On Going Home.

On Monday I am going home for Thanksgiving.

This year I have many reservations about my usual trek home. Instead of a deep sigh of relief because I will be away from Le Sad Store and New York for a week I am filled with...fear. I think that's the emotion i feel. Absolute fear mixed with grief and dread.

When I headed home last year I was under the impression that Marie and I were on a break. I hadn't heard from her in a few months and thought, perhaps, that she was shacked up somewhere in North Carolina with  new friends and a guy. I didn't attempt to call her once when I came into town because I was in a "well if she doesn't want to talk or reach out to me i'm not going to contact her either" mode.

I now regret and often can't get over the fact that by then she was already living at home with her parents; unhappy and miserable and possibly plotting her death. I don't remember much from last Thanksgiving. I think my brother and I played video games, i took pictures of my nephew, i read old journals and watched a lot of TV. It was an ordinary week with my family and yet there was so much going on with Marie who was less than an hour away.

This year i don't have the 'luxury' of thinking her absence has to do with our friendship falling apart. This year, I am returning to South Carolina where memories await me and it is freaking me out. It's almost been a year since her death and I am still not ready to confront it. I've distracted myself with boy drama, socialization, a new part time job, and sleeping. I cry for Marie. i cry for myself. I am coping in ways that are not completely healthy but now I am going to be in South Carolina for a whole week surrounded by places and things that will remind me of her, that will in someone carry her memory. And i am freaking out!

This is not an exaggeration. In the past few weeks I have lashed out at people, endured sleepless nights, wallowed and nearly cancelled my trip home because I don't think I can do this. I don't think I am ready to go back yet and be surrounded by 'her'. Outside of my family, my memories of home are entwined with hers. The coffee shop near my house is where we hung out that one night a few years ago and face-book stalk my crush from the internship. The track across town is where we laughed hysterically at two people making out in a car on prom night. I'll no doubt drive past our high school while i drive around trying to kill time. The journals i usually re-read will be filled with Marie stories and complaints. And don't get me started on the photo albums.

The other day i got into an argument with a co-worker who said she didn't like my attitude when i was around her. She said that when Kat and I are together I become a different person and she doesn't feel like she knows who i am anymore. I was totally offended by this comment, told her so and then said if she wanted to explain what she meant instead of giving me stank eye we could discuss it like adults. She didn't want to do this and we haven't talked since. I don't mind not talking to this woman. She is immature and annoying and the most aggravating person i have ever met. I am however, offended and stung by her remark that she doesn't know who i am anymore because I have often thought this in the year since Marie has passed.

I have said it many times that I am not the same. There is a chip on my shoulder. I am quick to find fault in people. I am quite judgmental of strangers and yet insanely territorial about my friends and family. I am a moody, complicated girl whose temper is swift and unforgiving. I often feel like someone has shuffled me in a crazy grief tumbler and placed me back together a little...different. Not bad or good. But different. Because of this, going home feels paralyzing. I am the same girl who left South Carolina four years ago and yet I am different. And now, on top of that, I am going home to a place that doesn't feel like home anymore because Marie isn't here to validate a huge chunk of what made it home for me. She isn't here.

Last night i had a fucking panic attack about leaving on Monday. I went in the back, hid behind some boxed and cried. I kept telling myself that I was not/am not prepare to go home. I kept cursing Marie and her fucking stupid decision to end her life. I kept cursing myself for being such an awful friend to her when she needed me the most. And I almost collapsed from the insufferable knowledge that she is just gone, that she is never coming back and that that this is my life without her; often more of a mess then an actual life.

Of course, feeling stupid for crying, i shut down the rest of the night, got in a fight with Sean and convinced myself that I would tell my mom i couldn't make the trip home. I was starting to spiral. Sean came up to me and asked what was wrong. I lashed out and told him that it didn't matter what was wrong because he doesn't care anyway (our relationship is weird). I ignored him the rest of the night and then cried in his car on the way home. I will have to write the events of the car ride home in more detail. I don't want to forget it. Since her death I have not been able to express in words how it is affecting me. I told Sean that I wasn't doing well since her death, which is something that I rarely even admit to myself.

He started to tell me a story about a friend he no longer is in contact with and how fucked up it feels to care about someone you are never going to be in contact with again. I turned to him and started crying and told him that that story about his friend is not that same thing. Marie is never coming back. She isn't off some where living a life that I am no longer apart of. She is dead. She took her own life. She is gone. Gone. There is never going to be a possibility that I will see her face again or hear her laugh or see the world like we planned. She is gone and it isn't fair I cried.

He pulled into my driveway and turned off his car while I whimpered for 15 minutes in the passenger seat. I stared out the window so he wouldn't see my face as I started to cry. He took my hand and stroked the inside of my palm with his thumb and said he was sorry. That he was really fucking sorry but that maybe I shouldn't keep trying to pretend that everything is okay. We spent an hour in the car talking about her. I told him some things i have only written about on this blog and others that i have not. He said her name out loud a couple of times and I forgot how much i missed someone else referring to her.

I cried some more. Told him I thought i was a terrible friend. Told him that I use to wish I didn't know her when she was alive. That out of the two of us, I wasn't the one who was suppose to survive and I feel guilty often that i did. He didn't say much and if he did my sobs drowned his words of comfort out for awhile. He did manage to say that I shouldn't feel guilty for hating and loving her. That to deal with her death I should be honest about the kind of person she was. Even if that means admitting that she was a dick sometimes (as am I) Then he asked if i was writing my feelings down somewhere, documenting what i am going through. I told him no. He asked why not and i said because i don't the words anymore to express how i'm feeling. That my expression and emotions are stuck in places i am not able to reach. And he said at a time like this, dealing with everything i'm going through, I should be writing this stuff down instead of fighting my 'words'.

And for a stupid stupid boy who continues to do stupid stupid things and break my heart in the process he has a point. I am not dealing with Marie's death well. I have spent the last year shutting myself off from how fucking traumatic this really is because when the sinking realization of her death sneaks into my mind it beats me up, it takes my breath away, it prevents me from feeling anything except numb. But maybe i do need to talk/write about what i am going through more often. Maybe i do need to see a therapist or attend a support group or something to learn how to cope.

 Because i am not coping well, I find myself acting out, panicking, misbehaving, spiraling because i am not dealing with the fact that my best friend is gone and is never coming back and the plans we made and the future i thought would include her is gone as well. And it's not to say that i'll go home this week and have some profound epiphany about her and my life and i'll be healed of my pain but i do hope in some weird way that i'll have no choice but to face what i've been running from and begin to accept her loss so i can enjoy things again.

I am all packed up and for the most part ready to go tomorrow. I can't stop my heart from pounding though and i still feel very very anxious about going home. But i feel ready at least for the time away from New York to collect my thoughts. I told Kat that I would write daily reflections on grilled cheese (the other blog, i write on sometimes) for her (and Sean) to read while i am away. She is as nervous as I am about the trip because she thinks i'll come back distant and weird. But if anything i just hope i'll come back determined to get better and not feel so overwhelmed by the changes in my life and the loss that is somehow connected to it all.