The
last few weeks I seem to have resorted back to my insomniac ways. The last few
nights, I was unable to sleep. I was tossing and turning the entire night, my
head spinning with so many things. Have I
said all the things I wanted to say to all the people I wanted to say them to?
Have I done most things right? Have I righted all my wrongs? Apologized to
those it was due? Mended all my broken fences? Forgiven those that deserved it?
Returned phone calls to those loved ones that were waiting for it? Made sure
that I exhibited appreciation and thanks for the people I truly care about? Do
they know that I love them? Would they know if it all ended tomorrow?
I
woke up the next morning feeling groggy and anxious. I was stalking myself on
Instagram and the pictures read like a story. It looked like I was having fun.
It looked like I was living the life I love, but was I? Was I really doing what
I wanted to do? Did I love the people who were deserving of it? Was I giving
all of myself to the individuals who reciprocated? Or was I losing gradual
pieces of myself? In my desperate attempt to be agreeable and just go with the
flow, was I blurring my own identity? Was I just floating through life, being
all those things people just expected of me? Or was I really living?
Death
leaves a heartache no one can heal. Love leaves a memory no one can steal.
–from an Irish headstone
The
loss of someone close to you can be actually earth shattering. It stops your
heart. You wake up every day thinking that maybe it was all just a bad dream;
that just maybe, if you pray hard enough, if you promise to be a good person
and bribe Heaven with enough good intentions, you’ll wake up and all of this
will be over. By some miracle from above, you will wake to find you were
mistaken; that you misread that proverbial text of doom that changed your life
forever and all of this was just a ploy to scare you awake. It was just a
staged event to help you realize that these moments are fleeting, that nothing
lasts forever, that things can change drastically in mere seconds.
But
sometimes, sometimes you wake up to find that everything has changed. Sometimes you open your eyes to greet the sun and the
molecules that make up your world are irreparably altered. Thankfully in my
life, I have only lost one or two people that I was incredibly close with.
These two people were different, however, because with them, I was prepared.
They were elderly and sick, and although it was still devastating, I was given
the chance to understand and accept it. I was given closure and I was there
during the defining moment.
But
last week I felt the pain of losing someone, out of completely nowhere, by
proxy. I was alerted via text messages days after the incident because I was
out of the country. It was one of those pit-in-your-stomach moments: my heart
was beating in my ears and I blinked my eyes over and over; I had to have read it wrong.
Hadn’t
I…?
But
I hadn’t. The words were clear as day and despite baffling medical science,
sometimes people just die. And sometimes these people mean everything to us.
And even worse still, sometimes we aren’t given the opportunity to say goodbye
or exhibit those things that we really feel.
Sometimes, due in part to the Invincibility Fable, we are comforted by the
misconception that we have all the time in the world. But we don’t, friends.
I
wish I’d paid better attention. I didn’t yet think of time as finite. -Jessica
Marie Tucceli
The
truth is that in the blink of an eye, things can change. You go to bed with a
false sense of security, believing everything will feel better in the morning.
(I know this to be true because I tell it to myself all the time.) Then you
suddenly wake up stripped of the chance to tell someone you love them. You go
through life with the blind belief that you have all the time in the world,
that your anger is so rightly justified, and you’re just going to let them
sweat it out, let them think about how much they’ll miss you in your absence.
Until
you wake up ripped of the chance to say you’re the one that’s really sorry;
that you would do absolutely anything to be given the chance to say so. To make
all of this pain in your heart go away.
In
these cases, I find the most devastating part is the inability to obtain
closure. Especially for someone like me, who is crazy neurotic and incessantly
concerned about hurting other people’s feelings. I cannot imagine my final
words to someone being ones spit in anger. I can’t fathom knowing that someone
attempted to patch things up with me and I was too stubborn and angry to care.
(Which is something I did a few months back, in December. And while I’m still cold and angry, I don’t
know what I would do if something ever happened to her, knowing that I was too
hurt and angry to grant her the chance to say she was sorry.)
What
if I were to wake up tomorrow to find that she put her head in an oven or was
killed in a crazy car accident and I was forced to go through the rest of my
life knowing that I was too proud, too convinced I was right and she was wrong.
Too proud to forgive, too angry to listen, and too bitter to care.
In
this instance, it was someone close to me that lost someone close to her. It
was someone with whom she was intimate, someone with whom she shared secrets.
This was a person with whom she had made future plans, someone she had bother
confided in and consoled. This was a person she had been close to for actual
decades, someone she had deemed one of her best friends. This was one of the
few people who understood her, one of the even fewer that really, genuinely knew
her. It was someone who made her laugh until her stomach hurt and in some rare,
darker moments, made her cry. Someone so meaningful to her life that regardless
of the situation, she was heavily affected by him. And now, in death, she would
be affected the most.
Even,
and perhaps more especially, in death, he had a hold on her heart.
Because
death is the only thing that could have ever kept him from you. -Ally Carter
Moral
of the Crazy: I cannot imagine losing someone that I shared that kind of
relationship with. I cannot imagine not being given the chance to say all I
wanted to say, to be not given one more day with someone that I truly cared
about.
When
all of this happened, I started taking my own moral inventory, reviewing my own
life choices. And while I suppose a lot of the journey is in the getting there,
I must shamefully admit that I have made more than my fair share of absolutely
goddamn awful choices. Some really simple and yet somehow still rather life
impacting, and others more serious and personal that I would rather not share
with my social media and internet audience.
Like
the time my grandmother asked me to sleep with her shortly before she died. I
told her that I would be in there later and instead, unable to cope with the
emotional crisis (there was a lot going on back then), I got drunk on Pinot
Grigio and watched the Maltese Falcon
on the Turner Classic Movie channel. I fell asleep on my aunt’s leather couch
like a total tool. Because I thought I had all the time in the world, and hey,
I was having a rough year. Shouldn’t I be granted one night to myself? One
night to just relax and not answer to anyone?
But
the truth is, I would give anything to go back to that night and snuggle up to
my grandma. And now, no matter how much time has passed and how much peace I’ve
made with her death, I will never, ever forgive myself for that. It was
something simple and seemingly meaningless at the time, but now I think, I could have gone in there and comforted her
for one night. It wouldn’t have killed me. God, I miss her.
There
was this other time, when I had just broken up with my crazy ex-boyfriend and
was going through this wild sort of life change. I partied a lot, I drank a
shit ton, I lost a lot of weight and hung out with a lot of men I probably
shouldn’t have. (It’s this weakness I have. I have an addictive personality.) My
spark went out there for a while and I went through this phase where I hated
everyone who wasn’t a bartender serving me until I couldn’t stand. I knew
alcoholism and abusive relationships ran in my family but I didn’t give a shit.
I was going to do me and if that meant I was hungover every day, then so be it.
At
the time, my sister was going through her own life crisis. She was getting a
divorce and while it was relatively uneventful, I wasn’t there for her. I
remember there was this one time where my soon-to-be ex-brother-in-law (really,
with the hyphens?) MySpaced me (Yes, MySpace. That’s how long ago this was.)
because my sister blew him off and refused to talk to him. I’m totally
paraphrasing because it was a long time ago but he sent me this message saying
that he was devastated, beside himself, couldn’t function, blah, blah, blah.
Was there any way that I could just pick up the phone and call him? Or call her
and explain how upset he was? Could I possibly illuminate my sister and tell
her that she needed to talk to him?
I
was young. I was going through my own shit. I also knew that my sister was
finished and there was no one who was going to talk her out of it. The
situation was what it was, I told myself, and what difference did I make in any
of this? I was just the baby sister.
The
reality is they’re both better off. They’re both successful, living their own
lives with people who make them happier than they ever really made each other.
It’s sad but it all worked out the way it was supposed to, I think. But despite
all that, I will never forgive myself. That man was in our lives for ten years
and I just walked away from him and his feelings. I ignored him (and her) when
he needed me because I just couldn’t deal with anymore problems. I had plenty
of my own. And now, approaching thirty, I think to myself, you could have picked up the phone and listened to him. It wouldn’t
have killed you.
But
I didn’t; and while I could actually go on and on about my multitude of
colossal mistakes, I don’t want to bore you into a coma. And that’s not what
this blog is about.
I
never thought twice about the way I’ve been spending my time, drying my guts
out for every dime. –Jewel, Leaving
Not
to sound dramatic, but the realization that we aren’t bulletproof sort of hit
home. It made me all sensitive to the world around me. It made my stomach hurt.
It gave me the desire to assess my choices and fix all my broken relationships.
It made me want to do all those things I have been thinking about for a long
time but just never had the courage to actually carry through with. It pushed
me to work out and diet even harder to become the best me I can be. Because
after all, you’re only on this world for a short-lived moment.
I
talked to some of my friends over a liberally poured whiskey (or three) and I
heard a multitude of comforting words. One of my dear friends told me that she
had been through a similar situation, “and realized,” she put a hand on my arm,
“that it takes more energy to hate than love.”
The
other friend tried to soothe me by saying that sometimes, you just have to do
the things that make you feel alive. That while being easy going and agreeable
is great, it is not a way to go through life. When you start living for others
instead of yourself, you aren’t really living. You’re just coasting. Coasting
through life, doing nothing for yourself. Sure, it’s true: everyone dies. But
do we all truly live?
I
guess, in life, at the end of the day, I just want to know that I did all I
could, that I lived my life to the absolute fullest. I want to believe that I
was good to people when they didn’t deserve it, that I was there for people
when they really needed someone, that I did all those things that made me feel alive.
I
want to know that I lived the life I
wanted.
Closed
eyes, heart not beating, but a living love. -Avis Corea
Comments
Post a Comment