Category Archives: grief

Once again, it has been a while

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Although it has been a much longer while since I had any contact with my long ago lost friend, Michael. I should back up a bit. Thursday night, my wife and I were discussing the fact that I’ve had many Michaels in my life. And suddenly the last name of my dear friend in college surfaced in my memory. I had been trying to recall his last name for many years.

I did something that I’m sure many of us have done, I searched for his name within Facebook. Given his unique last name and general idea of the region where he likely lived, I found him in less than 3 minutes. When I find a memory that has any teeth I latch on to it for dear life, and immediately get into investigator mode because memories can be fleeting for me. As fast as they may appear, they are also quick to evaporate. As soon a memory lands on me I immediately try to get it down somewhere, whether it’s on a piece of paper, a napkin, a text or email to myself–I jump into action. And I was not going to lose this one as it had eluded me for years.

I messaged him, and said something half-awkward like, “This is X, and I think you’re the Michael that worked at X with me in the 1990s while we attended x university at the same time …” It was something to that effect. To my surprise, he replied almost immediately with surprising joy at hearing from me. He said he had looked for me for years. My Facebook name is slightly different from my first name, it’s a nickname of my first name. And I made my Facebook profile private in that it does not come up in searches. I clearly recall making these choices in circa 2008 when I set up my profile because at that time I was still hearing from an ex with whom I had severed ties in late fall 2005/winter 2006. Yes, years later I was still hearing from this person. Ironically, my love addicted relationship with this ex is what led to me unconsciously leaving my friendship with Michael in the late 1990’s. And years later, my efforts to keep myself safe from her still continued to provide an obstacle to us finding each other sooner.

My dissociative identity disorder (DID) has mechanisms that I am still discovering, like the ability to leave a friendship, many friendships if I think about it, and not have the conscious awareness that I was doing that. Once I connected with Michael, I sat on the couch and thought about our friendship, the little I could recall. And that was sad to me as well because I know there is so much more that is not known to me at the moment.

We FaceTimed on Friday for an hour, and it was like no time had passed with the ease in which we spoke with each other. I didn’t yet tell him I have DID. Felt like too big a share for the first conversation. I did tell him I got sober in 2008, and he revealed to me he got sober in 1999. It was equal parts joy and sadness speaking with him. Having him right before me on the screen made it very real that this was a friend I walked away from over 25 years ago. He had many questions about why our friendship evaporated. I did my best to explain that I was not aware of how mired I was in my love addicted relationship at the time. I was so deep in that relationship that I left other friendships because my ex made it a negative experience any time I interacted with anyone but her. Without even being aware of these choices, I eventually dropped all of my friendships during that time. If it had been pointed out to me back then I am sure I would have given an angry retort that this was not happening, that people’s lives were just going in different directions. I can recall how stubborn I was to hear anything that contradicted my ideas/views on how things were in my life.

Michael talked about events that I did not recall, happy, mundane things like going for coffee and spending time at each other’s apartments. I treasure the friendship we had because I know it was safe, that he was safe. And back then I was not good at choosing safe people. We were each other’s fans, and such goofy friends. We would make up words, usually about gross things, just because we could.

To my surprise, I have found myself crying in small spurts since i’ve spoken to him. It’s like a delayed decades long response to the loss of the friendship back then. Even writing this I can feel myself get teary again.

I used to believe that my DID was only keeping me from bad memories. I have learned this week there is good I’ve lost as well.

You thought you wanted to know

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So far this evening, you’ve had an orange, chocolate sprinkled nonpareils, and you just finished watching an episode of NCIS. You even looked up the best keyboard case for an Ipad mini 4. An important question–Do you even own an Ipad mini 4? No, you do not. But, you learned the best keyboard case is from logitech.

Why all the procrastination?

You do not know how to write about devastation. You only know how it feels, but you cannot tell anyone what it is.

This devastation cannot be named, described, nor can it be identified. You only know that some people from your past make you want to run, and hide and disappear. But, you do not now why. All you know is how you feel.

There’s also a devastation in seeing friends from high school on Facebook, and knowing you were friends with them, but you do not know why or how you became friends. You only know you were friends because when you see their name you smile, and feel warm inside. You finally admit all this to one particular friend you feel most at ease with. She is supportive, and proceeds to tell you how the two of you became friends. It was in Honors English in high school, and you both shared a love of books and writing. She tells you stories about your senior Honors English teacher, and how you asked her to suggest additional books to you, and that you were the best writer in class.

You knock your memory bank around in your head trying to find the story she’s telling you, a story that you lived. But, it’s not there. No matter how hard you close your eyes, concentrate, and try to find the memories of knowing this friend, alas, the memories are not there. You thought this would be a happy thing, hearing about your friendship with this person. But, it brings a sadness you do not expect.

You always wanted someone to accept you as you are, have the ability to hear about you as you. But your heart cannot hear about happy stories you lived that you cannot recall. You thought this was a good idea, but instead it’s your own secret devastation.

Today’s post is written in response to Today’s Daily Prompt.

some accidental clarity

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Ever since I learned of Sara’s passing I’ve been in a foggy dissociative state that’s been confusing for me. Since mid November when I returned to my previous job (which is now my current job, life is funny that way), and fired Doc, my last psychiatrist (more on that in future posts), I’ve been doing surprisingly well. I’ve had less instances of getting stuck in the car in a foggy state where I’ll be stuck from anywhere from 10 minutes to upwards of 2 hours. I’ve even been able to get out of bed with very few instances of the stuck-to-the-bed feeling that used to plague me on a near constant basis.

However, a lot of that foggy dissociation returned once the news about Sara reached me. I understood the return of the dissociation at first as it was and is a loss. But then I started getting the feeling that there was more to it, but I couldn’t pin point it, and because I was in that foggy state the thought would come to me in a fleeting moment, and just as soon as it would come it would disappear. I would ask myself, “Wasn’t there something important I was just pondering?” But the thought would just evaporate, such is how it is when my dissociation is ever present.

Yesterday and today seemed to glob into one space of time. Every thing was an effort: getting in the shower, getting in clothes, going to get something to eat, driving, laundry, grocery shopping, the gym, eating again, and then throwing out garbage and putting away groceries. I was stuck in the car, and I just said to myself “We just need to go in the grocery store. We need bananas, oranges, toilet paper, and almond milk. You can do this! It won’t take long.” Thirty minutes later I make it into the damn store.

In that moment when I was sitting in my car, playing a game of Candy Crush trying to jolt myself out of the foggy state, the fleeting thought came back, and this time I managed to hold onto it. As I was playing that stupid game I suddenly had the realization that this has been so hard because of my mother. This whole thing took me back to my mother. There were countless times that she threatened suicide. She would yell that nobody cared about her, we didn’t care about her, and because we did not care about her she was going to kill herself, and when she killed herself we would all be sorry that we did not show her how much we cared about her.

This was a frequent scenario growing up in that dreaded ugly brown house on Marietta St, so much so that I got to the unfortunate point where I am ashamed to say that I started to wish she would go ahead and do it and put us all out of our misery. Thankfully, I never expressed this to her, but I definitely thought it, wished it, hell I think I might have prayed for it at one very desperate point. I don’t even want to know what God must have made of that request.

There was one time when I was likely around 6 or 7 years old when I ripped up a Ziploc bag in front of her and ate it as she was making her typical suicidal threats. When she realized I did it as a suicidal gesture she laughed, and said to me that eating that bag was not going to kill me.

Eventually I started staying away from home as much as possible. I recall one particular argument (actually this is the only part of the argument I recall. I couldn’t tell you what we were arguing about in that instance)  with my mother when I told her that there would come a day where she would never hear from me or see me again, and I wanted her to remember this moment, remember all the moments that brought us here to this because they will make up the reasons that she will never see me again. And I believe I said something to the effect of, “You should never have been a parent. You’re the worst.”

Decades later I stand by those words. I do, cruel as it may sound, it’s how I feel. I wish her no ill well, just that I leave this earth without any more exchanges between the two of us. Any love that was there was killed, extinguished long ago. She’s just a person to me, a person in this world with whom I have an unfortunate connection. I’ve kept my word in that I’ve not seen her for many years. It’s the right choice given the situation.

I never realized this until this week, but I believe her suicidal threats were likely the most damaging to me out of the entire potpourri of damage she rained on us. I believe it’s the reason when I’ve had friends who’ve experienced suicidal ideation I tend to freak out or take off or both. My own propensity for suicidal ideation leads me to be very close to the vest about it. In the rare moments when it has scared me I am reduced to whispering it to my therapist. There have even been times when I couldn’t even whisper it, all I could do was write it to my therapist and hand her the piece of paper. I never realized, until now, that I have a fear of talking about suicide.

The legacy of suicidal ideation was passed down to me, but I went the opposite direction with it. I try to protect everyone from it. My mother wanted everyone to feel responsible for her ideation, and I go out of my way to protect my loved ones from even knowing that I struggle with this. My mother suffered out in the open, and I struggle with mine in a good amount of isolation.

My mother was a good at crafts, and our dining room table often looked like a craft store vomited on it. She would make homecoming mums (a strange Texas tradition) or make candy cane reindeer at that table. I remember wishing that I liked crafts so that I could have one good memory of doing something nice with her. Instead, I would glance at her doing crafts at that table with my sisters, and I would read a book.