The Before and After

In a few months I will be 30 years old.  30 years freaking old. I know, it's fucking weird right? I started this blog when I was 19 and a sophomore in college and now here I am on the brink of 30 being a person and stuff. I would say I don't know where the times has gone but thanks to my various online and personal journals, I have a clear sense of how the years that have passed.

You'd think being almost 30, I'd be able to make concrete decisions for myself without feeling guilty. But that hasn't happened yet. And I am starting to fear that it never will. These past few weeks I have found myself participating in plans and outings that have no interest to me but that i feel obligated to attend because...you know, i don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

As someone who never used to be a team player, I am quite the people pleaser when it comes to people i love. Just this past Saturday my aunt wanted me to help her decorate her apartment for the holidays. Despite the fact that I had other plans (staying home and sleeping, wrapping presents and making dinner) i felt that i couldn't abandon my aunt. I felt that her asking me to help her meant she needed me and this need overwhelmed my own desire to have a stress free Saturday. Of course once i got to my aunts house, she revealed that she just really wanted my help shopping and carrying things back to this house. Four hours later, after being her assistant for the day ,she dismissed me and I was allowed to go home.

On my way, I got a text from my friend Heather who wanted to know if I would go to Target with her. Any other time and day I would have said no but  Heather and I recently had quite the falling out  (because she said some really shitty stuff about my past dealings with Sean and my current dealings with no one) and she's been trying to make it up to me ever since. We've been friends since Kindergarten and despite how bossy and all consuming she can be I can relate her anxious ways and how lonely she is, even though she has a lot of family and friends around her.

Our friendship is complicated but when I need her she is always there. Vice versa.But she has a tendency to lash out when things are not going well for her personally, which is exactly how are falling out happened. We were out for coffee one day and she was having a miserable week and felt anxious and stressed. Instead of dealing with her own stuff she projected her miseries on me  and vented about my life out of nowhere. We haven't talked in months, but the holiday season is all about forgiveness and moving on, so we have spent the last few weeks mending our friendship.

When she asked me if I wanted to hang out with her on Saturday soon after the disastrous time at my aunts , I told her (albeit still very tired) that I would love to go shopping. 3 hours later I was finally home, exhausted, depleted and upset for not putting myself and needs first.

The night continued to get worse in the 'i'm overwhelmed' department because Kat kept texting me about going Christmas shopping the next day with her and her brother. The next day of course being Marie's birthday.I had already stressed that December 6th (and December 13th) is and will also be a very weird day and that I probably wouldn't be able to make it.  But she wouldn't let up: 'we'll only be out for a few hours' 'we'll have a lot of fun', 'my brother is looking forward to this'.

 Lately, Kat has been inviting me to hang out with her and her bro ( a very nice guy) because she thinks he is lonely and needs someone to chill with. Because this is not an episode of friends, I am very hesitant with Kat's assertion that her brother likes hanging out with me and am even more peeved that we are often coupled together every time there is an outing with the four of us.

I must stress that Kat's brother is awesome. His name is Ryan. He is super nice and funny and great to hang out with. If he weren't related to my best friend, I would probably catch the feelings. We generally have a good time hanging out with each other and he is not put off by my silliness. This summer, the four of us went to the Renaissance Faire  and strangers kept coming up to her brother and I asking if we were a couple, and that if we weren't... we should be. It was weird. Cute but very weird.

 But because I grew up having a shit load of crushes on my older brother's friends I know i want to avoid the murky gray complicated area of liking a friends sibling. Honestly, it's a big deal breaker in my book. Unless of course, I happen to become friends with anyone related to Michael Fassbender. So I am trying to keep my interactions with her brother as platonic as possible. I don't want to entertain the idea of us growing closer.

But I don't think Kat sees how weird it is for me. She may not even recognize that her brother might or has developed an interest in me. She may not even recognize that I might or may develop an interest in him. I think she has tunnel vision and knows that when I am around,  her brother is in a better mood. That he is a tab bit happier. So in her attempt to get me out of the house on Sunday, she kept bringing up how happy it would make her brother if I was there.

But I couldn't go. I couldn't bring myself to go shopping in a mall, full of people on Marie's birthday. I wanted to just be by myself for the day. Make breakfast, go to the pond near my house. Reflect on the last four years since Marie died and mourn my best friend. I wonder if people in similar situations mourn the death of someone by suicide like i do. There is something so incomplete about Marie's life. There is still this huge chunk about her that I will never be able to understand or reconcile. The person I thought I knew did something that has caused a huge ripple effect and I still, four years later, am trying to make sense of the tragedy.

I guess what no one understands is that Marie is not the only person who died that day. She is not the only one who was lost. On her birthday and death day especially I find myself mourning the girl I was before this happened. I wonder who she would be if things had turned out differently. I don't miss that girl nearly as much as I miss Marie but I do  miss her. I do wonder about her from time to time.

Sunday marks four years since Marie took her life. I vaguely remember being stirred awake from a nap that day because my phone kept ringing. I remember how freaking annoyed i was that someone, presumably my job, was calling me on my day off. I remember not recognizing the number but I picked up the phone any way because I recognized the area code. And I remember the sound of her mom on the other line, telling me something really really bad had happened. She sounded so calm initially. "Hey, is this Beckett. It's Marie's Mom. It's bad, Sweetie..." and there is chaos. There is crying and sobbing on the other end of the line. There are hot tears and crying on my end. I may have screamed into my pillow. I may dropped my phone several times. I remember how utterly devastated she sounded on the other end. How her words sort of just blended together. Marie is dead. She killed herself. "I just want my baby girl back!" is the last thing I remember her saying before i went into shock.

And that, that moment,  was when my life changed forever. That was the moment that I lost my best friend but it is also the moment whatever person i was supposed to be and whatever life I was supposed to live with Marie in it, died as well.

I have never admitted to this. To anyone. But I a part of me died that day too. I think I died too.

Ryan's birthday is this Sunday and Kat has asked me to go out with them all and celebrate. I do not want to do this. I have no interest in being overly social that day. And this isn't because I want or plan on  sulking at home. I just want to spend the day by myself. I want these two days however tragic they are to be mine and mine alone. If I choose to share it with people, I want it to be on my terms doing something I would like to do to remember both people I lost that day.

And this year, I just want to take in the solidarity of this epic loss. I want to honor Marie's life. I want to mourn her. I want to mourn the girl I was. I want to be selfish and not cater to the wants of anyone else. Just for once, ya know.Just once.