Today is Halloween, Samhain (sow’een), the day when the veils between the worlds lift, just a fraction, just enough to see the restless dead. And my dead are restless today.
Tag: trigger warning
November 3, 2015
I don’t know what to say.
I don’t know what to think.
I am shattered. Heartbroken.
All the cliches are true. Every. Single. One.
***
Ben was easier to process. I knew the names of his demons. I knew where they hid. It didn’t hurt any less (do you hear me, Ben, you motherfucker? Do you know that I still miss you every day you’re not here?), but it didn’t send me reeling.
This? All I have are questions. I think:
If he could do this, who’s next? Who else do I know who is holding such unspeakable grief inside?
Was it money? Sex? Drugs? Something that can move the needle to explicable?
***
I’ve been fairly useless for the past three days. I take my girl to playgroup and to school and to eat Chinese food, and I think:
What’s wrong with our culture? What did we do to make him feel so alone? Why do we place the trappings of success above our own well-being?
Was this a wake up call? A warning? To who?
***
On Monday, NPR ran a bit about a health care plan aiming for a zero suicide rate. They screen for depression, are proactive about treatment. I think:
Would this have helped?
Would this net even have caught him?
***
I still believe, passionately, in the right to suicide. Deciding not to live is the ultimate act of self determination. Who am I to make that decision for someone else?
And yet. I think:
If there had been someone to listen, would he still have thought this the only option?
If we talked about this, if we made space for depression and anger and fear of failure (or of success or of life itself), would he still have jumped?
***
We cannot help but continue on. The hole doesn’t always close, but the edges smooth.
***
I unpacked some boxes yesterday, trying to regain some sense of order. Of control. I think:
If you’re reading this, I love you. I care about you. I would miss you.
If you need a hand to hold, you’ve got mine.
To Ben McCoy, Wherever I May Find Him
An old friend of mine from summer camp died unexpectedly a few weeks ago. I found out through Facebook, of course, where his sister had asked people to upload their old photos of him. It wasn’t until I had all my old summer camp albums stacked on the dining room table that it hit me that he was gone, really gone.
I always thought I’d run into him again.
Sometimes, people come into your life and they change you, indelibly, unexpectedly. I remember the music, the way it infiltrated those liquid summer nights, spiraling into the warm night air and settling around my shoulders like a hug. I remember sunlight hitting bleached blond hair, and I remember summer girls in tank tops and denim shorts, and I remember a smile that went on forever, a smile that was yours, always and only.
I remember two questions. Questions that book-ended the years I knew him. Questions asked carelessly, in the middle of a crowded room. Questions that still cut to the heart of who and what I am. I never answered either. I didn’t understand, until many years later, that I wasn’t meant to.
You could say I had a crush on him, but that wouldn’t quite be right. I had a crush on the idea of him. I was too shy, too awed by his popularity, too afraid of rejection to get to know him. When I came across him on Facebook a few years ago I friended him, but I left it at that. I didn’t think there was enough of a connection left for us to have any kind of conversation, for me to try to meet up with him when I passed through Boston. I wish now that I had tried.
Because most of all, I remember a boy with mischief in his smile, and love enough in his soul that it was yours for the asking.