I wrote the last blog post over the course of a couple days. My first attempt to write it caused a panic attack and after recovering I was too tired to finish it. When I returned a couple days later to complete writing it, I realized I wrote the entire post about Jeffrey and not “to you”. I do not know what it means that I instinctively wrote about Jeffrey and not to him, but here we are. Writing about Jeffrey and not to him.
Today is fourteen months since I looked across a small hospital room at Jeffrey’s dad and agreed it was appropriate to donate his organs. A powder keg of energy lights up my body and has all weekend. I am weepy and lonely and confused on how to pass time. Without weed or alcohol, I vacillate between complete boredom and needing anything to help me take a break from the intensity of integrating how lonely I feel. I told Heather no one is witnessing my life. There is no one here to know I did my laundry, vacuumed, made myself dinner, or worked out. There is no one to come home to and explain that I felt very emotional after going to a movie last night. Dottie and Carla can only provide so much validation of my existing and it mostly comes from them in the form of demands for pets, walks, and feeding.
I woke up still in a somatic lightening storm and knew I could only alleviate it by walking. I took Dottie to Upper Park and headed straight up Monkey Rock, losing the trail as water seeped out of the Earth absconding clear pathways. Wisps of cirrus clouds reminded us Earth dwellers the vastness of the atmosphere. In contrast, damp lava rock anchored the ground peppered by green grasses nourished by a wet winter. There has been so much gray weather since November I bought a SAD lamp. Lived in Seattle sixteen years and Baby bought her first SAD lamp because she could not delineate the edges of depression and grief and overcast weather. It is likely placebo effect, but I do think it helps me wake up in the morning. I sit with coffee with the SAD lamp on for 20 minutes while I watch my progrums (spelled how I say it in my head) before I start the day.
As I walked along the canyon, Dottie trotted ahead of me, looking back every so often to make sure I was still there. I never walk with her off leash as I do not trust she will have good manners when seeing another dog. Dottie always gets so excited to show other dogs how well she can play, but not all dogs have the patience to let her show them. A pesky, loving little sister. Today we chanced no leash, and somehow did not come across any dogs for Dottie to perform for. We walked mostly alone, the occasional trail runner passing us, pairs of female friendships coming their way back down. The air was crisp, the kind that burns your throat when you take a deep breath. The warmth of the sun embraced my body between the knife cuts of the whispering breeze. I asked myself “Is that you?”. I find Jeffrey in the moments where two things are true at one time. The air bit with bitterness and the sun defrosted my insides. The canyon is hibernating and alive. I feel both the weakest and the strongest I have ever been. There is some metaphor tied to Jeffrey’s bipolar diagnosis here, but I am not sure how to paint it.
I took Jeffery to Upper Park when we visited Chico for his birthday in 2023. I feel him when I am there. Just as film would splice back in time the memories of a loved one gone, I braid together the pieces of him in parts of Chico I loved. I know he would have loved living here. Chico is a container; a place my body knows is okay to be honest and messy. It arguably held the messiest parts of me, the parts that forged in the fiery template that became the barometer of everything I ever did after leaving and since coming back. I always tell clients that even in the messiest, most traumatic childhoods, the body knows where the nervous system formed and will feel quieter. Mine formed here, in the spaces between finches and dark-eyed juncos dancing in the winter sun. In the sincere “good mornings” offered by each person I passed by.
I have not had any THC since 12/30 and have noticed a considerable lift to depressive symptoms. I no longer feel shame, despair, or fear of never clawing my way out of this hole. I cannot know if that is because of THC’s biochemistry leaving my body (withdrawal is 30 days), a natural cresting of the Grief, or something else. I am sharing in the event anyone else is wondering if THC is having unintentional side-effects. I am not at all claiming a forever abstinence from it but am relieved to not feel so weighted in my experience of living. I told myself 2025 was my year to survive, that I would not judge the way I remained alive the first year of living without Jeffrey. I knew I would need to reevaluate if the techniques were worth keeping and am doing that now.
The most painful part of 2026 is realizing I can no longer say Jeffrey died last year. He died fourteen months ago, but it is no longer last year. Jeffrey died in 2024. I can feel the energy of my own want to move past this experience, to be in something new. But then I remember I never will move past it. This is who I am now. This is part of me. It is forever. Jeffrey did not die last year; he died in 2024. Fourteen months ago, today. I will forever be chasing the feeling of his wonderment about the canyon alongside me. Chest tightens as Grief sits on it. Tears form and fall. I gasp for breath and realize I was not breathing. Dottie trots back toward me and stands leaning against my thigh so I will pet her. We keep walking. The sun is whole-hearted and the breeze is bitter. Neil Young Helpless starts playing in my headphones. I am alive.
Last Friday, a friend posted about the time and date for a community member’s Hero Walk and I had a panic attack. I remembered what it felt like to be posting the same updates for people in my life about your Hero Walk and immediately without warning left my body. I watched myself at the Hero Walk. I watched myself in the room with you. I watched what it looked like to watch me post about the Hero Walk online, to be the people who learned you died. Just as quickly as I left my body, I came back, gasping for air, standing up from the sofa and trying to get to the kitchen sink so I could splash cold water on my face. I grabbed an ice cube. Earlier this month, I saw a doctor and received medication to help with panic attacks, but I have never taken medicine like this before. I was nervous in my panic to try it without someone being around. What if my body does not like it? What if the panic gets worse? I laid in bed at 7pm and turned on Law and Order SVU. I am rewatching old episodes because they do not require much focus. It is interesting to notice how much Stabler bothers me now. His macho, patriarchal ideas of how to be a man are grating. The panic subsided as I watched season five attempt to explain why conversion therapy is wrong. I was asleep by 9pm and slept until 7am the following morning.
On Saturday, I sorted all of my mementos into new boxes I purchased for whenever I was ready to sort them. I found a card written by my best friend in second grade thanking her for the Sky Dancer I gifted her. I looked at photos of people whose names I cannot remember, found evidence of my past relationships, of my sister’s past relationships. Of my father’s and my mother’s past relationships. I found birthday cards from my father’s mother who I only remember in images. I read all of the carefully dated and filled cards from Grammy and reminded of all the evidence of her past relationships. I sorted napkin drawings and love letters and poems and and took photos of the things to send people from my past. Here we are, I was telling them. Here is the evidence of who you are in my life. I kept these things to remember you, to remember how you made me feel, to remember the complexity and delicacy of loving and being loved by so many people.
On Saturday, I also touched all of your shirts. In sorting the mementos, I pulled out the things that are you. You cannot mix into the other boxes. You require your own. A few months ago, I bought an unattractive gray storage container so I could consolidate all of you into one place. I was in the storage aisle at Target for a long time deciding on a container. How do you select the container that fits all of you in it? What color represents the things you no longer need because you died?
Before Saturday, you were scattered all over where I live now. I would open my bedroom closet to grab a sweater and see the Panda bear with your heartbeat recorded on it be the ICU nurse. The panda sat atop the quilt the organ donation family coordinator stamped your hand onto. I had a container in the hall closet of random artifacts we found while mom and Phil packed to move me from Washington to California in January. Your shirts were in a moving box in the office closet. I needed to organize these things so i can choose when I look at the remnants of you. I also wanted to see what I had been avoiding looking at. What does all of you fitting into a box look like? I do not know what to do with everything I have left. Your wallet? You do not need those credit cards anymore, but I am not ready to let go of it all. What if I regret giving them away? So all of you lives in an unattractive gray box all together in my office.
After consolidation, you are now in the photo of us on my dresser from when we sailed on your dad’s boat over 4th of July. We listened to fireworks echo across the islands and felt the power of the explosions in our bodies. You are in your deodorant I still cannot throw away in the bathroom cabinet above the toilet. You are in the urn your father made for me, the one with wood from your cane and remnants of the tree in front of the family home you grew up in. The urn has circular cuts on the sides. Your father explained them as portholes, as if you are looking out from inside a ship. We cried as he talked me through what your urn is, cried as I scooped your ashes into the jar that sits within the urn. Ashes got onto the kitchen counter and I wiped them up with a Clorox wipe. You are in the photo-booth pictures from your fortieth birthday celebration that sits next to the tiny pocket-sized penguin Jena gave me when you died on my desk. You are in the half of the neon MuirWood sign that I still have in the office closet. And you now you are in the unattractive gray box.
It occurs to me that someday all of these things, these remnants of you, will all be and only be in the unattractive gray box. The shirts I am keeping might not ever become a quilt because I am stuck on finding someone who I can trust to help me make it. I am scared of your shirts getting ruined and not having them anymore. I smelled them as I refolded them and put them in the box. They smell like Downy and dust. Your smell is not there anymore. How many times will I move the shirts before I do not want to move them anymore? If I ever date, how do I explain your photo on the dresser? I suspect that eventually the photo on the dresser will not feel appropriate there anymore. I want to believe whoever is next will understand the remnants of you I have in my home, but it feels extraordinary to imagine such a person could exist.
On the day I consolidated all of your things into the unattractive gray box, I also reorganized my entire office, removed the trash, worked out, and took a bath. I did not eat until 5pm. It was not until 8pm when I was surprised by a panic attack while walking Dottie that I realized I had not been in my body all day. I journeyed to another place in my mind to organize your things, to touch all the memories of my life. I am scared I will always flip between feeling everything and feeling nothing. I walked outside in the cold for thirty minutes, audibly crying. Your welcome, Meriam Park, I hope it was a good show.
I gave up on New Years Resolutions a long time ago. I do not like the pressure of failing at something when my life has thrown so many curves that limited the execution of a goal. I do like settling into a Word if it appears to me, although, I do not put pressure on myself to find it. In 2025, my word was “surrender”. I knew I needed to surrender to the experience I am having of grieving you. I knew I did not need to resist my feelings of losing you, of having lost myself in my relationship with you. I sit here today trying to grapple with what it means to have made it through this year, but I do not have the words. I think I am still too in it to see what it all means. As I considered what my word should be for 2026, the only one that comes to mind is “acceptance”, but even that does not feel quite right. Maybe I am still in the hangover of surrender. Maybe I keep surrendering until a better idea appears.
One of my new favorite podcasts is called Shameless, “the pop culture podcast for smart people who love dumb stuff.” In 2025, one of the hosts, Michelle, had her first child and also lost her mother to brain cancer. In Shameless’s New Years episode released today (recorded in the future of Melbourne time), Michelle reflected on her difficult year, on losing her mother, and on not trusting setting intention for the 2026 because loss had changed her view on predictable safety. Michelle’s 2025 word was Presence and two weeks later she learned her mother had brain cancer. I really, really related to Michelle’s fear. I am scared to set any intention that goes beyond meeting myself where I am because any other expectation feels wrought with potential heartbreak. If there is any lesson in 2025, it is that I can get myself through anything, I am a good advocate for my survival, and nothing will every hurt as much as losing someone you love. Sometimes meeting yourself where you are is all you can muster. And that’s okay.
In the past two weeks, I spent dozens of hours switching between old episodes of Housewives of Potomac and podcasts which analyze each episode. I would rather immerse myself in the carefully constructed drama of wealthy narcissists than examine whatever it is I feel whenever I remember the new layers of grief I felt this week. I am in a feeling that takes my breath away and the familiarity worries me because I know where it leads. I do not like this pathway. How was I just in a reality where this was not present? I had the giggles on Thanksgiving for the first time since I can remember and now I am here? It feels like it will always be this way, grief showing up like a nosy neighbor, a confrontation by all the weight of losing you.
On Tuesday, a colleague brought a case involving a young widow client to our consultation group. As she processed, I could feel all Parts of me show up at once. The Widow. The Therapist. The Griever. The Colleague. The Trauma Survivor. The One who wants to feel anything but all of this. As The Widow began discussing what this client might be feeling based on my own experience, The Therapist saw looks on my colleagues faces, looks of people who got a peak into the enormous complexity of my grief. The Colleague realized parts of this last year people do not know, the parts The Griever has not written. The Widow spent a lot of time this year wondering if you tried to die, if you completed suicide. The Widow, The Griever, and the Therapist saw a look on one colleague’s face that made me question if my peers realized the hole The Griever keeps trying to crawl out of. The client is in month two of their new hell. In my January of this year. Without knowing them, The Widower knows where this client is and it is very dark there. It is unfeeling and numb. It is one hour at a time. It is surviving.
While I can make space for the parts of the client story that were so different, for the unique ways different bodies process traumatic loss, The Young Widow knows a version of a story most people, including my colleagues, will hopefully never know. This complexity is alone. The Therapist, the Trauma Survivor, and the Widow know clinical intervention for this client is only to make space until the client’s body shows signs it needs more support. Their body will know because the body always knows. It will panic, become depressed, anxious, and show signs of distress. Until then, the therapist should create safe attachment, make space, and validate. There is no therapy in the first year of traumatic loss. There is only containment and, as needed, education on why the body is reacting the way it does with interventions to help support the reaction. The Colleague and Therapist felt deeply aware of how triggered I must have looked to my peers. I cannot do anything about what they saw. What they saw was raw and honest. This is who I am now, the amalgamation of all these fucked up Parts. They are wounded and they have knowledge. The One who wants to feel anything but all of this cannot process it all. It is too much. I am kaleidoscopic.
When I close my eyes, I see trying to heal from this grief as attempting to reconstruct a wishing flower. I can feel the texture of the dandelion seed, that soft, delicate prickle. The breeze is Time taking each seed away from me. I will never have all the seeds back. If grief has a timeline, I feel like I am in the few seconds after opening my eyes having made the wish. I did not wish for this. The panic of the task at hand and how long it will take overwhelms me. It is a nightmare. It took me a year to get here and every seed I manage to capture is another painful piece. There is still so much work to do. I am surviving.
After that consultation group where all my Parts came, I had seven client sessions. By the end of Tuesday, I was exhausted, inhuman. As I ate dinner on the couch, I let my mind wander and began to sink into the reality the consultation group even happened. I am a person with all these parts. I opened my phone and another clip from When Harry Met Sally came up, the infamous diner scene. We watched When Harry Met Sally on our New Years Eves together. You were shocked when I told you I had not seen it. My memory tells me you loved the movie because of your mother, because it was her favorite. I feel apprehensive about my remembering around this detail and worry I am dishonoring your mother and your loved ones by disclosing it. For me, the movie is you. It is surreal to have the tragic death of a Hollywood celebrity trigger the capturing of a new seed of my loss of you. I put my phone down. I watched more adult women fight with each other. I went to bed. Tomorrow we will start again.
I found your Christmas stocking. It rests on our coffee table mocking me, comforting Carla who sits on it throughout the day. Cats believe anything remaining in a space it should not be is theirs for the taking. Blankets, post-it’s, purses, stockings. Your Christmas stocking has a “J” on it. I bought us new stockings the second holiday we had together. I thought we deserved something nice, our own traditions. You put a lavender essential oil and a lavender face mist in my stocking. I got you a new orange pen and a small notebook from Lucca. You felt so thoughtful to me. What do I do with this stocking? When I pulled it out of the box of holiday decor, I pondered if I knew anyone whose name started with a “J” who might want it but could not think of anyone. I imagined driving to Goodwill and dropping it off, but that does not seem right. Randy suggested donating it to a free little library for someone else to have but giving it away at all feels wrong. I can put it in the box I purchased but have yet to organize for all of your things. Something is stopping me from sorting my memories of you. So here I am, nine days later, wondering what to do with the parts of you I do not feel ready to lose or let go of. Grief defined.
I am in a space of saying “yes” to social gatherings although still have little mental bandwidth to make the gatherings happen on my own. I spent the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend reconnecting with a friend and meeting his wife for the first time so our combined three Boston Terriers could play together. It was lovely and hilarious. Dottie humped their dogs despite my discouragement and it was so nice to remember the presence of this person I cared about so long ago. After departing, I wondered what it would be like to come across a herd of Boston Terriers in the wild and determined it would be comically noisy and frenetic. Can you imagine hiking in the wilderness and coming across a gaggle of these tuxedoed creatures? Afterwards, I attended a friend’s child’s fourth birthday. I had a nice time and left at that point where I could keep drinking or drive myself home.
Both social interactions back-to-back awoke the Part of me that is lonely since you died. Most everyone I met was my age or around it. All of them were partnered and/or married. Several had children. We were not ready for kids and now I face a life where I may never have them. I do not want to be a single parent and am comfortable with this decision when I revisit the position I am in. But still. I sobbed when I got my first period after you died and realized no part of you would be living in my life anymore. I was devastated. Being around people my age is a stark reminder things did not happen the way I hoped they would. That you died.
Part of me feels like I massively failed at this thing everyone else seems to figure out. I can say the things one says to remind themselves their worst fears are not reality, and I do say those things. I did not plan for this. This is not my fault. I cannot predict the future and some of these fears may not happen. Saying these things does not temper this Part’s fear that I will always feel lonely. What if I am too broken to have the things I still want for myself? Gulp. There is no comfort to assuage this fear. It is primal, rooted, and obstinate. The next person who comes into my life has to be able to help me hold the large amount of heartbreak I experienced in my life. And there is just so so so much of it. It feels impossible to expect this kind of person to exist when I can barely contain the devastation myself. I am looking at your stocking as I write this. It is laughing at me.
When I got home from this child’s birthday party, I decided to watch Train Dreams. I am reaching for more grief content. I crave camaraderie in what I am experiencing, a validation that I am lonely in a profound way and other people know this feeling. If other people know this feeling, then I am seeable. I exist.
I read a review that described Train Dreams as a movie you do not watch, but drink in. I could not agree more. The film exquisitely captures the simple and extraordinary experience of living when faced with profound loss. What does it mean to live when ths much devastation exists in you all at once? Watching Train Dreams felt like watching what I feel like when I explain to my dad that I touched Time when you died. Because I feel like I touched Time when you died. I do not have another way to explain what it feels like to lose you. I feel like the trauma of losing you is not so much in the integration of a world with you in it (before) to a world without you in it (after). Although this is clearly a massive piece of it. The trauma of losing you is somewhere in the murk of having a new and profound understanding of how tenuous all of this living-stuff really is. I feel like I gained an overpowering knowledge of all the universe’s truths. I have an image of Father Time touching my forehead and giving me a data transfer of everything there is to know about everything. Train Dreams showed me this feeling, the feeling of touching Time in a way I can barely articulate in writing. I worry I sound delusional to people as I try to describe it, but then I remember anyone who thinks I am delusional has not experienced this kind of loss. This kind of loss is delusional.
Reading about Robin Lovesong’s near death experience in her memoir Loving Bravely is the closest I have come to understanding this new knowledge articulated with words. But I did not die and come back to life the way she did. You died and you did not come back. Sometimes I wonder at what exact point did I received this knowledge. When did Time touch Me? I suspect it happened when I used my entire body to move you from your side to your back and began pressing into your chest at a count the first responder talked me through while on the phone. “I need you to slow down and go to my beat, Natalie” the first responder directed. I followed their instruction. I touched you when you were dead, attempting to bring you back for more than 8 minutes before the paramedics came. I touched what it means to be living when you were not. My life will never be the same. If that is not Touching Time, what is?
After my last session today, I checked something on Facebook and the memory I posted on the one-month anniversary of you dying popped up. I forgot today marks thirteen months since I found you on our floor. I feel relieved and devastated to have forgotten. I am no longer counting down and tracking this timeline which means I am making progress in healing. But, what does it mean that I am not? On r/Widows, what I read is correct: the second year is harder than the first. So far, the second year is full of realizations contextualizing the meaning of your loss. I opened the box of Christmas ornaments and realized it had been two years since I had seen them. Last year I was living with my mother and stepdad in the haze of having lost you, counting the hours and days as they passed, looking for any milestone to anchor me to Earth. I was in my mother’s Christmas, a familiar place during an unfamiliar time. Time passes more quickly now than it did one year ago. I have had a year to fine-tune my skills. And, including healing, I am more skilled at looking for the signs that you lived at all. Your stocking is on my table because I do not want to forget. Because, alongside the fear that my life will always be lonely, is a fear that I will forget what it feels like to love and be loved by you. What happens to the things I put in your box? Touching time, indeed.
Note to self: Touching Time will be the title of whatever memoir this blog becomes.
One year ago, I arrived at the hospital for rounds anticipating guidance on removing your life support. The medical team informed us the day before tests confirmed you were not responsive. Your brain did not register any of the pain you definitely should have been in. I already knew. I knew when the neurosurgeon named Natalia told me on November 9th to keep hope up, to talk to you and play music. She told me we never know what kind of healing the brain can do and while I knew she was right, I knew you were not coming back. You did not have it in you to heal from this. We did not know how long you did not have oxygen when I started CPR. She introduced herself as Natalia when I arrived at your room. I remember because I tried to address her by title, as Doctor, but she corrected me. “I’m Natalia”. She’s the only name I remember from that week because her name was close to mine. She asked if she could hug me before leaving. I said yes and she gave me a strong, sturdy, caring hug. I played Reggae Saturday on KEXP because you loved Reggae Saturday. That’s what we would have listened to. I held your hand. I told you I loved you and that it was okay to move forward. I am realizing now you were the first of two people I have told this year it was okay to move beyond this life to whatever is next. The second was Grammy.
After Natalia hugged me and left, I sat in the room listening to Reggae Saturday with you alone for a couple hours before others arrived. I do not remember who came or when. I know your sister was there and your brother. Your dad and his partner. My parents were making separate journeys from Chico. I had not slept while staying at Adam and Randy’s. I lay awake and cried, in shock. I got to your hospital room by 6:30am. Dottie was staying with Adam and Randy because I could not leave her alone. I sat on the sofa in your room and focused on breathing. Inhale, 1-2-3-4. Hold, 1-2-3-4. Exhale, 1-2-3-4. Even today when I have box breath like that to help my body settle, I remember sitting in that room on the pleather sofa that was easy to clean. I remember looking at lifeless you and out the window at the oranges and yellows of fall. I remember the beeping as they tried to thin your blood. The machine did not work and the nurse was so kind as she overly explained that “this happens sometimes”.
I was hugged by your neurosurgeon on November 9th. On November 10th, we learned your brain was unresponsive. That you felt no pain. My mom and I walked to your room and a doctor asked to speak with me in a quiet room down the hall. I knew she was going to tell me you were not responsive and actively thought “remember this hallway Natalie, it’s going to change you.” I remember the wall of professional photos of the medical team. I wondered who the interior designer was of a hospital and how did they get that job. As the doctor told me, a conversation I cannot remember, a woman walked in on her phone seemingly unaware I was learning you died. That woman was probably stuck in her own nightmare. Not getting the hint from the palpable despair in the space, the doctor who told me you were brain dead asked her to leave. The woman startled, apologizing for intruding. My mom held me as I wept. We went home. There was nothing left to do. I told Facebook you were not going to wake up and the first of many panic attacks gripped me. Sitting on our sofa in our home, I lost my breath and hyperventilated as I attempted to touch the reality of you dying. The same reality I still struggle to touch. The energy of trauma is other-worldly and powerful. No wonder it splits us.
On November 11th, I arrived at the hospital a little late for morning rounds. My parents were with me, and I think I asked them to stay in the family waiting area until I knew what was happening, although I cannot remember. I did not want to crowd your room and we were only allowed so many people. The medical team stood lining the hallway and I parted the members of your family blocking the entrance to your room so I could set down my water bottle and jacket. Was it raining outside? Or was it sunny? I think it was gray? So many details I cannot remember. I squeezed your hand and told you hello. Your eyes were half open, the sparkle no longer adorning the cerulean anymore. There was a thin layer of white crust under your eye lashes as your eyes attempted to keep moisture in them. I grabbed a tissue and wiped it away. I tucked your hair behind your ears. I joined your family in the doorway to your room and tried to understand what the medical team was talking about. They gave updates about your nutrition and fluid intake.
I think it was on the 11th, although I cannot remember exactly what happened and when, that your sister said the quiet part out loud on behalf of all of us: why are we gathering to discuss your nutrition and fluid levels when your brain died? I did not understand what we were doing at Morning Rounds and was so grateful when your sister interrupted their updates to ask. We arrived on the 11th expecting to be talked through pulling you off life-support, but here we were getting updates on your nutrition. Your sister knew you would not want to be laying there like this. We all knew you were not supposed to be suffering any more than you already had. It was not what you or any of us wanted. I did not hear the reasons and went back to your bedside. Someone told me we were supposed to meet with a team at 10am. Everyone dispersed for a walk, a cry, tea, or coffee. I do not remember where I went.
On the 11th, at 10am, your father, his partner, your brother, your sister, myself, my mother, and my father all sat in the room where I learned you died just the day before. Across from us, two women introduced themselves before quietly and kindly discussing next steps. They asked us to talk about who you were to us. I do not remember much of the conversation. Eventually, they explained organ donation and how it works and I realized they were preparing us for a conversation I had not anticipated. You were an organ donor, and your body had not completely died yet. Just your brain. And, amidst all of this, we could help you help other people. Several of us indicated approval of the idea. It was unquestionably what you wanted. The donor coordinator asked your dad one final time if she had permission to move forward. He made eye contact with me and I nodded (or did I say something?) and he looked to the coordinator and confidently said “it feels like a no brainer. Let’s move forward”. Here we all were in a situation where you were brain dead, having opted to be an organ donor. It was a literal no-brainer. The air in the room hung heavy as everyone quickly assessed if we should start crying over this remark or start laughing. I started laughing, tears filling my eyes. You would have thought it was funny. We looked at the time, and it was 11:11am. So, on the 11th day of the 11th month at 11:11am a group of us defined a day meant for Veterans and Hope as something else entirely. We formalized your time of death.
Today, I woke up at 5am and could not fall back to sleep. I cried as I remembered where I was one year ago and what it felt like to not know what would happen to you. I tried to exercise but quit one-third of the way through because I could not stop crying while on the bike. I canceled the massage I scheduled because I poorly planned it to take place at 10:45am and I knew I could not stop crying or relax as 11:11am passed on the clock today. I am sitting in my dry, but sweat drenched clothes, wearing the KEXP “You are not alone” shirt your dad got you and your Eddie Bower printed fleece pullover we bought that one time at U-Village. I carved into a candle my mom gave me yesterday. The candle was made by a shaman to burn on 11/11, the angel number, the number of hope and remembrance. My mom had been saving it for herself for years, always out of town on the day or not able to get to it. She handed it to me last night after I made Grammy’s cookies for her memorial on Friday. “I realized you could use it more than me”. I carved the words “love”, “healing”, “wholeness”, “alignment”, “rest”, “peace” and “laughter” on one side. I carved your name on the other. I am going to sit here and watch it burn in between episodes of whatever I end up watching. Because today marks one year since you died and I do not know what else to do but try and remember and focus on what’s to come. David Kessler once said “Anxiety” is the Present and the Future while “Grief” is the Present and the Past. I’m firmly in Grief today. It is a relief to be here.
Grief took me walking again. We walked on the South Rim Trail named for Annie Bidwell. Grief led me and Dottie through grass the color of butter and underneath trees still dotted with the leaves confused by a 45-degree morning and an 80-degree afternoon. I imagined the leaves asking if they should be dying or thriving, but that is probably projecting. We stopped at Bear Hole and sat down as cyclists gathered themselves to finish their ride. Bear Hole looked different from the South side of the canyon. Smaller. I wondered if that is because of the slope of the canyon or because there was no fog shrouding the sky, just us and the autumnal sun. Probably both or something else completely. You would know the answer.
As I walked, I wondered out loud if you were walking with me and tears fell down my face as I registered profound anxiety at not knowing the answer. A runner gave me a look of pity as she passed me. Well… are you? Are you here with me? Does my wondering increase the possibility of you walking alongside me? I mean, we think therefore we are… right?
If Grief takes me on walks, Depression keeps adding weight to the ball shackled to my ankles. I cannot tell where Grief ends and Depression begins. They run alongside each other taking turns punching me in the stomach. Since Grammy died, I am back in the wing of the Grief Palace I cannot map as it hides from me in total darkness, no distinction amidst the shadows. It is not suicidal here, but it is dark. I have been in this part of the Palace before, and I do not like it here. It comes with dreams of children dying, people chasing me, and torture. I dreamt two nights ago that I lived in the world where the acceptable punishment for a child stealing food was nailing a cabinet door to their head until the nails fell out. Dark.
My body feels like it is straddling the precipice of panic and I am spending more time managing my stress with focused, mindful breathing, through exercise, and through dissociation. I want to drink and have more weed because I want to feel anything else but this fire in my chest, pain in my hips, and the knot in my stomach. I want relief from overwhelming dread. I do not drink and have more weed because I know it will not actually make me feel better and my mostly sober brain feels judgement over “doing the right thing”. I feel like I will always live in this wing of the Grief Palace and the Part of me who knows I will escape this place is so fatigued from trying to rationalize and remember for everyone else. Today, I watched Twisters and understood the moment a background character let go of what was keeping them from being blown away. I may not be in the middle of a tornado, but I am exhausted. How much longer do I need to hold on?
I found you on our dining room floor 359 days ago. I somehow managed to get myself through 359 days of you not being here. And now I have to get through the next two weeks.
I keep repeating the plan to myself, so I know I have one. You will get through this, Natalie. You know how.. You’re already doing it.
Important Dates:
Saturday, November 8th will be one year since I found you on the floor of our dining room, did CPR, rode in an ambulance, and my life changed.
Monday, November 10th will be one year since the neurosurgeon confirmed your brain was not feeling pain.
Tuesday, November 11th will be one year since they declared you and we gave your body to organ donation.
Thursday, November 13th I have therapy in Sacramento. Hailey and Tootie get into town.
Friday, November 14th is Grammy’s funeral.
Sunday, November 16th will be one year since your Hero Walk.
I am off from work from the 7th until the 16th because I cannot imagine having to hold other people when I can barely hold myself. I did not make plans for any specific days because I do not know what my body will need as it remembers learning you died. My only idea for an activity is to sort and organize mementos and the things that belonged to you. I figure this will help me honor you, keep me busy, and give me space to remember the parts of us I want to. The parts of you I love so much. I also plan to go for walks with Dottie if the weather allows it. And to sleep.
I want to ask someone to wake me up when this is all over.
I took today off because I did not know what I would need. I still do not know. After drinking a cup of coffee, catching up on Marco Polos, and watching an episode of Dawson’s Creek, I felt like I would crawl out of my skin. I thought about running errands, but going to the grocery store is something I would do for Future Me. And today is not for Future Me. Today is for Past and Present Me, for Grief. Instead of filling my gas tank, I walked in Upper Park for almost three hours with Dottie. We walked from the parking lot to the end of Yahi Trail and back up Middle Trail. We were mostly alone aside from a jogger, a cyclist, the man who cleans the portable toilets, and a dog walker with a blind dog. The cloud cover hung low and I could not see the top of the canyon. The creek was silty from the recent rainfall. Leaves were finally succumbing to cooler temperatures and dashes of crimson and gold and chocolate accentuate the oak and sycamore trees. Birds rang the alarm as we entered their territories. A breeze whispered. Dottie smelled everything and kept alert to any sound behind us. I listened to a podcast and kept walking. One foot in front of the other. I’ll know when I’m done and it’s time to turn back. One podcast ended and I turned on another. I could have walked forever except eventually the spiderwebs got thicker than I wanted. We turned around. As we walked out of the canyon, blue skies framed the landscape. There is a metaphor there somewhere, but I do not have the creative bandwidth to know how to better articulate it.
My grandmother, my mom’s mother, died on Wednesday evening. On Tuesday, my mom called me while I was throwing a tennis ball for Dottie at the dog park that is too small for meaningful acceleration but will do the job. It was 3:29pm. I never heard my mom sound like that before and I knew she was not in her body. She has 24-48 hours. Edita was with her, a close friend. I’m glad she was not alone. I knew I needed to get Dottie home and immediately go visit Grammy. My mom was not in town attempting to visit my sister, my nieces and nephews, and friends before completing a training in Texas. That psychic said my mom would not be in town when Grammy died. I knew I needed to be there with my uncles while my mom and Phil figured out getting her back. I put Dottie in the house and drove to be with them. I hugged them and witnessed them reassure their mother it was okay to go, that Jesus would hold her. That her siblings and mother were waiting. Tears lurked in all of their eyes. The last time I saw one of them cry we were at breakfast after his house burned down in the Camp Fire. Flashback. I hung back when they left so I could have a moment with her alone. I told her I was proud to know her. That mom was coming. That Hailey wanted to thank her for being a safe place when we did not know we needed it. That I wish she could help me understand what I am navigating with losing you. That I love her.
My mom did make it back on Wednesday morning. She wanted to go directly to the place my grandmother was cared for. I met her and Phil there. I knew it would be difficult for Phil. We were in the week that Phil lived exactly one year ago. He lost his mother, Marie, the lady who loved yellow, on the 25th last year. My parents were going to face losing their mothers the same week one year apart. Eventually Phil left and my mother and I spent Wednesday afternoon with my grandmother. There is poetry there somehow. My mom’s brothers came in and out as time allowed. Eventually needing a break and to wrap up some work things, my mom wanted to go home. We watched a Leanne Morgan sketch on Netflix and I remember watching the same one while in a hotel room driving from Seattle to Chico the week you died. Leanne Morgan is funny and I will not let my sadness and trauma over you taint that. After watching, my mom and I went back one last time. We were tired, but there was not a good reason not to see my grandmother. I kissed her forehead before we left one last time. It’s okay, you got this, I said to her. We knew this was coming. Dementia was there for ten years and cancer most recently. We read the text on Thursday morning. My grandmother passed on Wednesday evening after we left. God keep her. I’m not even religious, but God keep her.
I do not know how to place these two griefs in the same universe, let alone in my body. As I watched the body of my grandmother labor to keep breathing so we could all say goodbye, I kept thinking about how much this was the way death is supposed to be. This is the loss we prepare for. The loss we expect because of age, because brains cannot function forever, because bodies eventually get cancer. And your death, your loss, is not the way death is supposed to be. People are not supposed to die at 41 because of alcohol used to medicate their mental illness. We were supposed to grow old together, or at least reach five years old. Today, we would have been five years. What am I supposed to do with that?
I have wanted to ask my grandmother so many questions since you died. How did she recover when Lloyd passed away? Lloyd was a soul connection unlike many of the others. My grandmother and Lloyd were so in love. Hailey and I could feel it as kids. There was this radiant kindness to him that saturated the way we grew up. It matched Grammy’s in a delicate way, still holding the strength and subtle beauty of gossamer. What did that feel like to her? To have him one moment, then not the next? Did they talk about it together? How did he reassure her about life after him? Or did he? I came back from the class trip from Washington DC and I knew immediately by the look on my mom’s face something was wrong. Lloyd passed away while I was touring this country’s ode to patriotism. My mom, sister, and I lived with Lloyd and my Grammy after my parent’s separation and eventual divorce. I watched what happened to Lloyd and felt it, even if I was across the country when he graduated to the next experience. But I was in junior high, too young to know what that could feel like for his partner. For her. And I wonder all the time now.
A year ago, you guided me through the butterflies at Pacific Science Center. We turned four years old. It was a day that made me feel hopeful, that reminded me of the good parts of us. The parts of us who were curious and wanted to know things. That wanted experiences. That knew we could be so much more than the life we were living. You opened a part of me that let you lead me through the butterflies even though I dislike the idea of their wings brushing my skin. We talked about what we wanted for our wedding, the idea of eloping in Muir Woods for all the obvious reasons. Even with everything going wrong, I trusted you completely. I knew we would navigate it together.
I knew I would need today off work as I try and grapple with what it means that we could have been five today. We could have been living in this apartment I am in now, together. We could be going to family dinners on Friday, together. To the California coast on weekend trips. Walking Dottie in the park. But you died. In twelve days will be the anniversary of when I found you on our dining room floor. We were four and then we were nothing. It took my family years to get used to the idea of my grammy dying. Will it be the same way with you?
I have been so terrified of the ways in which losing you will alter who I am. Will I ever trust anyone again? Will I always be afraid they are lying to me about their alcohol use and die? I keep telling myself I would rather be alone than settle for less than I deserve, but did losing you unreasonably raise the bar? I am working so hard to heal. And then my Grammy died. And I do not know how to hold both things at once. I feel like I am in a snow globe trying to decide which flakes to notice. There is glitter everywhere. My attention is fragmented.
On Saturday, I completed an already scheduled Grief Art Therapy session because I knew I would need time to understand what it means that we will never turn five. I processed what it means to be in two different griefs, to not understand them as both being part of my life and how I am supposed to function. I was so in my head. My mom named on Sunday morning that her feelings need to be processed privately, not in front of others. I instantly understood something I have always felt: there is not always space for our feelings all together, the energy of our feelings together is too overwhelming. No wonder I had not cried while staying with my mother. There was somehow not space. Not on purpose. But how does one process this loss? After Grief Art Therapy, I raced back to my mom’s because her brothers were coming over to reminisce about their mother and help me write the obituary. My mom had signed me up for the obituary which makes sense. I am the writer. I had to write my Grammy’s obituary the same week we would have turned five. What is that?
It is one of the most distinct privileges of my life to sit at my parent’s dining table with my mom and her four brothers as they remembered who their mother was, how she made them who they all are. I am upset I did not record the conversation for us all to remember. Not one of my grandmother’s children has the same experience of her. There is two decades age difference between them. My grandmother was fifteen years old when she became pregnant with the oldest, and thirty when she birthed my mother. All five of them have individual experiences of anger at my grandmother for abandonment, for the ways she did not always perfect motherhood. And those experiences are incredibly valid. Yet, all of them told stories of her kindness, of her generosity, of her quirkiness. All of them articulated how she impacted them, taught them to not judge others, to hold the complexity of multiple stories, to have Faith. For all the flaws, for all the ways she might have hurt them because we all eventually learn our mothers are humans dealing with the weight of human problems, she modeled always loving them. And they all see and feel that love. There really was nothing my grandmother was prouder of than her children. As I sat documenting and witnessing all of them tell their individual experiences of her, and add more kindling to the story-fire, I felt so aware of how proud she would be of her legacy: these five humans and the love they continue to show everyone else was her gift to all of us and to everyone who knows us. To me. And to you. It is because of my grandmother that I eventually met you. She taught me the generosity, and the love needed to hold the storyteller in us that wanted to grow past four years old. I feel I suddenly understand the answers to all the questions I wanted to ask her. It is her values that allow me to know I will survive losing you. It took losing her to learn that. Because if she could survive all that she did and still have these beautiful children, my family, to show for it, then I can survive losing you. Grammy taught me Love leads everything. And loving you is something I will always be proud of. It’s what she would have wanted.
When I got back from the park, I made myself breakfast and then committed to being a blob all day. Except to write this, today is for feeling sad about the fact we will never turn five. Tomorrow can be for everything else.
Yesterday was 10 months since we decided to donate your organs and officially moved into the space of you being dead. It was also the day I realized I had not thought about it. Around 4:12pm I was walking from one end of my mom and Phil’s home to the other and a voice inside me said “oh wow, you were just now not thinking about him being dead”. It was different than “I forgot he died”. There was no trauma or re-remembering of the moments that filled my life ten months ago. Instead, it was a flutter of noticing, the wings of a memory touching my skin. A whisper that did not knock me over. Whispers knock me over so frequently now, it was nice to notice one that left me with my feet still on the ground.
I have had few more of these moments the past three weeks. I found a video of you making dinner, lip-synching to Whitney Houston’s rendition of I Will Always Love You. I kind of remember the night, but not really. I know I probably made you do that for me on camera because I found it funny and endearing and wanted to capture it so I would remember. I also probably paused the song so I could film it at the right moment. I remember wanting to remember us and how we felt that day, remember the warmth of being madly and exquisitely enamored with you. I wanted to feel the moment of us being on the same page and in the same room with too many groceries on the counter as you layered whatever is in the leftover containers into a casserole dish. I shared the video on my stories because I love it so much. Because I love you.
After posting, I got texts and direct messages from more than a few people asking if I was okay. I found the outreach confusing. Did I say or do something to cause worry? I felt and still feel a bit baffled by it. To be clear, I am so grateful people check in. My confusion is in no way a discouragement from doing so. My point is I had another moment recently where a memory of you was not immediately coupled with the dread of feeling the loss of you. The checkins tell me the video feels heavier to others than it did to me. A difficult part of what I am navigating since you died is the fact most people do not understand what I am experiencing in any way. I have grandparents who have not experienced the death of their partner. I am the first person in my family, and in my parents generation to have this happen to them. My aunts and uncles still have their wives and husbands and life partners. I am the first of my friends to have a loss like this. Most of us don’t have our partner die before we are “old enough”. Definitely not when we are 36 and 41. This short fucked up stick is all mine.
When I focus on the Part of me that misses my Whitney Houston moments with you, I can feel the heat of my throat bearing the responsibility of managing a tidal wave, a useless levee about to let the water destroy my precariously constructed Grief Palace. I do not want to feel restriction when I look at you lip-syncing that you will always love me. Because that moment is the joy of us. I have so few of those to see. There are not enough recordings of us at the moments when things felt good. These moments reassure me I did not make it all up. If there was ever any advice I could dispense, it would be to record the innocuous things with those you love. Get a minute of video here and there and then put your phone away and stay present with them. I did this as much as I could with you, but it will never be enough when I was supposed to have a lifetime.
I am feeling an integration happen, grief folding into my day to day as I find other ways to fill my time that do not include a screen. I finally have mental capacity to do more than watch tv all day. I read a book and started another. I got my library card so I can save money on buying books I will not read more than once. There are small glimmers of hopefulness floating around me and I feel like I have bandwidth to see them. They are fragile glimmers, iridescent little bubbles floating in the wind and bursting at the softest touch. I told Heather last week I was nervous about experiencing this shift because the last time I looked toward the future, a wave of grief destroyed any sense of stability. I lost myself into a depression I do not like and loathe to welcome back. You death makes me scared to trust Hope. Some days I am pretty sure the destruction of Hope is probably the worst part of your dying. Right now, I make it through every single day attempting to convince myself that Peggy Lee was wrong. This cannot be all there is. So, I catalog the small whispers that do not knock me over. I try to watch the bubbles as they float along the cliff. I need as many of these moments as I can get.
I am operating in a world that is only one day at a time, and more often a few hours at a time. I am struggling to plan for any more than today and maybe tomorrow unless someone else has made the plan for me. Tell me a date and time, and I will be there. My ability to be creative and follow through is limited which makes me a poor social companion. Relationships are two-way streets and there is roadwork on my side. Sometimes I can get around the construction, but most of the time I am stuck in traffic. I feel like I am constantly tricking myself to get things done, something that has been a thread in my entire life, but not in the way it is now. Before you died I ate without thinking about it. Now I eat because it is time to eat. Meals are big factor in how I pass time. I get to lunch and am thankful I made it to halfway through the day. At dinner, I actively have gratitude I can go to sleep soon and pass more of this horrible After without you by sleeping.
All of that said, I am proud of me. I cook myself dinner more than I do not. I remain mostly sober. I pay my bills on time. I ask for help when I cannot pay my bills on time. I attend all of my client sessions and am accountable in my job. I attend weekly supervision to make sure I do not lose sight of my grief as it impacts my clients. I attend weekly therapy. In July, I joined an art therapy group with other therapists once a month. I am starting art therapy biweekly to have more space for someone to witness what I am going through. I stay in contact with my small group of people most days and remain responsive. The level at which I am functioning astounds me and, when I think about it, I feel validated in how exhausted I am. Then I remember I am exhausted of being exhausted. Then I tell someone in the rotation about feeling totally frustrated with my life and completely depressed. Then I watch tv or drink wine and puzzle or have an edible. You died ten months ago and my body still has not repaired from all the ways my brain broke when I found you not breathing on our dining room floor. But I make myself dinner more than I do not. And I started to notice that I do not always think about you dying. At least there is that.
I am overflowing and suffocating. I have felt so stuck, so unable to write. The depression is palpable, the negative bitterness spilling over from what I now see is the deep, crimson and leaded impression of pure rage. I wish I were touching the heat of a brick wall. I could dismantle the structure, feel dirt under my nails and my nails break off as I carved out the chalky and dry mortar to finally throw the bricks. I fantasize about doing this destruction often, of hearing the sound of my Rage as it reverberates off of every horrible, intrusive, and debilitating betrayal I have experienced in my life. It sounds like the heaviest xylophone falling the longest distance. An echo into forever. There is not enough cardio or weightlifting for this. Not enough words. Not enough paint. Not enough weed or alcohol. Not enough walks with Dottie or days by the pool. I am trying to climb the brick wall and the heat is singeing off my flesh, peeling away layers of my hope for the healing here. I can see parts of me stuck to the wall, remnants of my skin left to wither and die unsupported. I go places to get coffee or lunch and wonder: Can everyone here feel my seething? Rage.
Your father wrote a poem about your mother, about his connection to her even since her passing. It was beautiful because your father is a brilliant writer and understands how to articulate longing. I read the poem and, as if reaching through time to put your hand on my shoulder, I felt you. I felt your grief. I felt the way you avoided talking about the loss of your mother. I saw you in her picture and instantly felt every piece of sadness you carried without being able to express it. And I felt your rage. For a vibrant, brief moment, my rage had someone else’s to sit next to. My rage found company. I feel rage thinking about it now. I finally understand this piece of you and you are not here to hold my hand and witness me. You died and I lost my witness. We are two shadows locked in aspects of time some fantasy novel tried to solve before. But love is still not enough in this memoir. I am exhausted having to keep learning this lesson. You died because you drank yourself to death and I cannot write you love poems. The words that come forward are so full of rage. I am scared the Rage will and is changing who I am. It’s like looking at Pandora’s Box and I know I have to open it. What will happen if someone actually sees who I become when I let the Rage come out? Will they still love me? Will I always be the parentified child who is too afraid to trust that people around me can hold all of me? Rage.
I sobbed by the pool as I realized what you must have felt with the loss of your mother. I also sobbed as I simultaneously confronted the jealousy I have of those who can write such poems. I cannot write that poem for you. Not right now. I’m mired in fear that I might never trust anyone again. I am terrified I will be alone forever because not only do I not trust anyone, I do not trust myself. I never have and you did not help me learn how. There is history here. I picked a marriage that failed because the person did not know who they were when they married me. Before that I dated a drug addict in active heroin addiction during our relationship, a fact I did not learn until a decade later. And now you, an addict so steeped in their mental health trauma that you drank yourself to death. You said all the beautiful and correct things I needed to hear so I felt loved and trusted and adored. I wanted to believe your words, but the words of an addict leave an impression and a blank page, disappearing ink. This new version of me is exponentially more skeptical because I did not listen to myself with you. Again. Rage.
I was telling Randy about the Rage, about finding Rage while doing art therapy in my grief support group and about how I feel like I cannot show it to anyone. Randy then told me about the quiet his brain feels since taking an ADHD med. His description of the quiet reminded me of how it was when you started Adderall. It took forever to get the care, but you finally got prescribed last summer after being diagnosed AuDHD. The med made you so clear and you regulated your emotions with ease. You did not drink in secret. There you are, I thought. It felt like I finally had a clear picture of you, of the version of you I created my future with. As I remembered that feeling, I connected to the part of me, the Storyteller, who still feels madly in love with the man I knew was inside you. The man of my dreams. The man who was calm, intelligent, and thoughtful. The man who knew and had pain, but understood how to manage it. Who encouraged me and cheered me on. Who planned their life with me. Who wanted children with me. I feel grateful for this part, for the part of me who reminds me why I stayed. We told a beautiful story together. Until you could not get a renewed prescription because the pharmacies were out of stock. Until you died from the drinking attempting to quiet your overflowing mind. Rage.
If my life were on film, I envision a 5 second clip that shows every warm feeling of us followed by a sprawling image of a deep, dark, cavernous Pit filled with Despair. It’s a horror movie. Aubrey Plaza is right, grief is like trying to navigate The Gorge. How can both versions of us, the good and the bad, exist in my relationship to you? I keep trying to see the depth of the gap, but there is no amount of squinting to make this clearer. I feel crazy when I try to see it all. It is with this thought I remind myself of what I tell clients all the time: “if you’re wondering if you’re crazy, the relationship is probably crazy.” Therapist Me is right.
One year ago, you asked me to marry you. It was a surprise. We had talked about it, but we were going through so much last summer with your Autistic Burnout. That you had gone through the process of securing a ring or that you would ask when you did, shocked me. On July 23, 2024, clients canceled and I had free time. The afternoon was sunny and warm, so I wanted to walk Green Lake. I was trying to walk more, a ritual I return to when I am overwhelmed. And our life had been overwhelming. You were in a cycle we were just beginning to understand, the burn out pattern of sensory overwhelm, meltdown, dissociation, and laying in dark rooms with no sound. We were both so desperate to figure it out. I threw as much resource as I could at it, found the right psychiatrist and a therapist who specialized in Autism. I read and researched everything I could find. It felt like something in your brain was short-circuiting. So, on a suddenly free and beautiful summer afternoon, I wanted to take a walk. I wanted to experience life outside our apartment, outside the space that had become an overwhelmed and depressed representation of yours and my mental health breakdown. And then, on the walk, you asked me to marry you. And I was surprised.
My parts are still confused on how to feel about all of this and they are yelling at me. My brain is in a constant argument about what happened to me. To you. To us.
One Part tells the story of our engagement, of how we talked about getting married, about wanting kids. This Part loves to focus on how at the location of our first date, you told me “I don’t know what the rest of my life holds, but I do know I want it to be with you.” It was so honest, and I felt seen. Everything you said acknowledged an appreciation of what I was navigating while trying to support you. I was excited and proud of how we were learning to balance the complexity of our life together. This Part of me, The Storyteller, was and is so proud to say yes to you. I knew we were figuring it out, that the metaphorical structure of support being built was the right one and would be strong.
And then a different Part of me says firmly and with her whole chest: “But I was not sure.” And then I change directions to the part of our engagement I am embarrassed and ashamed to feel. I focus on the things I knew were wrong with us. I remember how you yelled and called me names during your meltdown the weekend before and then again on Monday. How you threatened to kill yourself. How in the Fall a couple months later, I started finding bottles of vodka. This Part, lets call her Betty, kept tabs on how exhausted and overwhelmed I was, on my depleting and declining mental health. Betty is mad at The Storyteller. Betty is the one who knew I am struggling under the weight of your mental health and that I needed help. That I needed you to get more help. That I was drowning in a problem so massive I did not know how to talk about it. I did not tell my family about most of it. My friends and therapist knew flavors, but not the extent of what we were navigating.
I knew what was happening clinically. These episodes only happened when you were in sensory overload which, I learned, is something that happens to many Autistic folks because their brains go through synaptic pruning at a rate on average 40% less than neurotypical people. What does this mean? Autistic folks feel the world more. Your sensory sensitivity coupled with PTSD from your extensive trauma history caused you to dissociate when having a Meltdown. The pattern was predictable: after running an errand, after tutoring, always in the late afternoon. You would meltdown into a fit of rage before realizing you needed to lay down and go to sleep. In the beginning, I would have to convince you to rest, that maybe it was time to turn the lights out, put ear plugs in, and turn on rain sounds. Eventually you learned to do this for yourself. But there were times, you could not do it at all. The Meltdown was too deep and your body too overwhelmed to manage it. Those times are when you were cruel and I would leave the house with Dottie. We agreed to my doing that. We talked about what to do and created a safety plan verbally we both agreed to. We had a safe word. My leaving signaled you crossed the line and needed to go to bed. And that is always what happened. Within thirty minutes to an hour, I could come home to you asleep. Once asleep, you would sleep until the next day, your body exhausted from the overwhelm. Sometimes you needed two or three days to recover. Then something else would trigger you. This was the pattern all of 2024. But in summer we figured out the Autism of it. And some of the things we tried were working. Progress was being made.
We always talked about it the next day. I would fill you in on the gaps in your timeline. You would apologize and we would dissect what we learned for next time. There was always accountability from you and no two incidents were ever the same. But, I was exhausted. I am still exhausted. Even now, as I am writing this post, I grew tired remembering all of it and took a break. It was and still is so much. And yes, we were stuck in a what many people would quickly label as a Cycle of Abuse. The Storyteller really struggles with this assessment, the idea that what we were doing was unhealthy. That I did not deserve the way I was treated and lied to. That I deserved better. The Storyteller thinks I am smarter than to be in that love story, the one of delusion and harm. Betty is really not sure.
The Storyteller feels like I am betraying you to wonder about it. Because I love you more than I can imagine I ever loved anyone. I saw all of your Parts. All of the ones who were suffering and trying to get a space. The Genius who wanted a witness. The Part who was articulate, witty, intelligent, and charming. All of your Parts wanted more for you. So did All of Mine. We felt like we met because even with things being so hard, we were in that love story. The love story where all our Parts are witnessed and loved without condition, even the ones we felt shame about. The love story where our astrological charts said our souls were supposed to meet. Our Storytellers loved the narrative. I said yes because I believed in you. I believed in me. I believed in us.
Betty: But was the story real? Or were you stuck in a fantasy?
Fuck off, Betty.
I feel betrayed by how much you drank in secret because it led to you hurting me in so many ways. You bailed on healing every time you drank. You stopped being able to even try to get better, started drinking more and in secret. Your Meltdowns got more severe and meaner. When you drank, I felt scared of you and what you would do. It was never physical, but I was scared of what was happening and what could happen. I struggled under the weight of it all and Betty was getting louder. As the result the of cycle we were in, I became this person plagued with self-doubt in a deeper, more extraordinary way. I ping-ponged between Betty and The Storyteller. I could not talk about my doubt because I was so afraid of everyone telling me to leave you. Leaving you felt like giving up on The Storyteller. Whether I trust her or not, The Storyteller is a part of me who wants someone to love her. Who wants happily ever after. When we tell someone to leave their relationship before they are ready, when we tell them we do not approve or that we are disappointed in their choice to stay, we ignore the Part of the person who wants to stay. Who wants everything to be different. Who knows better and is afraid to confront knowing. Who knows it is not working and still loves them. Who is very good at seeing the potential of relationships and people because growing up in a home where conflict makes the body an unsafe place means you spend time dreaming more than you do learning how to love yourself.
One of the hardest parts of grieving you is you are not here to remind me of the Parts that felt good about us. The best part of loving you was feeling seen by you. And you are not here anymore to see me. Instead, I am alone with the experience of us to sort by myself. You are the only one that can answer my questions. Part of me wants to know why you asked to marry me when you did. Betty thinks it was manipulative. But the Storyteller is not sure. It is confusing. You died and our cycle broke. And as horrible as I felt within it, at least I knew what it was. This new place is a vast, empty dark hell. And I hate it here.
I said yes to you because I loved you that much. And if love could be this unique and strong, we could get through anything.
The Storyteller: You can even get through this.
Betty: But I’m taking the reigns for the time being.
I think that is probably the way it is supposed to be, Betty a bit louder than the rest of my parts. And if the gift of us was I get to finally help Betty do that, The Storyteller thinks it was worth it.
A Natalie Observed 