After my previous posts in which I detail the horrific event that was my husband's death by suicide and the parts in which my son and I played, I was overwhelmed by the amount of compassion shown to me by fellow Bandmembers* and Pranksters*: Thank you, every one of you, you have no idea how cathartic it has been to put it out there in detail and have been met with such love.
FLINGS A WHOLE BUNCH OF MOTHERFUCKIN' GLITTER, Y'ALL*. Like, whoa.
I'm sorry to say that things have taken a bad turn: Y'see, I haven't told you about the stuff between then and now, the struggles that have been never-ending, some big and some small, all of them significant in and of themselves, all of them further traumatizing, cumulatively. But the latest development in WTF Has Happened To My Real Life? is crazy-making, crazy-sounding and if I didn't feel safe here, if I didn't believe that those of you who look at me sideways (ok: e-Look at e-Me, e-Sideways) will surely reserve your negativity (wouldja, please?) and doubts for what I hope is a whole lotta bunk that makes my hat my dinner in the end (and I will gladly eat it if I'm wrong -- I'll eat all my hats, and I've got hats, lotsa hats), I wouldn't even bother writing this down because it's just insane. Speaking of THINGS THAT SUCK, BULLSHIT, ISOLATION, ESTRANGEMENT, and (heyzeuspleaseletthisonebewrong) CHILD LOSS...
...insanity. Unbelievable insanity. Couldn't sound more fictional if I'd written it fictionally.
Not fictional. Factual. Actual. Horrible.
But first:
1. Blame. Shame. Self- and otherwise. Totally natural, sucky, painful, understandable. Everyone involved -- which is to say, everyone who knew the Husband and me and the Boy in any capacity -- seemed to feel a degree of blame and shame. To qualify any of our experience and reactions and feelings as anything but unique, individual and valid would be selfish: Anyone with any knowledge of suicide-survival knows that compassionately, intellectually, academically, all reactions are unique, individual and valid. Anyone who refutes or denies the survivors' right to their own emotions is, plainly put, an uneducated asshole. Sorry.
2. I have been subjected to a lot of blame and shame put on me by the other survivors; while these pointing fingers have hurt and left bruises and bumps, I am nothing if not careful to acknowledge that I HAVE NO IDEA HOW ANYONE ELSE FEELS. Not even the Boy, no matter what he tells me, and his feelings are evolving momentarily, which means I have to roll with the punches that come at a good speed from a rapidly-growing fist. Even when they hurt, I have no choice but to give them credence and respect and love him unconditionally -- not only by academic standards, because I understand that his emotions are his own even when they are hurtful -- but because I believe him and respect him and love him unconditionally out of motherly compulsion and a sometimes-outrageous level of human compassion. I confess that I am ever-forgiving of most people's hurtful behavior toward me (except when I'm not, but I will touch on some of that here shortly), I confess that I take a lot of flack from folks who say, "what is wrong with you? How can you let that go? How can you forgive [insert perceived/real/whatever atrocity here]?"
Because I do. It's all I know, it's my compulsion, it's my reflex, it's part of who I am. Personally, I like that I am inclined toward such forgiveness; I like that I was not taught it but that it flows through me naturally...I certainly have PLENTY of reasons not to forgive, forget, let go and let love, but my spirit does not behave this way. I am grateful for that.
3. That declaration made: I am being tested right now on the highest level of that credo, of my personal motto of Resolution Not Dissolution, and if I don't get an honorary PhD over this one for sticking to that rule, I will go in the complete opposite direction and I think there's a jail cell at the end of that road. I am being strong and brave with great deliberation these days in a way I've never been and lemme tell you, Pranksters: Shit is Hard. Really, really hard.
I've never been a heavy drinker -- in fact, until I was 29, I could count on my fingers the number of times I'd been truly wasted, drunk -- ever. I spent over 20 years in the restaurant/bar business and have enjoyed my role as the straight one, the goody-goody, the only staff member who didn't answer the call to the service bar for shots that are practically mandatory in the service industry; before the suicide, at my last restaurant job, I drank one of my two shift drinks at the bar after clocking out, then took the second one home in a thermos that I'd store in the back seat during the ride home and not touch it until I was sitting on my back porch at 2-3am. I wasn't even comfortable driving with two drinks in me; my boss disapproved of this for years and I conspired with the bartenders to make a covert switch-and-drop before walking out the door so that I could get away with it. I now know that he simply didn't believe that I really did save that drink until I got home; I still feel no regret for this behavior. Not that it's even relevant anymore...the point being that while I don't need a witness for this, I am compelled to clarify it only to bring to light that substance abuse is often borne of trauma: On par with only veterans of warfare [as compared to survivors of other trauma], it is reported that 60-80%* of suicide survivors struggle with a level of substance abuse at some point during the grieving and recovery process. We are particularly prone to relapse, chronic illness, incarceration and recidivism -- even with no prior history of substance use at all.
*(this number is not to negate the suffering of survivors of abuse, loss, assault or illness, I simply use it to make a personal point. I realize and have that same aforementioned love and compassion for all struggling survivors of whatever trauma; forgive me if my use of statistics strikes any reader as better-than: It is not my intent.)
Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying I started this journey clean and sober -- on the contrary, I spent years as a pot-head, dabbler in psychedelics, long-time tobacco user; I worked in the restaurant business for so long that it would be a practical lie to say I'd not been exposed to cocaine/methamphetamine abuse and have at least tried them...aside from the marijuana, however, I had never had a propensity towards chronic use or abuse: I simply do not enjoy being intoxicated. I am small and I vomit...vomiting is not fun. Especially when the point of using illicit substances, criminal or no, is often to have fun. I did not, however, get any reward from opiates, the idea of needles was/is terrifying to me and I live in Baltimore, where heroin is king and I have been to too many funerals...I am afraid of heroin, and any pain-killers I'd ever used were for the purpose of alleviating pain that was too great for ibuprofen or aspirin.
And then I met this guy, after the suicide, a guy who was fresh off a separation and who was a devoted and loving father to a 2-year-old beautiful girl and who loved me and the Boy and who was a talented musician and a dedicated worker and a terrific lover and a very heavy drinker...and a lover of opiates. Specifically, opiate-based pain medication. Not an addict, not someone who was constantly in pursuit of pills, not a "junkie" (a word I hate, by the way): Simply someone who found pleasure in the feeling these drugs gave him and who acted as if I were sprouting a second head when it came to light that I had a 30-count bottle of vicodin stored in the medicine cabinet of which three (3) pills had been consumed since their prescription six months prior:
"You have a whole bottle of vicodin? Why didn't I know this?" he asked humorously.
"Um, because you never asked for an inventory of the medicine cabinet?" I responded in kind, "you have to file form 1184 for that list."
"No, seriously," he said, "why do you have those?
"Because I had [unknown virus requiring visit to ER], they were prescribed, I took one a day until my pain was manageable and switched to ibuprofen. What's the big deal?"
"Um, can I have some?" he asked with nervous laughter, and I told him, "go crazy, I don't like them, they make me puke."
And to be fair: He didn't down them quickly, the 27 remaining pills lasted a long time and it was not an issue for him nor for me: People use drugs, I know this and I'm fine with it. I also understand that there are limits, there is abuse and that powerlessness is often a result of drug use. I understand better, now, because I ended up addicted to oxycodone for an 8-month stretch about a year after the above conversation; I am now sympathetic to yet another aspect of something I didn't used to understand as a result of my own suffering. And for the most part, save for the heady beginnings of opiate addiction that we call the Dragon We Chase, that we rarely experience again but that a lot of us die trying to catch: It was suffering, to the Nth degree. I gave a good chunk of money to dealers, one of whom is now in federal prison (having nothing to do with me, but for whom I have a good deal of sorrow and over said sorrow I have been lambasted and berated, but the drug trade is insidious and everyone involved in it is human and remember when I said I am overly-compassionate? I am told that my love for this prisoner -- not that kind of love, smutty -- is great example of my hippy-dippy love fest with existence), spent a goodly amount of time in so-called "Pain Management" centers (pill mills, candy stores...effortless. Sick-making) and it shouldn't surprise anyone that these love-affairs -- the one with my boyfriend and the one with the drugs -- ended on an ugly, sad and disastrous note. Several hours after proposing marriage to me, with the Boy in his lap (who had been trying out "Daddy" on him for two weeks), with great sincerity, tears and all in front of a half-dozen dinner guests that the Boy and I accepted with great joy and happiness, I found myself fighting for my life on the floor of my kitchen when he took issue with me refusing to give him his car keys as he stook stark naked before me, in a blacked-out state of intoxication, crying about how unworthy he was of my love and affection.
I gave him a warning: If you try to leave in your car, I will call the police. You are wasted, you aren't leaving, go to bed and we will discuss this tomorrow.
(I hate this part, because for as much oxycodone as I'd ingested that day: I was stone-sober. It took me only eight months to bottom out, to hit "maintenance level," and all I had to show for it, at the time, was a collection of blankets and snuggies and hoodies with cigarette burns in them courtesy of nod-outs on the porch while chain-smoking: No more fun, lots of potential disaster. This part turns out better than it will seem, initially).
And so he grabbed my phone, pushed me down on the floor onto my back, pressed his knee into my sternum while crushing my trachea with his forearm, and covered my mouth and nose with his giant hand: He was trying to kill me, and he was entirely unaware of it. I bit his hand, over and over, and every time he'd pull it off I'd taste the blood in my mouth as I screamed for help, screamed, "somebody please help me!!!" as the Boy lay in his bed in the room directly above the kitchen. In the same house where just a few years earlier, his father had committed a different and equally devastating act of violence against our family and the result, while not fatal in the true sense of the word, was the death of a second family for him.
I want to say, here and now before I continue: My Dear Sweet Boy, Love of My Life, My Reason For Being, My EVERYTHING: I am so fucking sorry for everything that has happened and that keeps happening. Mama is making changes, Bahboo, Mama is getting healthy again because she knows that she cannot care for you if she doesn't care for herself. Mama knew this before Daddy died, but she forgot and she is so very ashamed. I hope you can forgive me, my sweet love: I am in so much pain right now over my mistakes, I miss you terribly and I am doing everything I can to make it right so that you can come home. You are so brave, I am so proud of you, and I hope you are having fun with your cousins and that you don't have the pain that I have, that you don't feel as profoundly sad and hopeless as I do right now because I would go to the ends of this earth to take from you a fraction of this pain: It is immeasurable, Bahboo, it is something I pray to g-d you cannot feel. Rest assured that there are Legos running from the faucets here, waiting for you to come home, and that I am hell-bent on giving you a happy life from here on out. And that I will teach you things that I never imagined needing to, but that I know now are vital to your ultimate health and happiness. I miss you, I miss you, I miss you: I'm moving as fast as I can, baby, hang on.
(Mama also knows that she switched between first and third person in that paragraph but she doesn't care and refuses to change it.)
Lest anyone think that that was what separated us: It wasn't. It was simply the beginning of my journey to my bottom. I could honestly die right now from the pain of all this, just will it to happen, it feels so close some nights but I need to stress something: I am not now, nor have I ever been suicidal. Any reference to death in anything I write is hyperbolic and should never be read as a desire to take my own life: I WANT TO STAY ALIVE, I WANT TO BE HAPPY AGAIN, I WANT MY FUCKING SON BACK GODDAMNIT. In and not in that order, necessarily.
Get stoked: There's more! But there's also laundry. Love yous.
ps: I need a family law attorney ON THE FUCKING DOUBLE if anyone knows a good one, cheap, in the Baltimore area. Please. I'm begging.
pps: Dear Bureaucrats Who Make Nauseatingly-Biased Decisions Based On Hearsay, Absence of Fancy-Looking Lawyers and Single-Motherhood As An Apparent Handicap To Be At The Very Least Shamed If Not Punished And Criminalized, Especially When Said Single Motherhood Occurs In A Violent Fashion To A Previously Successful and Talented and Happy Woman With A History Of Mental Illness Whose Own Biological Family Is Testifying Against Her And Who Never Once Claimed To Be A Lawyer Yet Is Expected To Reasonably Represent Herself In Court As One Person vs Nine Persons: FUCK YOU OVER AND OVER AND OVER.
You suck.
Kindly refresh your memories over that part in law school where the defendant is "innocent until proven guilty," and that the plaintiff is responsible for the "burden of proof." What you did in that courtroom was embarrassing to me, to Americans, to the judicial system and was BULLSHIT. Had you addressed a single issue on that protective order**, I would have walked out of there and gone to get the Boy; instead, you treated it as a trial (it was not, it was a hearing) and by law -- FACTS, PEOPLE: I'M SMART AND I CAN READ -- you abused your position and took advantage of my vulnerability by not adhering to the simple LAW that declares, again: the Plaintiff is responsible for the Burden of Proof with regard to the charges on the order. All of which are bullshit, none of which were addressed.
*if anyone is interested in the asterisked portions addressed at the beginning, please drop me a private note.
**the law states that during the hearing to determine whether a temporary protective order will become permanent, extended or dismissed, the only thing that can happen, lawfully, is that the plaintiff be given the opportunity to address the simple charges listed on the order -- nothing more than the charges listed -- and the burden of proof lies on said plaintiff. Not one single element of that order was addressed. The attorneys saw me standing there by myself and blatantly took advantage of a situation they had a chance at getting away with and they did, and the judge allowed it. Shame on them. I don't know if y'all know this: I'M NOT A LAWYER, I don't know "I object!" from "I'm on fire!"
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