadness.  Anything but celebration.

She would want you to celebrate her life...

This is the type of phrase often turned by the grieving left behind.  I don't believe that this is true about her and I don't believe she would have ever desired such a celebration.  I cannot celebrate a life so shattered, so damaged, so wilted that it funneled down to one eventual option of death. 

Our lives closely resembled one another until she shot a hole in that toxic fork in the road.  How do you celebrate a life gone by when you can't even celebrate your own?   She's dead.  I'm alive.  I consider myself lucky and nothing more.  Not exactly reasons to reflect, release some balloons or even visit the final marking of her earthly existence.

And then the selfish side... I don't want to fucking celebrate a person who placed so much responsibility, need, and cries for soothing squarely upon my shoulders.  I gave so much but in the end perhaps I gave too much.  When she left she took a piece of me that I cannot recover.  Now I'm left with the scar of death barely stitched together with the thread of hope that I truly did all that I could do.

How do I celebrate a life passed too early?  How do I remember her with anything but painful regret?

Surprise

Sitting on a small couch last night, I felt as if I was sitting on the corner of some cosmic world.  Alone.  Completely alone.  And this particular world was not round; rather it was square.  Square because there is no circular justice.  Not unless you count being tortured and murdered as some sort of redemptive revenge.

And then I felt injustice pressing squarely behind my tired eyes.  What has happened is not just.  Nor is it fair because they have made their exits and I have survived.

Everyone is dead... that keeps ringing in my head.  I know that is not the precise case but in my own twisted world, everyone is, in fact, dead.

So now I sit week after week, even moment after moment, left to deal with their abuse, their hatred, their woundings, and their deaths.  Then there are my scars, my memories, my terrors, and all the collateral damage that comes with being a member of this disappearing family.  Theirs and Mine: two separate and fancy walk-in closets full of skeletons and ghosts tucked away in every nook and custom built drawer specifically designed for keeping the best and most wrenching secrets.  What an inheritance.

All this while their ashes stir peacefully in the smallest pockets of square cosmic spaces.

Death let them off the hook.  And now I feel that I am on the hook for the lion's share of the damage.  This hurts deeply; deeper than I ever imagined.  This surprises me.  I knew and yes, I fantasized, that this day would come.  And here it is and I writhe alone. 

But with this pain I have also discovered a considerable peace.  I can sleep.  Really sleep.  I have never slept well, even as a married adult sleeping in a safe environment.  From the day he fled I held my breath dreading his return.  Checking on my daughter five times a night was nothing strange.  I had to know that he was not in her room.  And with that knowledge I stole another hour of sleep.  So now I sleep surprised, soundly and deeply. 

While I always knew this day would arrive, I never believed it would. We are no longer looking over our collective shoulder. 

And that freedom is a complete, yet lost, surprise.

Enmeshed

en·mesh (n-msh) also im·mesh (m-)

tr.v. en·meshed also in·meshed, en·mesh·ing also in·mesh·ing, en·mesh·es also in·mesh·es

To entangle, involve, or catch in or as if in a mesh.

 

Used in a sentence: Shattered is enmeshed in a complex web of lust, love, and abuse.

 

Dear Ruth commented on how deeply embedded my parents are in every aspect of my being.  And possibly more so than the typical adult child.  This thought caught me falling off balance it wasn't until I fell to the ground that I took a hard look at the truth of this idea.

 

And she was right.

 

My sense of normal has always been skewed.  Well meaning people always insist to me that there is no "normal" and I have always smiled and accepted their offering of kindness. 

 

However, I'm finally going to have to flatly refuse that well meant advice because what sense of normal I have always had is certainly no where close to the typical yet non-existent normal.  Ruth brought this thought to the surface when I had to look at the possibility that in many ways, I was more connected to my parents than the typical adult.  Just like I used to think that everyone heard voices in their heads; I also thought that this enmeshment was normal.

 

But it is not.  Not even close.

 

I lived and died by my parents hands.  I starved and was fed at their discretion.  I was his companion and her demise.  I was his lover and her deepest competition.

 

And all these roles were diametrically opposed to the single role that should have existed.  Parent and child.

 

It is creepy, weird, dirty, strange and wrong but my father was my first lover.  And I use the word lover very loosely but to a daughter starving and begging for affection, that is exactly what he was.  A sexual bond existed between us that served him well to emit his constant control.  For many who read here, one can probably equate this bond to your first love; they are someone you have moved on from but you never quite forget.

 

My problem is that I never really moved on from him.  He was unforgettable.  He cast his net wide and though I struggled I never was quite free.  I was trapped in his warped lust because I carried a bond of both a child to a parent but also a bond that intimate partners share.  But now he has moved on from me.  And I would be lying if I said that I didn't feel a deep twinge of impure loss.

 

No wonder I am so very fucked up and confused.  Every single day has been a struggle lately.  My only solace is that this is finally over and with each step I take I am walking out on this distorted love.

 

I hope.

Smile

My chest is pounding quick and frantic lumps.  I hear the feet crush the padding of the carpet.  It is only a whisper but I feel those steps ring inside my ears.  I bury further under my thin and naked sheet in hopes that I will turn invisible before the feet reach my room.

I squish my eyes until I see colors blur behind my eyelids.  I love this trick because it makes the darkness not so scary.  My door opens and then shuts and a shadowed figure moves towards my too small bed.  If my bed was bigger I think I could get away. 

A cold and metal finger presses against my tiny, trembling lips.  This finger has a jagged edge and as it presses further I feel a pop from my lip and a taste of metallic blood.  Shhhhh... is what this finger says without a sound or word.  I simply know.

My only screams tonight will echo inside the halls of my head.  Echoing because no one hears them.  My screams bounce and rattle around, desperate and lonely.

His other hand roams around and past my naked sheet.  There is nothing to hide behind.  Up one leg and rubbing down the other he moves deliberately and with purpose.  His breathing is quick and matches my own fearful panting.  With one knee he pins one small leg.  And with the other he has now widened my fearful body into a grown-up X.

One sweaty hand.  One jagged, steely cold finger. 

Don't move an muscle... don't you make a sound... you are too small... going to make you bigger, little girl. 

The sharp and jagged finger is cold against my anxious skin.  Skin is popping.  Widening pain. And my terror is stretched further than ever before.  Jasmin slips in front and I fade into James' hurting arms.  He is heavy upon me and he smiles a strange and upside down smile.  

I will never forget that hateful smile.  And I will never see him again.  He is dead.

For sure.

Badness

I am learning there were two versions of truth. 

His truth.

And then the truth. 

Forgive me because none of this is black or white.  Nothing is as it seems and this is so fucking confusing.  Ever since I received this news I have had an overwhelming sense of guilt.  Shame.  In little kid terms... badness.

Small voices repeat... bad people get killed... he was bad... he was our dad... so we are bad... over and over and over.  These are anxious words wrapped with fear.  Fear that we are next.  An irrational fear yet a real anxiety.

How could I be good yet come from them?  I get that they were bad.  Exceptionally bad.  So how did I get here when badness raised me?

Bad little kids don't have parents... If you tell then you will get taken away...  And then you won't have parents... Because you were bad.

And now we have no parents.

Quite honestly, I am lost.  I pace the floors all night.  My chest is full with pounding butterflies.  I stare at the food on each plate.  A cold sweat overcomes me with each police car I see.  My mind wanders through each day waiting for that phone call.  The call that makes this all official and I wonder how it will go.  I wonder how I will react.  And what I fear the most is that I will have no reaction whatsoever.

And in that lack of reaction, my badness will commence.

Conflicted

Life seems to be measured best in approximates currently.  I have a difficult time explaining that I am fine, sad, good, grieving, angry, or relieved.  Approximate values, however, can be assigned to the various feelings. 

Approximating allows me to change.  To fluctuate.  To estimate something that may change at a later time.  This works because I am nearly every conflicting feeling all rolled into one.  Conflicted is perhaps the only feeling that is consistent.  Conflicted is my stalwart feeling.  My rock.  It is always there.  No matter what.

I love him.  I hate him.

I need him.  I do not want him.

I trust him.  He hurts me.

conflict.  Conflict.  CONFLICT. 

No matter how you shape it, spell it, or write it; it is there.

Chances are, it is him.  In my gut I feel it.  And from that feeling I know that death is  the worst feeling a stomach can own.  With each moment of decay, that rotting feeling in my own body grows.  His decay is my decay.  I cannot eat, drink, or sleep.  I am terrified that in my sleep I will not wake up and in that time we will meet.

More alive than ever before; he is in my nightmares.  His rotting flesh makes my own creep with fear.  His missing fingers I have found.  They are in my sleep and reaching towards me.

Once awake I am sad.  And I am guilty.  I survived and I fear I did not do enough to save him.  I did not make him a better father.  A better husband.  Nor a better human.  That one more chance I withheld.  Buried beneath my fears, his chance died an unnatural death.

Could I have done something more? 

Loved him better?

Loved him differently?

Hated him completely?

My head and my heart are conflicted.  And my memories are conflicted too. 

I remember the man who bought me a treasured doll.  I remember the man who brought me ice cream home from the store.  I remember a man that patted me on the head.  I remember the man who gave me my love of reading.  I remember the man who gave me my first dog. 

And then...

I remember that same man who destroyed my favorite doll.  Who starved me for doing wrong.  Who brutally raped me.  Who tore up my favorite books.  Who killed my beloved dog.

And then I am conflicted.  And I hurt.

*Sigh*

It has been a collective *sigh* kind of week for me.  And a collective upheaval.

I am still terribly conflicted over this impending death and I still do not have it sorted out.  I have taken this weekend for myself; to feel how I need to feel. 

It is a slow going process.

So while I have not been writing here; I have lots to say.  I am truly grateful for the thoughts that all my readers have shared and I am hopeful to be back in the next day or so to respond and share more of where I am at.

Thank you.