Sorrow

I knew the pain would come eventually. I guess I wasn’t expecting it to hurt this much. I remember one time when I broke up with one of my boyfriends (can’t remember which one now) Megan said something to me about how during every breakup, you relive all the breakups you’ve had. You relive all the pain, and try to figure out what went wrong. I think the same could be said for suicides, and even other deaths. But in a special way with suicides. I feel like I’ve been shot in the chest with buck shot. There are holes everywhere that I’ve struggling to breath around. There was a death recently in our community, the brother of a young girl I knew. I was talking to the girl’s friend, Lora, about how everything was going. Lora said that she was amazed at her friend’s strength and ability to keep moving forward even through all the pain. Lora said she knew it would just take time before the pain started to go away.

Everyone says that when someone dies. The pain goes away eventually, just give it time. Its a load of crap. The pain of losing someone never goes away. We just learn how to live with that pain. It feels like there is a hole in your chest that you’ve learned to breath around. But it never really heals. Sometimes it will hurt more than other times. Sometimes things will happen that will remind you of the hole, and sometimes things happen that make breathing just a little bit easier. But the hole is still there. The hole that the person once occupied is forever unfilled. And I really think thats okay. I wouldn’t want to forget any of those who I’ve lost. I wouldn’t want their lives to somehow lack impact on mine. It doesn’t mean that I walk around everyday in excruciating pain, but ask any person who has lost a loved one. Do you ever forget? Do you ever stop missing them?

The occurrence of another suicide seems to reopen all the wounds I carry from other suicides.  It opens up the wounds of all the people I’ve lost.  I think what seems to make this worst for me is the inability to be with my friends during this time.  Just like when my former high school chorus teacher died, I had no one to… commiserate with.  No one who knew her and really knew the impact she had on me.  Rebecca and I never got together, and even if we had, I’m not sure Rebecca really understood what Gleich did for me.  And now, again.  Rebecca does not understand the relationship I have with Juice and Bubba and T-Bone and Nathan and how John fit into all that.  I want to be with people who understand my sorrow, who feel the pain that I do.  Misery loves company, and sometimes people just need to sit in that misery.  Its miserable that he’s dead and that he took his own life.  And while people out here may try to be sympathetic, they cannot even begin to be empathetic.  First off, many of them have never experienced a suicide death in their life.  I’ve gone through this more than once.  More than twice.

I know what this feels like, I know what the questions and doubts and what ifs are that roam about in my head.  I don’t necessarily know how to deal with them, but I know they will come without answers or comfort.  This is all compounded by the fact that I was supposed to be back in NY this week.  I was supposed to be going to Washington, DC for a wedding this weekend.  I was supposed to be with my friends who are also mourning this loss.  But the church railroaded my plans.

If I wasn’t already angry at the church search committee for this, I certainly am now.  I know this is important and I understand that I need to be here right now.  But my friend died.  He jumped from a fourth story window and took his own life.  I don’t want to break down around people who will pat my head and say ‘there, there."  I want to be around people who are also breaking down.  I want to be around people who cared for him the way I did.  Who knew him the way I did.  Who are actually mourning the loss of his life.

I feel like I’m barely breathing around the cracks in my heart.  I feel so displaced and disconnected.  I feel like I don’t belong and I don’t fit in.  I feel like I don’t have a place or a people or even a person out here.  I don’t remember what show it was, but some character was telling another character how she is her person.  She is the one you call when your car breaks down, or you have a fight with your roommate, or you get a new job, or you find $20 in your jeans, or whatever.  She is your person.  I have people, but not here.  I don’t have someone here who is my person.  

I feel disconnected and ungrounded and out of place and displaced.  Maybe its just that I’m not used to feeling like this.  I’m not used to being so alone so much of the time.  I’m not used to feeling so… insignificant.

I’m not suicidal or anything, at least not yet.  I don’t know if I will get to that point.  This all feels different than other suicidal slips.  Its probably more sorrow and mourning than anything else at the moment.  Mourning the loss of John and the missing of Justin’s wedding.  This was incredibly important to me, and coupled with John’s death….  I don’t want to be here this weekend.  It can be so damn important to everyone else, but it really feels stupid to me.  I don’t want to do it, and I don’t care about it.  This is not where my heart is at the moment and I’m angry that I can’t be where my heart is.  Because where my heart is, it is vastly more important than these people.  These people who I have known for a split second compared to my friends, my family.  These people who don’t really seem to care or understand how much this hurts and how much this aches inside of me.  These people who don’t reach out and don’t connect and are so goddamn Dutch conclave it makes me angry.  Physically very very angry.  They are stupid and backwater and selfish and close-minded and racist and xenophobic and stubborn and just do damn ignorant.

I really, really, really am not in the best of moods.