Coming Back Again

 I have not written anything in over a year. I've closed off most of myself in truth. 

In many ways, I've been grieving. It has felt as though I've lost another child. My son, my middle child, has moved out and has not talked to me in about 10 months. My other son is glad he's gone, that it's time that he grew up and moved out. The son that has not left has told me to make no contact, to change the locks, to get security measures on the house.

William left this house for another where he is someone else's problem? gift? guest? family member?

It's nice to have this house to myself, I admit that. But to have this person that I went to bat for year after year, defended over and over to the detriment of my other children - to have him completely shut me out and reject me has been pretty fucking brutal.

He was full of blame and anger towards me. The house was a constant reminder of his guilt and the loss of his sister. He got to walk away and make a fresh start. 

The Only Way Forward is Through

I have isolated myself. 

Hannah is gone. All that is left of her is a deeply sad, scarred place. I hear and see things that I want to to share with her, that I remember she liked, and there's no her.  The fiction that I gave myself when she first died (that word hurts), half hearted even at the time, that if I talked with her she could hear me, that she would try to reach out to me somehow, in the glow of lights on the wall, that is faded and hopeless now.

On my living room wall, a captured light.

From march, unpublished

From March 18th.

I have hung onto the grief tightly, like a life ring .  It has changed me, and I have had to evolve to survive the oceans of pain and grief. I have tried to ignore the cold seeping into me as the stresses of the last several months have magnified my feelings, until I realized about two months ago that I had become  bitter, angry, and anxious.  

I am- possibly too late - taking time off of work to take care of myself, though I am not sure that this job fits me any more. I am not sure what fits me now, unsure of who I am and what I want in many ways.  I will need to make decisions about that soon. I crave the familiar, but find that I am in fear of the changes that the company is going through and how they will affect the smaller, more vulnerable business that we deal with. I find that when I try to think about this, waves come over me. Anxiety, making it hard to breathe. Fear of being unemployed. Fear that I won't find something better. Fear that it doesn't matter, that I will lose my job, my friends from work. Fear that if I don't lose my job, I will stay there in a place that has changed, and that has been so inconsistent in their policies. Will we raise the minimums? Should I bend over backwards for this customer, or will I need to say no? If I say no, will they complain to me, to my boss, to the board of directors? Screw up formulas and cost O* thousands of dollars. They want their products shipped before they're paid for? nope, says Melinda. They choose to work with us in development again, but only if they may buy their IP. No to O* about their IP. Yes to O* about their IP, but only if they pay a lot. No, they won't have to pay a lot, they will just have to buy a lot, more than they are ordering right now. So much whiplash, and that's just for one customer. How many products need to be reworked? How many customers won't make the new MOQ? How many businesses will fail due to our new policies?

I am trying to become a calmer, more open person. It's like a flower opening one petal at a time, but where I felt closed and choked a month ago, I can see rays of light sometimes now.

What is the Condition of My Heart?

 Note:  This is based on an exercise from Megan Devine's "How to Carry What Can't be Fixed." This is my experience in the world right now, 2 days shy of 22 months since  Hannah took her life, 25 months after my long term relationship ended, 24 months after my finding out I had stage 1 ductal carcinoma, 25 months after the pandemic created multiple crises in the USA, 4 months since my treatment plan was taken away and uncertainty has taken it over, and 3 months since I found out that Darren had died alone in his apartment, not found for weeks. I have had a growing sense of anxiety and dread about pretty much everything in my life, and I am taking some time off of work to learn some coping techniques and begin to heal.

My heart. It's hidden away in the shadows now, unidentifiable in shape, around a corner protecting herself.  I can only make out shadow and light mostly, bright yellow and white intermingled with sharp black edges and greys, the occasional flash of an image:  a wrinkled mass like clothing, a large crumpled bow. Things that had value and possibly beauty and may still, but have been dropped on the floor, neglected, ignored, discarded. I no longer know if the trampled-on mess is my own creation or something that has happened to me, at me, but it's clear my heart has not been treated well by me. It's been treated as though it has no value, should be given away like a trinket with no care for it.

I have been looking for someone to help me do my "dirty laundry," to help me clean up the mess, but I am beginning to see that I just need to pick up one piece at a time. Walking on and over and through the mess without acknowledgement or care has only served to further damage those parts of me that need care and devalues who I am and who I can still be.

I know that I want to be in "the world" in a way that is in keeping with my values. I know that where I am working right now does not feel like that right now, but I don't know if it's the lens that I am seeing through or if my perception of the current trajectory of inequity in the company is real. 

My Grief speaks

Note:  This is based on an exercise from Megan Devine's "How to Carry What Can't be Fixed." The instruction was to characterize and describe my grief. 

I am grief and I am lonely. You have shut me out and I will be felt. I will be heard. You  know me. I am the feeling of damp anxiety,  like water pouring into an already obstructed drain. I am the moist darkness that rots your pipes, destroys your foundation if you continue to ignore me. You may feel safe right now, but I will make sure that you know that the floor may collapse beneath you. It may only be a squeak beneath your foot, but does it foretell collapse?

I am the feeling of despair, the moisture beneath your knee when you gave CPR, the hopelessness soaking into your clothing and seeping into the crevices  and dark corners all around and taking hold. You think I've gone, and then one day the noise below your step reminds you that you are vulnerable.

Ignore my voice and  pests and poisons flourish in your world. Untended, I am as rotten fruit, the pool of barely identified liquid sticking, stinking to the bottom of the drawer. Deny me, forsake me and  the softened wood of your foundations and fortifications are chewed up and decay. 

The perfect peach must be examined and re-examined again to make sure it isn't spoiled or wriggling. The zucchini and cauliflower are uneaten, finally you give up on "real" fruit and buy frozen, antiseptic, unseen, giving you a sense of autonomy and safety.

I want for you to see me. I want you to acknowledge me, so we may learn to live together one day.

I am meeting with a counselor on Monday to work on a plan and tools to help to reduce the intense anxiety that I have been experiencing these last several weeks.  

Trauma and trust issues.

Written August 4, 2021.

 A recent conversation with someone has put a new spin on the old record of mental illness...mine, hers, what that means and what it looks like.

It has taken me a few days to be able to sit with this and write since our Tuesday meeting, to be able to

unpack and dissect our conversation and why it has created a sense of sadness, anger, vulnerability and

apprehension that makes me wary of coming back and talking with you.  It has opened up a jagged can

of worms.

Narcissist. That word is fucking powerful. It’s used to describe Donald Trump in the same breath that he

is called a fascist. It’s used to describe emotional abusers and dictators, people who take and want love

but cannot give it in return. The concept of narcissism is never associated with empathy, mindfulness, or

kindness.

Is writing about this, thinking about it, wanting to deny it, inherently narcissistic? Does thinking about my

own inner workings and outer life make me self absorbed? Is my willingness to pay thousands of dollars

a year in therapy an indication of a desperate need to have someone validate me? Was then my love and

marrying a selfish grab for attention which I was condemned to reject? Was being a parent a desperate

endeavor to prove my worth? If that is true, then my daughter’s death tears that down.

For years, I cut the bottoms of my feet because the pain when I walked took away the pain in my spirit,

my head, in the murky places that I wanted to exorcise. I have taken dozens of antidepressants and a few

antipsychotics. In times when I was desperate for clear light and breath, I considered electroshock

therapy to take away the darkness, knowing that life might not have the vivid blues and greens and reds,

but neither would it have the greys that sometimes take over. Perhaps life would be less painful and fraught.

I have learned a lot in DBT, from getting older, reading about Buddhism and meditation, though it does

not dissipate the greys that come over me, the periodic thick fog that unfocuses the ability to see beauty

and hope. I’ve worked hard to gain a gentle dominion over the krakens that arise. I continued to see Dr. S,

while in a deeper place I have wondered if by seeing a therapist, I am only paying someone to listen to me,

to talk about myself, that it was elementally narcissistic, staring at myself in the pond looking at my reflection

week after week, month after month, year after year. I tread the line, knowing that it’s not appropriate for me

to ask my therapists about themselves, yet knowing that the “relationship” is inherently selfish.  But over

time, I had gotten to a place of calm in my life, and was seeing my last therapist once every 3-6 months.

There was stability at work, I was slowly ending an unhealthy love relationship, and felt that I was beginning

to have friend relationships in daily life. When the cancer diagnosis, the decision to have a bilateral

mastectomy happened, I was okay. Worried, but okay. The isolationism of covid was mitigated by my

ability to see people at work every day.

But when Hannah died, my world was shaken to its roots. I felt like everything I believed was wrong. Every single interaction between her and everyone she interacted with, her moods and actions and my

response to them was worthy of question to try and find the answer to WHY. I wanted to know how a smart,

sassy, beautiful, intense, artistic young woman could have slipped away like a porcelain cup crashing to

the ground. How have I, who am so much less than she, survived and she is gone? I will never know, and

while that’s not what I want, I accept it and will continue on, even when I am in pain.

But back on topic.  After Hannah died, I called my talk doctor.  She was a great therapist for years, but this

loss was a different thing, and I needed someone who could understand. I came to you to deal with the

trauma of my dead daughter under my hands, pumping her chest, my knees in the fluid that drained from

her body after she expired. The lips glued shut, the memory of that last horrible argument. The recognition

that she must have been afraid of my father’s yelling, of her own anger, and in that last moment when no

one saved her by opening the locked door. She must have been afraid when no one saved her. Was she

still alive when I was knocking on her door, plate in hand? I have accepted that I will never know. It’s been

a year of memory of those last moments, of her childhood, touching the objects that were there with her

in her daily life til the day she died and slowly deciding what to keep, what represented who she was, and

to be able to let go of some of the rest in a world where my family - my sons, my ex husband, my parents

- have not been able to deal with. The only way forward is through. While it’s likely as hard for me as for

them, I am doing it because they say they cannot. This year has had multiple surgeries, T-rex arms, work

grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, living my responsibilities in the world, wishing there was a hand I could

grab onto for. Lacking that, I push the feelings down.  

I recognize that my jokes about eating my feelings are the tip of an iceberg, thanks in part to Brene Brown,

which I am about 70% done with. I see that I am numbing when I eat til I am sick to my stomach, watch

tv, listen to silly books on audio, shop, surf the internet for hours, and am only slowly opening to the possibility

that there are other choices. The way forward is through here as well.

I came to you, Laurie, to help me navigate what I could not even accept or comprehend. For a year we

have talked almost every week. I don’t envy you listening to the horrors of the experiences of people like

Craig, Sybil, Rebecca, Walter, Laura and my family.  You’ve heard the stories, experience our pain, seen

our tears. You’ve looked at the drawings, walked through the darkest moments of our lives with us while

we trust you and the others in our group with the things we can’t talk to anyone who hasn’t been there.I’ve felt uncomfortable periodically, about focusing some of what happened with Hannah on my own

childhood, my parents. How they have acted is theirs, whether it be from love or hate, control or absence.

Is it not also true that Hannah and I both ultimately have had agency over our decisions and actions

even when those choices were catastrophic? 

Narcissist.

When one is wounded, do we not rest and heal? I did not take that action last year, needing to go to work,

to talk with customers and co-workers daily.  Is my need to curl up narcissistic, or am I trying to take care

of myself?

Narcissist.

Your use of the word hit hard, and I don’t know if you saw, but my walls went up, the locks began to close.

I was shaken, uncomfortable, offended, shocked, traumatized by the word, the idea, even as you tried to explain.

Not narcissist. Vulnerable narcissist.

Not the same, yet some of the same pathology as grandiose narcissism. The other side of the same coin: arrogance/shame,

extroversion/introversion, superiority/unworthiness, attention seeking behavior/social anxiety. The core elements

are the same in both - Self absorption. Lack of emotional empathy. Sense of superiority. Attention seeking behavior Bizarre.

EntitlementI do feel entitled, I feel guilt and shame for it. I recognize that so many people don’t have access to medical

and mental health, and I do.I recognize the gift of having a home, a car, insurance, family, even when all i

want to do is hide myself away to be alone, to process, to escape. I feel monstrous, ludicrous going to therapy week after week, knowing that I could be taking that time and money and helping the unhoused, the 

powerless. 

Defining Characteristics of vulnerable narcissism: sense of superiority, hypersensitive, vindictive, resentful, ashamed, neurotic, depressed, anxious, moody, introverted, unworthy and inferior. Personalizing criticism?

I try to learn from constructive criticism Though the anxious part of me says that if that were true, I would be

feeling less like I had been attacked). Vindictive? I don’t believe so. Envious? I do have feelings that there are some others whose lives are easier, in part due to just resilience, which

I am trying to learn. Resentful?Possibly. I resent my weaknesses. I resent the sense that I have had what seems  bad - mojo? Karma? luck?

 I want to take responsibility for - control of - what happens so that I can have a sense of management of

the uncontrollable incidents that put me where I am. If I eschew this characterisation, does my “arrogant

denial” make the diagnosis more likely? Do narcissists have an incapacity to see their true selves in the

mirror?

  DSM-5 traits of narcissism:

• Self-esteem dependent on needing others to admire them, and their emotions can go up and down

• if they don’t achieve this external recognition.

• Goal setting is based on gaining approval from others. They set standards high so they can see themselves

• as exceptional – or set standards low based on a sense of entitlement.

• Struggling to recognise the feelings or needs of others, unless those feelings relate to themselves. 

• Not having a clear sense of how they affect others.

• Superficial relationships, mostly to boost their self-esteem.

• Arrogance and haughtiness, believing themselves to be better than others, and can be condescending.

The problem right now, Laurie, is that this is a lot to process, and in citing your insights from the podcast about

narcissism to me, something in our professional relationship became amiss. Maybe I am a narcissist. Maybe you

are wrong. Maybe you are right. But I need to step away from the hurt and anger that I am experiencing so

that I do not lose my livelihood and my way. Even if the way is not the “best” way right now, it’s the one I

can handle.

The New Year

 

The sunflower rug - it got to me. The family joke that ceased to be funny the minute her body ceased to be alive It was in 2006, on a train for many hours mile after mile of sunflowers as we traveled across France  until she said she could not stand to see any more sunflowers. For years it would come back, as a sweet, happy joke when we would see sunflowers. When we went to Europe again 10 years later, she brought a dress with her because she know that she would be going to the Van Gogh museum with Troy.  I think she wore it on her birthday when we were in the Summer gardens in St  Petersburg. She looked beautiful in it. She was cremated in it.

My mom wanted a rug for her kitchen floor and asked for my help to order one online. I was going through a website to find something that would work for her and I saw the sunflower rug. It was pretty, and I remembered Hannah, but it only hurt a little, and it was okay in a few minutes. Her brother saw the photo and remembered too. I wonder if it will always be this way - a little, common thing can make us sad. It's not as bad. I don't always cry and sometimes believe that there is hope for the future. God, I hope there is happiness in the future for the boys...  She's been gone for over 19 months now. I can see sunflowers without tearing up.

I googled her. I realized, again, that there will never be any more things to see when I google her. Her obituary, her published thesis, a photo from her obituary. That's it. 

Reticence

I have fought writing and expression these last few months. God,  it's been over two months.  Hannah passed over a year ago now, and her birthday has passed.  Another birthday we will not celebrate with her. I no longer know how many days it has been,  and the flow of days and weeks brings little comfort. There are  reminders in everyday life of her everywhere I go: art,  music,  flowers,  books yes,  but blue hair,  safety masks and gloves,  blue Volkswagens,  my back yard.  When I hear a fire engine,  my throat tightens. The sense that they are there to rescue is mitigated now by the knowledge that that sound can also be linked the darkest moment in so many lives, in my family's lives. I live in the house where she passed.  The door to that room is closed,  and I struggle to go through her things,  knowing it takes me farther from her. I feel a sense of failure in the avoidance, want to clutch everything to see if I can smell her in her belongings, but know that they are just things.  The phrase that I taught my children all their lives "they're just things" mocks me now,  because her things are all that is left of her. 

There is a softening of the pain of her death,  like a scar that is healing. There is a quote that I am trying to remember about the sensation of a scar. It distracts me again from writing, but I see that,  see the way in which my mind distracted me from getting close to the feelings again.  I will sit with that understanding,  sit with this feeling of peaceful sadness that I am having this morning. 

Trying too Hard, too Late?

For the rest of our lives, those of us who were part of Hannah's life will try to make up for it somehow:  to be a better parent, a better brother, for those who harmed her to be more "woke" after her death. 

It's the not trying, or ineptly, solypsistically, publicly calling attention to how much one is trying that ... hurts like the devil to be near.

My father wrote an article for an online magazine.  In it, he talks about women swimmers, and how 'his realities were changed' the first time he was beaten by a woman when he was swimming, and goes on to talk about woman swimmers.

Something that I have learned from Hannah is to hold space for other voices. In the case of what my father wrote, it's a problem for me, because he's an old white man talking about himself in reference to women, acting as though he is speaking in deference to women, but elevating himself in "woke" context. 

I don't have all the right answers, I know, but learn to stop. Give opportunity to other voices, encourage them without trying to tell them about your own  experiences. Listen without planning your next sentence, your next commiseration. Listen without judgement and hear what is being said, how it is being said.

I am guilty of it, and Hannah let me know. Probably she didn't call me out every time.  Her brilliance and creativity, her depression and torment, were hers.  To poke at it until I figure out how to dismantle it and make it make sense will never happen. The IF will haunt me until the end of my life, the shockwave of realizing she is gone will never completely go away. To find peace is accepting. Accepting we will never see her dance again. Accepting she will never  sing again. Accepting the silent guitar, the hardening paint, the pink dresses and combat boots that she wore, the leaves and flowers and photos and projects that she will never create. The lessons she could have taught children, her friends, her family, me.

A seed is planted in me to try to be better, to reach the next one, to learn the important things.

It has been 338 days since daughter, sister, friend, teacher left this earth.

 I love you, Hannah.

10 months and 4 days

I will always hold Hannah deep in my heart in a broken, beautiful place.

Ten months is no time at all, but it's an eternity of echoes of seconds since she left. Her face, her voice are etched into those of us who love her, and that loss doesn't end. The jagged edges of it have softened, beaten on the tides of tears. When one of her friends announces nuptials or pregnancy, it is a joy tinged with those tears. When her brother has good news for a change, the news is gratefully, lovingly received, but stops at the infinite ocean of  where she no longer is.  

But the sun did come up today without her, and we are learning daily how to navigate through these calmer waters, knowing that  storms will come again. We know that we will continue to push through and survive through them.

Hannah, you are loved and missed every day.

the guilt that comes along for the ride

I have been so afraid of my son's grief and depression that I have let him get away with acting like a child. Today, after a night of constant  interruption of my sleep sure to noise , when I told him to act like the adult he is, he said "fuck you" and walked away. It's almost liberating to realize that I have been reacting in a way to avoid a repeat of what happened to Hannah and I have operated from fear instead of dealing with adults and have caused a regression in the autonomy in both of them.

Don't know what this means.

grief, rage

Lately, I am finding myself suddenly, surprisingly, intensely full of rage. Since I don't know why it's happening, I turn it inward into a sea of frenetic self  loathing and a desire for violence: yelling, screaming, pounding violence against a body and mind that I try to have compassion for and find myself utterly lacking. I want to eat and punch my way out of what is going on inside me, because I give it almost no voice. My throat can't speak these words.

In times of calm, I meditate. Love and healing to myself, to my family, to the world. I tighten around the rage, because I fear that if it's  expressed it will leave a swath of poisonous waste around it. I take some precious breaths, center myself and do what needs to happen next. But my breath is shaky today, my throat tight, and so I left, afraid of what the next words might be. I have so much compassion for the suffering of my sons but can't find my 'self' to be compassionate towards this morning. The cold winter wind and gray sky are my voice, a whipping invisible, touching everything. The sound of it feels more real than the filth of my home, the depth of my despair and anger. I want to leave it all behind and go to a place of love and light and warmth but right now, I know that this is my normal and right now I need to figure out how to survive it. 

Addendum: I picked up a book 10 minutes later and opened it:

"The warrior in your heart says stand your ground. Feel the survival of a thousand years of ancestors in your muscles and your blood. You have all the support you need in your bones"

Jack Kornfield

Christmas without Hannah

 It's so incredibly quiet in this house. Tomorrow is Christmas, and the noises in the house are from mechanical things - a dryer, a fan opening under the house.  There is no music, no laughter, no arguing. No sneaking into the back bedroom to wrap the pile of gifts, because there are no gifts, no decorations. There are my sons in their separate rooms, me in a third, silent, sad, thoughtful.

Two days ago, at work, someone burst a balloon. It triggered a memory of that day. I thought she had maybe slammed a door, maybe taken my car and had slammed the car door. It was the chair being kicked away. 

Grief. I don't want this. I don't want this to be the last thing that you gave me, Hannah. You had so much that you could offer the world.

Holidays

 It's 13 days till Christmas.

I have been pretty numb these last few days. My son fell apart in the car on Wednesday, sharing that he felt that he was responsible for Hannah's death. He felt like he was mean to her while she was growing up. It was true. He was not nice to her. 

I see her face twisted and tortured in that video, over and over in my head, something inside her punishing and painful on hearing her brother yell half a house away.

I did the right thing. I told him that he was not responsible, that I love him.

Sitting on the couch, I prepare my grocery pickup list for tomorrow on the computer. There is a holiday section, and I absently scroll and click around, looking at the lights and the wreaths. And then I realize that she is dead, there is nothing to celebrate this year. Still calm, tears coming down my face, slowly at first. I close the tab.

Before thanksgiving, we decided, mindfully, what we wanted to do with that day. 

I am scheduled for surgery in 5 days. Covid is surging, with over 3000 deaths in the US yesterday. 8 days later is Christmas. We are approaching Hannah's favorite holiday, with no desire to decorate or bake cookies. Hannah was a creative and prolific baker, and her "hot tits" snickerdoodles were divine.

For many years, we made gingerbread houses, and I saw in my old photos on facebook a picture of her, huge smile on her face, sweet little gingerbread house next to her.

Photographs are beautiful, painful remembrances of this child that I adored. My gift child, I called her. She was not an accident, I would say, she was a gift.  What happens when I pass and the photos do not go to her or to the children that she might have had?  I continue to hold physical space for her belongings, at the same time knowing that there are others who might benefit from them-clothing, cookware, food. I am not ready to give them up: a beloved tie-dye onesie handed from one child to the next that I held onto for when one of my own had a child of their own; art that she created, boxes of tea that she was given for her birthday; a tin can that says "Black Lives Matter" in her scrawling handwriting.  Books and books and books, some of which are old and musty and the only significance to them is that she found them in an old, abandoned house. I could create a small museum to her with these things that have stories and meaning. 

I allow the days to pull me along. For the most part, I don't think that I am making choices so much as allowing the choices of others to make my path. I am having surgery because no one has told me not to. I go to work, I call my parents, I cook and eat, I pay my bills. These are the things that we all do on a daily basis.  This writing I choose.  It is painful sometimes, but it is for me.

My younger son was asking yesterday about where Hannah was now - her spirit. He wants to believe that she is not entirely gone, yet since he does not "believe" in God, he is struggling.

I thought this morning on awakening that if I died in surgery that maybe I would be with her....

Broken glass

 11/16 It's raining today, and I took off my boots in the front hall. On the bench in the hall is a box, and I recognized it immediately. When Hannah moved it, she brought a box of broken glass from a windshield She had found in the street, and in her usual way, saw an opportunity for art. Art that she can no longer create. It feels solipsistic to talk about how this makes me feel, but nobody reads this anyway. I sat on the step and cried. I want to take the glass and make something for her, in honor of her, but feel like a fraud, a counterfeit. 

6 Months

 Tomorrow, it will be 6 months since Hannah took her life. She was a daughter, a sister, a friend, and many other things, but since she passed, she is the silent plastic box in the velvet bag on my mantle, the home accessory I never wanted. I hate that she is in a plastic box.  It feels disrespectful.  I have been looking at urns online. It has to be the right but what is the right container for my daughter's ashes? When I try to figure out what she would have wanted, I wonder if she would not want to be contained at all, and the idea of finding the proper box or urn reinforces that unpleasant truth that she is gone.  

There is a darkness that is coming over me as I approach this milestone.  It is one of many such to come as time continues to move forward. Thanksgiving came and went, now this, then Christmas. New Years, Valentine's day, each with memories that come with them.  Thanksgiving we mindfully and carefully chose to "skip." She hated Thanksgiving's lore and its inaccuracies and felt that it further disrespected the Native Americans and lied about what we as a culture did to the first peoples of this country. She loved cranberry sauce, and that was her contribution to the meal. She happily added experimental ingredients every year: raspberry flavoring, orange liqueur, even vodka one year, orange zest, mostly with success.  Hannah loved to decorate for holidays.  I think she would be horrified to see the state of chaos that this house has fallen into in the last six months, but would be of help in trying to get it organized so that we could decorate pine cones with glitter or create a craft to brighten up the house. Her things, her brother's, are all over the house, some in boxes now. Most of the chaos beyond is mine - clothes and linens that don't get put away, bags of recycling, outer signs of inner distress. I find myself trying to take long slow breaths at times so that I can feel the air in a brain heavy with sadness. I know that I am not bearing this alone - the mere presence of my sons confirms this. Yet I feel alone, and when my son was crying yesterday after sharing the recurrent images of Hannah on that last day that he is experiencing as we come to this hallmark, I found sparks of anger welling inside of me. I feel like there are people outside of the door at my heart, which I guard against them. I was able to see that this was something dark that my son hadn't caused, and was able to be there with him, recognizing his need above my own pain. Yet, there are moments when a flicker of light appears: a card from someone I know letting me know they care. Words from someone 3000 miles away, not intended just for me, but that my heart was able to let in the light from. The part of me that wants to cling to the darkness and rage will not win. I love, and I am loved, and while I will never stop missing her, I will find a way to make peace, one flicker of light at a time.  The night sky is dark, but it is filled with stars, each one a sun. 

realization at an inopportune moment

 I was in a very public place today when I realized that I have two wedding dresses that I have saved for my daughters, but I have no daughters to give them to.

Where did it go wrong?

11/7/2020 I am sitting in my oldest son's apartment, close to 200 miles away from my home.  He is packing and moving back home with my other son and I for good. This is in part a financial decision, in part because the past few months he has not felt safe to stay in this place, far away from family.  

Due to the pandemic, he lost his job, and his income is basically gone. His life is devastatingly, irreversibly altered, these last few months, and he plays games on the computer to numb the anxiety and to silence the voice of grief that whispers in his ear. He is afraid that he will lose his out of state insurance by moving home. I am afraid for his safety if he stays.  The depression that he has contended with his adult life has become a jagged mountain to deal with, and outpatient intensive therapy was the recommendation.

Most of us who have lost someone to suicide feel that we should have done something differently. I wonder if she would be alive if I had *made* her go to the doctor's when I started worrying about her, paid more attention somehow to what she was saying, been more patient, encouraged her to transfer to another college. I should have seen that she had changed - that she no longer had friends, was angry and defensive.  I should have seen the increasing strain in her. I try to pick apart the threads that led her to take her life, and led her family and friends to where we are now.

Puzzling it out  won't bring Hannah back and it doesn't "fix" anything, but I desperately want to understand, and so I try to piece it together.

She was a competitive student, and knew exactly where she was in the class standings, knowing that she wanted to be high school valedictorian while she was still in middle school. She eventually was, and had to work for it, though I suspect her peers didn't know how much.

My earliest memory of the anger and hostility really manifesting is of the week before Christmas, in 2014, when she and my father got into the first of what seems like many  disagreements and fights.  I would like to say before I go too much farther, that for years, I was afraid of my dad. I didn't and still don't know exactly why, though he did have his occasional outbursts, putting holes in walls, being angry with his children in ways that included corporal punishment, and my never feeling good enough to meet a standard that I couldn't even identify, let alone meet.

We were making food for Christmas - cookies and pierogi for Christmas eve and I think we were going to do gingerbread houses? - and they got into an argument.  I have no idea what it was about, though I wish I knew so that I could maybe understand what happened, find a pattern.  There were raised voices, there was swearing, and she left, which I suspect now was a reactive fear and confusion to the escalated confrontation that was unfolding. It was raining, hard, and I tried to call her, panicked.  She texted her brother to let him know she was safe, and returned home hours later, long after my parents had left. This was a few months after Eric had harmed her, though I did not find that out until later.

There were incidents, much more minor, and she was convinced that her grandparents didn't love her.  I don't believe that it was true, but I think that they were afraid of the potential for arguments, and I know that at the least, my mom believed Hannah didn't much like them.

In college, it became more serious, though I knew only the surface of it.  She moved out of place after place, and I know that part of what happened there was due to her immediate and increasing dependence on her boyfriend and his on her.  He told me after she died that one of the first times he met her, she was talking about killing herself and went on the roof of the dormitory. She began to experiment more with drugs and alcohol. Her dormitory roommates were uncomfortable about her bringing Jacob into the room to spend the night.  She moved into a house with other students who had technical majors, and had difficulties with her roommates there, which came to a hear when the heat went out during a snowstorm, and the landlord and she got into a fight in which which Jacob "defended her" and she felt like she needed to move again. She house sat for a young man who was priveleged to own a house off campus, and she went on a trip, first with her oldest brother and then with our entire family.  While she was with her brother, she terrified him one night while they were in an argument, telling him that she was leaving because of the argument. Somehow my son was able to soothe the situation, but it was the first of many explosions. There was one in a museum in Amsterdam, where the security guard got involved because of an argument between her and her other brother. There was a fight that night between she and I, on a cruise ship, where she told me that she would be sleeping on the deck. I wonder if she would have killed herself, leaped off the ship that night, if I had not told her I would leave and she could be safe in the room.  I slept on the floor in my sons' room that night.  She told me that night that she wanted nothing to do with any of her family.  There were spats every time that she sat at a table with my father on that trip. Dinner was stressful, between needing to be social and trying to keep an ear out to make sure no fights broke out.  I don't want to make it sound like it was all bad. There were sweet times, where she got along with her brothers and I, and it felt like it would be okay. We had lovely days - St. Petersburg, where she had her 20th birthday on a river ride under lit bridges, sipping champagne and eating chocolates, the vegetarian restaurant in - was it Talinn? - that she researched and found, and had a wonderful meal at after seeing a historical reenactment, walking with her in Stockholm and Helsinki, and going to places - museums and parks and shops, wandering through streets.  And her making friends with an artist on some little island in Denmark. I was so amazed that she could put herself out there like that.

On Christmas eve 2019, there was a fight between my mother and she.  it was about a piece of information that I had believed all my life to be true, which my mother denied and said some awful things about that night.  My mother wouldn't back off.  Hannah wouldn't back off. It was horrible.  I think that it ended because my mother made something that Hannah believed was an apology and Hannah made something that my mother believed was an apology. Christmas was done, gone in the wreckage of that fight, and caution prevailed in the conversations that followed.

After that, I didn't see much of her for two or three months, though I tried. She was "busy working", she was "self quarantining" from the  virus, but I knew she didn't want to see us.  The threat from that trip, that she wanted nothing to do with us, was bearing out, and then she had to move back here.  There was an imbalance in the house: no one felt comfortable there. My other son was too loud for her, annoyed her. He didn't see that to be true and basically ignored it and lived his life.  She wanted him to quarantine so that he would not bring coronavirus into the house, and it wore on both of them that the other would not budge on this.  She didn't leave the house, but about a week after she moved in, she got quite sick. She thought she had the virus. They hadn't even developed an accurate test for it at that time, so she may well have.  

I carry the weight of my responsibility in her death, knowing that I missed that moment when I could have stopped her.  She paid the price for what I did not do, did not see.

The Truth

The truth is that there isn't a day that goes by when I don't have a deep and unflinching recognition that I fucked up and that her life was the cost of that, and now she is gone and I can't apologize. 

It doesn't matter what the "actual" truth is in the world, it is my truth, and at times like today, when I am in a garage full of real reminders of her, I want to disappear.

Musical Notes

This morning, I was talking with my oldest son (I will not be “naming” my sons or family out of respect for their privacy. I do not feel this same respect for her rapist, Eric, though.). The song Careless Whisper came up, I don’t know why the conversation went in the direction it did, but we were talking about the lyrics, then the singer. George Michael. *BOOM*  The invasion of sounds and images and smells and feelings that last day. The strangeness to me of her very strong reaction to the images in the video for the song Freedom and how low her energy was when she made the half-humorous comment (apologizing for that reaction?).

“I think there's something you should know

I think it's time I stopped the show
There's something deep inside of me
There's someone I forgot to be
Take back your picture in a frame
Don't think that I'll be back again" -Freedom 90,George Michael

Hannah was a talented musician, though the world did not get to see enough of her music. She had her own appetite and tastes in music, but also held some of the songs and musicians that I cherished close to her. Music was a force for creation for her, for putting out a voice that she felt was not being heard and communicating what she felt, especially after she felt not believed by people that she trusted after she was hurt by Eric.  I believe that it often held some ability to reduce the pain inside her when the memories or hurts swept up towards her, until it no longer did.

There are songs that will always hold memories for me:  some sweet, some bittersweet.  When she was in high school, she was enamored with a song called Shut Up and Dance by Walk the Moon. iI has been her calling card in my ear every time I’ve heard it for 7 years.  It makes me smile with tears in my eyes now. It still lifts my spirits as well.  I imagine that in her mind as a 15 year old, it rang as a love song that she could fully dive into, and I can see my sparkling, lively daughter dancing in the family room or kitchen while she helped cook or baked one of her creative baked goodies, singing to Walk the Moon, Neon Trees (Ho He) Owl City, Pink, especially the early music, Mumford and Sons, Imagine Dragons. 

As she got older, Nicki Minaj and Jesse J and the women who sang about spoke up for the rights of women and all people as well as became part of her repertory. Janelle Monae, Lizzo, Princess Nokia, other names that I wish I could remember now were significant inspirations to her music and her intersectional feminist philosophy (an phrase and concept that I had not heard of before her introducing it to me). There seemed to be a supportiveness among females in these online and musical worlds that she was lacking in the physical world.  She would tell me stories of betrayals and unkindness among people who she went to school with, until finally, online she became part of a group that accepted and understood. I don’t know how the group came together, but they were all over the world; Hannah’s passing, the group slowly drifted away.

Over the spring, while the coronavirus encapsulated her into her small, cluttered apartment with the boy who had broken up with her but stayed to sponge, she spent time working on her music, honing her skills through the constant pain in her wrists from tendonitis.  There are a number of different styles and pieces that she experimented with, sharing with her friends and the world on instagram: blues, rock, a little jazz. There is a song that she recorded during this time, but she only publicly put into the world about a minute of it. It is Wild World, by an artist that I grew up knowing as Cat Stevens, who is now known as Yusef Islam.  I have searched for the original video among her recordings, but that scrap of her singing, a little unsure for her, is all I have of it.  The song seems almost intentional, though I would guess it was not. At the time it was just a too-short piece that I was enamored of from a song I love.

“Now that I’ve lost everything to you,

You say you want to start something new, 

It’s breaking my heart, your leaving,

Baby I’m grieving…”-Wild World, Yusef Islam

I have a playlist on youtube of her songs, speeches, art pieces, including this song. I listen to it, try to hold onto the details.

Here is the link to the song: https://youtu.be/FjqhcsYT12Q .