I can't help but be sad.
It's not as if things aren't going well for me these days. Because in a weird, i'm enjoying my 20 something life way, they are. I am okay with not having my shit together. I like hanging out with my friends. I like sleeping in late. I like flirting with cute boys and hanging out in cars with Kat. So, sure, i don't make a lot of money. So i'm no closer to understanding what the hell i want to do with my life. But for the moment, taking it easy and enjoying the small things is what i need.
But every now and then, the sadness seeps in. I am consumed by thoughts of Her. I am consumed by all the shit she decided to miss out on. And i get sad in a way that I cannot explain. I have abandonment issues that stem from childhood. My father, a long time alcoholic, choose the bottle over his family (the root of said abandonment issues) and from then on stupid things make me believe people would rather leave me than make things work.
I use to have this horrible fear that my mom would trade me and my brother in for better kids if she had the chance. I remember when I was in the 3rd grade I accidentally knocked over a plant in our house. We had carpet at the time and the plant made a huge mess. I tried to scrub the dirt out with water and soap which only caused the dirt to smear on the carpet, ruining it the harder i scrubbed. I went into full panic mood at this point because my mom left my brother and I for a few minutes to go to the store and in small span of an hour, I ruined the carpet.
The only thing running through my head at that point was that other kids wouldn't have been so clumsy. Other kids wouldn't have knocked over a plant on new carpet. And that my mom would never forgive me for the stain that would always remind her of the time i fucked up. And i thought then, with tears in my eyes, that she had every right to replace me if she ever had the chance too. Because she deserved better than me.
Of course, when she came home, she quickly assured me that the stain on the carpet, and the death of the plant, were no big deal. She did her awesome mom thing and made me feel better about the whole situation. If I remember correctly we ended up moving a desk over the spot and after awhile it became another part of the decor. But i still remember how i felt that night. That dreadful fear that she would abandon me because of the incident. That that is what people do when it came to me. They tolerate me for so long until the opportunity arises where i can be replaced.
This has been a huge delay in the healing process for me. I am devastated by Marie's suicide. There are days when I can't comprehend that she is gone. That she is never coming back. I pretend that we are just taking a break from our friendship because we have grown distant. That she is just in Wisconsin (where she said she wanted to live once) going on with her life just as I am mine. Because that fantasy is much easier than the reality. It allows me to steer clear of feelings that she abandoned me. That I wasn't enough to make her stay.
And while I can write this, and cry, and feel sad, and put my grief into some sort of fuzzy perspective I am not open about this with my friends and family. I smile and grin and have seemingly adjusted well to the death of my best friend. It's hard to conceptualized that in the 7 months since her death i have blossomed into this.... better version of myself (from others POV not my own). I've lost some weigh, grown and cut my hair, become a skirt wearing chick and welcomed social interaction like a champ. I go to bars (irregulary, but more than i have), i'm invited to do things with people i love and adore.... and i have a tattoo! At tattoo! And am getting a piercing this weekend (long story)
Everyone seems to like the new Beckett. The girl with the edge and the crude jokes and the willingness to try new things. The girl who is open and outspoken, polite yet scrappy. The girl who is less timid and self conscious. She is a hit. She is me now in a lot of ways, with her combat boots and low skirts and new attitude. She is the me I see in the morning when i wake up and the me before i go to bed....except when she's not.
Because underneath the bravado and the grin, underneath the adjustment and the ease with which i have slipped into this new life I think about my best friend every day. I think of the me before she went away.And the sadness comes flooding back.
I often go back to the day she died and feel pressure in my head because i remember how hard i cried the night she died. And the old me is back. The facade falls apart. And i am suffocated by grief suddenly. But i don't have anyone to talk to about it because everyone around me thinks that i am okay. Why wouldn't they, i am good at pretending. So when i do get sad they don't even associate it with her death. It's all 'why are you so sad? is it the weather? your period? a boy break your heart? And i give this incredulous look because i am surprised they don't relate my sadness to her death.
On sunday i went to work after a morning of crying because I heard Marie's laugh in my head (memories are often triggered suddenly). I avoided everyone. Kept my head down. Made little eye contact. My safety net against grief. When Sean came in he saw that I was upset, pulled me to the side, asked what was wrong. I told him that Marie was on my mind, he made a face like 'oh' and said we could talk in the back if it made me feel better. So we did. But he tried to pull me in for a hug first to comfort me. I pulled away because around people i'm not sure how grief is suppose to look. It feels excruciating, sometimes empty. Like a puzzle you've lost some pieces to. This is what the picture, me, is suppose to look like (a girl healing after the loss of her friend. look how well she has adjusted), except you've come to the end of my puzzle and realize a few pieces are missing. No matter how close you've come to the completing the picture, the missing pieces prevent it from every being whole. I will always feel like a puzzle not quite finished.
When i shrugged his hug and attempt to comfort me away he asked me to open up about what was in my head. Since he's working on being more sympathetic i need to work on not being a wall. But i'm not sure how to do that. Because my grief isn't as easy as missing her. Marie could be a terrible person. She wasn't nice. She wasn't friendly. She hated everyone. And sometimes I hated her. Not all the time. But some of the time. And my sadness has much to do with her death as it does with anger and disappointment and my own fears that I will end up like her.
But i can't say this. I can't. I can't. I don't admit this. And i wasn't about to to him of all people. So i put on an act. I played angry Beckett first: "i just wanna be left alone, dont touch me" *pushes cute boy away*. I played sad Beckett: I sat down on a stack of boxes and pouted up at him, i teared up and shook my head. He grabbed my hand and slid to the floor with me. He rubbed my thigh and told me that he was there to talk if i wanted him too. That he'd stay with me, in the awkward position, until i opened up. Crying Beckett followed soon after: "i just get so fucking sad Sean. I can't explain it. She's really gone isn't she". And he touched the side of my hair and told me that it was going to be okay.
I cried as much on the inside as I attempted to on the outisde.
Because I felt so numb afterwards. Dumb numb. I felt unresolved. I felt like a phony. Because with Sean I want my grief to look fragile. I need it to look that way with him because I want him to want to take care of the broken girl. I want the thigh touching and comforting stare. And it's not just with him that i am not authentic about my grief. With Kat I want my grief to look like progress. That while i am suffering i am stepping out of my shell and becoming a person again. With my mom I want my grief to look like strength, that Marie's death has taught me to value my own life. And while these are all accurate pictures of my grief (and healing process) these last couple of months, it doesn't capture the full truth. Because I am still struggling with what I need grief to be and look like for myself.
I am conflicted because I miss her and yet i hate what she did. I feel abandoned by her in the greatest sense. That she opted to leave instead of tough it out with me. And her death makes me feel like i did when i was kid, scrubbing away at the carpet with all my might, wishing that it (the carpet, the dead plant, the newness the stain brought) could just go back to the way it was before everything came crashing down.
Some days, it's all i can think of.
3 comments:
so here's a true thing: everyone grieves differently. grief can make you strong, can make you fragile, can make you make progress - it can do all those things and more at once, or in a kind of rotation.
It's funny; in older books, I often see people saying "don't speak ill of the dead," or something to that effect, and I think we still believe that. But even dead people - even dead people who we really loved - were also jerks sometimes, or imperfect, or let us down, or annoyed the shit out of us - and that's as much a part of them, and your relationship with them, as the times when they were kind, or generous, or made you laugh. The fact that Marie's death was self-inflicted doesn't change that complexity of your relationship; if anything, it intensifies it. In a way, it sounds like your grief is a lot like your friendship with her while she was alive; sometimes, you're annoyed/angry/outrages at her; at other times, she's your best friend.
no one wears the same face with everyone; it makes sense that you would "perform" grief and sadness differently around different people. I'll bet you do happiness and excitement differently, too - do you say and act exactly the same when something awesome happens around your mom as you do around the Boy? or Kat? or casual acquaintances? I know *I* am not precisely the same. It's not faking it; you aren't lying or being tricksy - you're just being your (awesome) self, in all its complexity.
keep talking to people - here and in person and on telephones or however - about how you feel. you're not obligated to be happy on their behalf, and if they can't understand that you're still in the midst of deep sorrow, then they're shitheads. You aren't wallowing, you aren't being "unhealthy" about your grief; it doesn't sound at all like you've gone bonkers. It sounds like you're sad, and angry, and confused, and that all makes a lot of sense to me. If you pretended that you were all better, I would be very concerned and disbelieving.
Wow...there's so much of what you said that resonates with me. I sat transfixed, so intently reading, that I was surprised when I'd reached the 'end'. I know what pretending feels like and I know how badly we all want to be accepted, esp. if we feel we have no reason to be. The abandonment issues I relate to as well and you're so brave and courageous to share all of that here. I wish I could be as brave. Maybe Marie's death has left a hole in your heart. But at the very least, you've sprouted new life in others'; at least in mine you have. Thank you for sharing your story.
I don't visit blogger often anymore, but when I read your post I did a double take thinking I must be mistaken--reading something I'd written...
My best friend committed suicide my senior year of high school. Everyone called us "partners in crime." Every semester we would change our classes so our schedules would match--even passed notes in class like we were in 4th grade.
It took me three years of carrying the guilt behind closed doors until I went and saw a counselor--and it's not as if anything was earth-shatteringly different after I went--but for me, just showing up was tantamount to admitting I wasn't okay with what had happened. It's been six years since, and there are many days I still can't believe it.
All that to say, and this may sound odd, but if you need someone to talk to, I'm here. I'm a total non-creeper, 23-year old law student in Kansas, and I can understand not being able to talk to people close to you--
I still have a very hard time withstanding a mention of her when I'm in the presence of my family or friends--but two years ago I finally told them in a sort of I-can't-exlain-this-but-you-need-to-know kind of way, "I'm not okay. I'm still in the middle of dealing with all this and you need to know that I'm just not doing all a-okay underneath." And it was like breathing a sigh of relief just to tell them that. They didn't ask me questions about it and I'm not sure if we've even talked about it since, but it gave me some peace just knowing that they knew.
So, you may not see this comment--and if you do, don't feel like you have to reply--but just know that I can on some level relate to what you are feeling, and somehow it gets easier to think about your best friend every day and keep breathing. I still think about her every day.
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