Third Thursday

Last night, I went to the Sur­vivors of Sui­cide group for the third time.  It sucked.   It’s been a rough cou­ple of weeks, and I needed to go.  I needed to talk about things, but when I got there, I found myself unable to artic­u­late anything.

What the hell is there to say?  My brother is dead.  His youngest daughter’s FIRST birth­day is next week, and he’s dead.  I was think­ing about it, and before this hap­pened, if I had been asked about griev­ing for sui­cide, I’d have prob­a­bly said some­thing along the lines of, “Dead is dead.”  Mean­ing that the why doesn’t mat­ter, if some­one is gone, that’s all there is, and why com­pli­cate it? But it’s not true, every­thing is more com­pli­cated, and dead is more than dead.  There’s all this OTHER to deal with. Skele­tons keep tum­bling out of clos­ets.  Rea­sons he hated his life come leer­ing at me, com­pli­cat­ing my dreams, inter­fer­ing with nor­mal life that is sup­posed to not be about him.  Yes, he was part of who I am but I shouldn’t be so fix­ated on him.  I should not have to go talk to my kids’ teach­ers and coun­sel­lors about how some­thing my brother did is affect­ing their lives!

I’ve been screw­ing things up lately.  Mostly money.  Have I told you all how I wrote a check to the water com­pany for the account bal­ance on my check­ing account?  Yeah, good times.  I’m still wait­ing on the check back.  I get lost, and for­get where I was dri­ving.  I for­get to eat.  Actu­ally, I don’t for­get, because I see the clock and know it’s time.  I just still don’t care about food, so to trick myself into eat­ing, because I’m such a tight­wad, I’ll eat out.  I’ve been so waste­ful, but if I pay some­one to fix my food I’ll eat it.  I say the wrong things to peo­ple.  I’m usu­ally very care­ful about my words, but I’ve been liv­ing with the taste of shoe leather for a while now.  Or I’ll for­get to talk alto­gether at other times, and think I’ve said things when I haven’t.

I’m all full of rage at the moment.  Just white hot anger and frus­tra­tion.  Impo­tent, twisted, gnarled, defeated vex­a­tion.  I can’t direct it! It’s so use­less.  Any­way, tears keep on com­ing, and it’s hard because the kids aren’t here to dis­tract me, and maybe that’s good?  To have to face it, I mean.  I go back to almost vom­it­ing at times, if I sit still for too long with noth­ing on my mind.  It’ll pass, I know it will, and later there will be sad, or happy, or whatever.

I’m learn­ing to ride out the emo­tions some­what. I started play­ing this game that some­how gives me a way to focus my brain just out­side of where I want so that I can think through things with­out cry­ing.  The fam­ily knows now that if they see that on the com­puter screen, just to give me a bit of space.  How do I keep liv­ing with this daily?  I want to get on the other side, see this mak­ing sense, and at the same time I want to totally avoid it, deny it, walk away.  And I see peo­ple at that meet­ing still com­ing after 6 years, and I know that this is how it is.  I’m forced into this weird depres­sion place, and all this pain.  It’s like the energy of his own per­sonal pain was not destroyed at all, just dis­placed onto all of us.

Part of the rea­son that the chil­dren going to school is hard is because I run into other par­ents who expected to see me over the sum­mer.  And I missed all the play dates, and so they know we did some­thing.  When I have to answer how my sum­mer was, I’m unable to lie to smooth it over, because they’ll ask next what we did and I just can’t say a trip to Vir­ginia.  So I’ve been sim­ply telling peo­ple he died, and leave it at that.  If they start ask­ing details, I give them, but I don’t seek it out.  But I can’t bear to be the cause of their dis­com­fort.  It hurts to write here, because I feel like I’m caus­ing peo­ple who read my pain to feel a piece of this hor­ror I have to live.  But to deny what’s going on with me is to deny my brother, and I refuse to do it.  And if I hold it in, the buildup of emo­tion is too bear. I’ve got to dis­place some emo­tion myself, to share it.  Accord­ing to my coun­sel­lor and my read­ing, it’s a nor­mal part of the griev­ing process that is stunted by sui­cide because of the asso­ci­ated stigma.  So telling folks is a good thing, and I remind myself of that when I’m tempted to clam up for every­one else’s sake.

I’ve been try­ing to jour­nal, to write, and it goes into these spi­rals and I can’t get hold of it. I write a sen­tence and I delete it.  I try to reword it prop­erly and the emo­tion changes.  I flay myself for feel­ing “wrong” but I know I shouldn’t do that. I try to feel the way I feel and I get mired into it and have to rip myself out of it to do the next thing. Some­one at the group last night sug­gested I write to Lau­ren when I write.  Maybe that’s good.  I think I may try it, because it’s been 2 months.  We should have had any­where from four to eight tele­phone calls that were two hours long in that time.  And I want to talk to him, so maybe that’s a way to go.  I miss hear­ing his voice, though.  And his wife deleted his myspace account, which was her right, and I’m not mad, but all my let­ters from him are gone, except a cou­ple of emails I kept but they’re so full of hope and “it’ll be alright”-ness that it breaks my heart, and my voice­mail deletes mes­sages after ten days so that’s all long gone!  So I think I’ll try to start writ­ing him.  But dammit, he won’t write back, and that just pisses me off.

But it’s not all ter­ri­ble, right?  It’s not. I’m writ­ing this, for one.  I may have had a hard time artic­u­lat­ing last night, but in the course of writ­ing this, I went through one of those gut-wrenching grief bursts and came out the other side and feel peace­ful again.   I actu­ally missed the real­iz­ing it had been two months exactly until a day after.  Lit­tle signs point towards an inte­gra­tion on the hori­zon that is bit­ter­sweet, melan­choly, but some­how rec­on­ciled into the beauty that life breathes.  In some ways, I’m learn­ing to like myself a whole lot more than I ever did.  Assert­ing myself is simpler. People have always told me I’m unduly hard on myself, and I’ve never really believed it til now, but it’s true.  For­giv­ing myself for what­ever gaffe I’ve made is nec­es­sary, so I’ve learned to extend the com­pas­sion I have for oth­ers towards myself.  So that trite cliche that keeps being passed around is true. I’m not dead, so I’m get­ting stronger.