I’m feeling better today. I think dealing with loss is a process… no I know it is. Some days are okay other days feel like there is lead in your blood and nothing will help you lift yourself from the bottom of that tiny broken tea cup state of being.

But today is better, I spent my night with friends and talking about Chez. I could write a book on my feelings for that beautiful person. She was a lot of firsts for me. Not the first girl I loved but the first one that I kissed and she kissed me back, I remember it so clearly.

It was summer and we were sat in a cool hallway letting the sweat drip down our foreheads as our short clad thighs soaked up the cool of the linoleum. She had Hillary’s head in her lap and I don’t know what she said but we were laughing when she grabbed my face in her hands and kissed me. “I love you.”

We didn’t see each other often but when we did it was like no time had passed, but time did pass, and it was not kind to either of us.

The day before she died she called me and I still dream about it, I should have gone to see her. I should have dropped everything and ran to her… but over time I’ve realized that by the time she called me she was already dead mentally. She got her chance and she took it and she left a hole so large in so many people’s lives that I don’t think the universe will ever recover.

I dropped out of college and headed east.

I didn’t want to drive by that fucking building every day, I didn’t want to watch another sunset and think of how strong the wind would have been to carry her to her final resting place…. I didn’t want to think about if she had changed her mind.

I ended up in Rhode Island. I lived on an island in Rhode Island and I spent my days sanding the floors, walls and ceiling of a burnt out house, it was in the process of being remodeled and hopefully turned into a bed and breakfast.

I think that little island saved my life.

When you are forced to put one foot in front of the other it resets your brain. It’s methodical it’s repetitive and its mindless. I walked a lot while I was in Rhode Island.

I came across the Brothers of the Sacred Heart during one chilly Autumn adventure.

I was greeted with warmth in the form of coffee and friendship. I can’t remember his name now but one of the monks was absolutely insistent that me being there on that day was fate. I have a tattoo of a sacred heart on my chest that I got when I was 17. We talked for a long time about how God works and why bad things happen to good people and I was so angry. Hell I’m still angry.

I didn’t make it back to the island before it got dark and I was stopped by a lady drinking Jack Daniel’s out of an over sized martini glass. She offered to share and we sat on her porch talking about her husband and her grown children. It got later and we got drunker so she offered me a place to stay for the night.

As I crawled into the bed in her attic bedroom she wished me sweet dreams and asked if I wanted the light left on. It was the first time I had slept well since Chez had died.

The next day I spent drinking coffee and making plans and by the time I made it back to the island I had decided I was going to do better.

I screamed her name into the sunset. Just Breathe.

I wish I could say that when I got back from the east coast things got better. They did for awhile but since I had limited ways to cope with my depression and suicidal ideology it wasn’t long until I found myself neck deep in a drug induced shit show.

My first husband pulled me out of that, took me to the middle of nowhere East Texas and dried my ass out, cold turkey detox from methamphetamine, cocaine and booze. It wasn’t pretty.

Try to imagine that your body is both on fire and being dipped into a frozen lake at the same time, that your eyes wont focus and you gasp for air with every movement. Water tastes like acid and feels like you’ve swallowed glass. Food isn’t an option and the nightmares… there are no words for them.

The hardest part of staying clean wasn’t staying away from the drugs. I just made it so it wasn’t an option anymore those people were not in my life anymore and I hid from the world by drowning myself in my romantic relationships… it was the smoke. It was feeling the color green and tasting good music. I could have sworn I was going to die from a broken heart, the world was grey.

My life has been pretty cyclical since then, I am clean but not sober, up until very recently I was in a pattern of finding a partner, completely disappearing into them and their life. Being everything I could for them until I made myself so sick that I either broke and relapsed or ran away.

When I had my daughter a lot of things changed. It started with the typical “Ah look I made a thing and now I have to keep it a live for like 18 years” and then that turned to “Holy shit my kid has so much of me in her what the fuck am I going to do?” and presently I’m sitting at work trying not to cry because once again she was sent home from school because her outbursts cant be handled. “ How do I help her? How do I save her? How do I keep her from living through what I did and still do?”

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F*ing Grief 2

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