A Natalie Observed

Tag: overdose

  • This Post Talks About Abuse

    We were kissing and I felt Jeffrey’s skin on my skin. I felt the bumpy texture of his freckles and moles, the braille of his scars along his hips and back. I felt what it felt like to feel completely present in my body next to him, to learn what it felt like to not be concerned about what was happening and escape my constant, fluttering uneasiness. Then Jeffrey starkly got up and left me on the sofa in a manner that shifted presence into worry. The energy moved and I did not see when or how. Jeffrey stomped into the bedroom belligerent, bumping into walls like a bowling ball against bumpers down the hallway. I could both see and hear Jeffrey rifling for a change of clothes while still sitting on the sofa. I could hear him foraging from his closet to the space under the dresser. Jeffrey was looking for the cane he made with his father, the one with wood he picked for the handle because he liked the chatoyance. I found myself in the doorway of the room where my office was in the apartment we shared. I did not walk there, so how was I there? I gave Jeffrey space as to not overwhelm him more than he clearly was. I asked what he was doing, why he was leaving. “Why don’t you come sit with me and we will have some quiet time? Or take a nap?” I said all the things I knew to say that might interrupt what was happening and, in his loudest and most abrasive octave, he yelled as he shoved his feet antagonistically into the Nike shoes I bought him, “Y’never unnerstand anythin’… you don’t, you just… you never do. Are you… are you an idiot??!” As he spoke, I noticed my whole body was solid, my torso bracing for whatever could happen next. It was never physical, but I was never sure. Psychosis meant we were not in the same room at the same time. A more fucked up Inception but no one knows the plot or who is stealing our dreams.

    Jeffrey threw open our front door and slammed it shut behind him. I heard his key stumble to find the lock followed by the hall door clatter shut behind him. I started to wonder about what to do next. Do I follow him? Does he have his phone? It is not my job to babysit him, but is he safe in this headspace to be out in the world? What does this mean? What if he gets hurt or someone hurts him? What state will he be in when he gets back? Will he be drunk? Would he come back still angry at the ghosts in his soul? I sat on the sofa again.

    Just as I felt the texture of the woven, olive-green material, I woke up. It was 1:29am. “I am in Chico,” I thought, “I have to wake up for therapy in Sacramento soon. Jeffrey is dead.” I slept a few more hours, dreamless. My alarm went off at 5am and I got ready to take Dottie and me to therapy in Sacramento. I go to therapy in person whenever I can. It is a 90-minute drive and the time in the car is helpful for the unwinding I need to do after I process my new hellscape I still struggle to logic. And now I have this super-fun trauma dream to discuss on top of feeling overwhelmed by people wanting me to feel hopeful again, and the one-year anniversary of moving to Chico.

    I told my therapist that I felt my body remember what it felt like to be there in the seconds after Jeffrey left. I felt the relief of his energy not being in the room, that he could not yell at me or get injured while I watched him refuse help. I explained the absolute dread about what would happen when he came back. I have rarely dreamt of Jeffrey since he died. Only two other times. Once, right after he died, I dreamt about a bike ride we planned together and I woke up in a panic attack because I missed him. The second time was the first night in the hotel room when we moved me from Seattle. I dreamt Jeffrey was angry at me for not saving all of his things. I woke up in a panic attack I hid from my parents who slept in the same room. And now this. A dream that encapsulated what feels so confusing about grieving him.

    In psychosis, Jeffrey blamed everyone else for the miswiring in his body, his brain, and his soul. I always knew the words spewed at me, laced with the venom of a lifetime of self-loathing, were not about me. It always felt like what he yelled at me he was yelling at himself. I always knew and still know it was not my fault.

    I told myself over and over again he could not help it. He was not in his grounded mind to have any agency in what was taking place. He almost never remembered what happened or how. He always apologized and we always made plans for what to do next time. I explained to my therapist I feel like I still do not understand about what was happening between us. And she softly, gently asked me the thing: “What if he was mentally ill, could not help it, loved you, AND was abusive?” Something in my body relaxed when she said it. What if all of these things are true at the same time and I do not have to know which one is right? What if?

    I feel embarrassed I let this happen to me. I feel deep shame. I taught clients about abusive relationships while entrenched in my own. A hypocrite defined. I know all the things to say to myself to help complicate my own judgement. Abuse happens to everyone and does not discriminate. You had unmet needs that were fulfilled in your relationship with Jeffrey and it is okay to have filled them. He really did try to do better for you. He really did love you. This is not your fault. You are still a good person. But none of these things change what is true. I both loved Jeffrey and was abused by him.

    I feel like a traitor when I talk about the shadowy parts of us. How do I grieve someone I loved so deeply and who hurt me this much? I have asked myself this question every day for fifteen months. Because today is fifteen months since Jeffrey died. I told my therapist I wish I could ask Jeffrey what he thought about us. I wish I could know how he thinks of it now that his soul is theoretically unburdened by everything Jeffrey navigated while he was alive. Would he see it the way I do now? The way I did then? Does he feel bad about it? Does he feel like I betrayed him by talking about it with people? Am I betraying him by writing about it?  Part of me still misses the part of our cycle that reassured me we were still on the same side of something. It was us against his mental illness, right? The thing we did the next morning after he rested and was himself again, when I got to tell him how his behavior hurt me brought us together. He listened, validated, and apologized. That is the thing about abusive cycles: the two people in the cycle are often the only two people who know about it. Our pattern of Jeffrey exploding and then reconciliation afterward allowed both of us to foolishly believed we solved it after every incident, but we never did. It never stopped, even the week he died. It is as they say: you cannot see the forest through the trees when the trees are all falling on you. I have yet to meet anyone who can.  

    Today, I talked a client through how normal it is to know someone does not intend to hurt them, but to be hurt by them. How normal it is to not know how to make sense of what is abusive behavior by someone they love and care for. I reassured my client of the thing I always needed to hear: I was not crazy. It was real. I asked them a version of what my therapist asked me: what if they do not mean to hurt you, and it still hurts?

    The burden of knowing exactly what to say to people because I have also heard these things is heavy.

    I hope I win the lottery soon.

  • Initiation

    Yesterday, I was vibrating. I woke up vibrating and took Dottie to hike further up Upper Trail than I have before. 1.5 hours up before turning around when I realized my body needed to take a break. Dottie did not want any water and my quads clenched with each step, a reminder of the tremendous pain in the muscles of my hips. Despite accomplishment of the distance, I got home and was still vibrating. It was not enough to relieve whatever was happening.

    The energy in my body was unfocused, exhausted, and mired in the Grief that is living in my hips. I spent an hour after this hike attempting to pick something to watch but could not identify my mood to select something. I started cleaning my coffee table which led to unloading the dishwasher when I got up to fill my water bottle and then I looked at the cake I made in the fridge before remembering I had laundry in the dryer and when I put away a towel I remembered I needed to shower followed by “oh yeah, the coffee table project” and then trying to pick something out to watch while I clean because I could not find something to listen to. I hiked this morning to help my brain with this frenetic lack of focus but still had it afterwards. It is times like this I wonder about ADHD, but I know I do not have it.

    This lack of focus is from the energy of the Grief living in my hips. It has been here all month. I cycled less this month than any month this past year because my hips are yelling at me, screaming that I am not doing enough, that I am drowning. I am in hip pain because I am in soul pain. Francis Weller talks about trauma as a rough initiation of the soul onto its new path. I love the way this idea relieves my body of the responsibility I feel to “get better”. I do not want Yoga that is a “work out” because the body should be “worked with”. Grief is the same. I let it wander into the space whenever it needs to because that is what my body needs. I cannot force that timeline because I cannot rush an injury into healing. I tend to it, witness it, create community with it, and invite Grief to sit alongside me until such time my body needs to sit inside of Grief, to sit in the presence of it’s altar. I am still learning how to surrender to the idea that, despite everything I learn, I will never be the master here. The Grief Palace has more detail than ever before and yet I know I will never know everything about it. Mine is to accept the invitation to keep learning, to learn the art of working with.

    I stretched before and after hiking. The pain in my hips lessened with each inhale and exhale as my muscles lengthened and released the acid they held onto. With every step during the hike, I imagined the wince of the muscles in my hips as they held their breath pulling other areas of my back and legs closer to them. The hike was good for them ultimately; they hurt less afterwards than they did when I woke up. But the hike did not help the feeling of vibration in my body. I started writing to harness it somewhere. Here we are.

    Last Saturday, after several days off from riding the Peloton because my hips scream when I am on it, I woke up with a goal of being lazy and watching a show. While scrolling to find something, I stumbled on the second season of Drops of God. I had no idea AppleTV was making more of this show that so beautifully explains everything I will never remember about wine. “I wonder what Jeffrey would think of there being a second season.” As soon as I thought it, I started sobbing. I immediately felt resistance to the sadness that overcame me. I did not want to feel Grief and I felt resentful of it’s intrusion. I did not want to remember how painful Longing is. I wanted to numb this feeling, but could not. I did a 30-minute stretch to see if my hips were in any shape to ride the Peloton. They were without any pain for the first time in a week and I did an hour-long ride. I knew I should take it easy, but I did not because I was vibrating and avoiding. Something had to happen to release this energy. After the ride, I was still in it, in the energy of the Grief, so I stretched another thirty minutes. I took a bath with lavender bath salts to ensure my muscles could get the relief they needed and to force stillness.

    After the bath, I still could not focus and decided to reorganize my entire kitchen. Mom and Phil gifted me the Franciscan Desert Rose dishes Grammy had given to mom after my parent’s divorce. I wanted to put them away in an effort to keep the apartment tidy as I have managed to do. Putting them away gave me reason to solve a problem I had not had time to solve until now: I kept reaching for coffee cups in the wrong cupboard. Yesterday marked 365 days in this apartment, one whole year in Chico, and things are eerily the exact same as when I moved in. A shrine to where I was one year ago, to the absolute shock my body was in. It strikes me I went 357 days reaching for coffee cups in the wrong place before fixing it. After completing two rounds of dishes in the dishwasher, removing everything from every cupboard, cleaning the cupboards and putting everything away in new homes, I took Dottie to the dog park. I was still vibrating and avoiding which meant I needed to keep my body moving. Dottie and I spent almost an hour amused by a hot pink tennis ball. The sun started to dip behind the buildings. “Finally”, I thought, “I can go home.” I made myself a Hello Fresh dinner and went to bed by 8pm. I made it through one day of avoiding grief. I avoided Grief because I knew I had Grief Art Therapy Group on Sunday. I would confront feeling the Longing for Jeffrey tomorrow.

    I am realizing as I write this that I feel a need to nest in this apartment. I want to finalize decorating, get organized, and feel visually less cluttered. I am getting rid of clothing and sorting the medicine cabinet. I am staying busy with tasks that help me feel anything but how I feel about losing Jeffrey. To function right now still takes a level of dissociation that is harder for me to do when sober. I am keeping up with cleaning tasks, completing longer workouts, taking Dottie for more frequent long walks, more stretching, more meditating, more getting work tasks done on time, more clients, more professional training. I am absolutely more productive which does feel better for me. A month without THC has given me a baseline for where anxiety is in my life, for how I function alongside Anxiety. Alongside Grief.

    I still feel the least Anxious I have ever been in my life. And the most confident. I know exactly what my body is doing, thinking, and saying. I listen to her well. My hips hurt because I am grieving. I am moving my body differently trying to manage the distress of Jeffrey’s loss and my hips are hurting. My hips hurt the same way they did the weeks after he died. My body is still healing. One year ago, I spent my first night in the apartment I moved to from Seattle because Jeffrey died from an alcohol related heart-attack. I was traumatized to the point of moving to another state within two months of his death. My life changed so much and so quickly. I am one year in Chico because Jeffrey died. When processing the enormity of trauma, I tell clients that you cannot put the universe in a box. The task itself is impossible. I have to sit here and try to sit amidst the universe, amidst the fall out of Jeffrey dying. I have to sit, experience, and witness the process of my initiation.

    I do not recognize the person I was only one year ago which is a new layer to the Grief. In the Grief Art Therapy Group, I brought in the creamer dish from the Desert Rose dishes as my offering and intention for our suggested theme: New Beginnings. The sugar bowl and creamer dish are original to the first batch of dishes hand-painted in California in the 1940s. Grammy gave the set to mom when mom moved out from Grammy’s. Mom was living somewhere as an adult without a partner for the first time in her 30s. Grammy collected dishes with the gusto of a hoarder and the taste of someone well beyond her station. I set the creamer dish on the altar and explained the origin of the set, that they are now in my cupboard at my first apartment after Jeffrey died. Threads of my life weave together, generation to generation, creating something ornate, intentional, familiar, yet foreign. It is beautiful even in all the despair.

    For two hours, I painted the roses on those dishes. I meticulously layered acrylic paint, mixing and remixing the colors to get the hue of pinks as close as I could to the original design. As I added leaves, sparks fired somewhere deep in the core. I wondered about why I was painting these remnants of a past no longer familiar to me. They are absent of all the pain that has led me to this moment. Tears formed in my eyes as I found magazine photos that cultivate the feeling of loneliness. I finalized the image by writing words associated with anger and rage in black marker, the words violently overlapping and obscuring what used to exist in simple ignorance beneath them. I am the picture of the roses violated and disfigured and marred by Grief. This is who I am now. I am a woman who touched time, whose hips hurt when grief gets stuck in her body. I am a woman who has the energy to nest into this next phase of learning. I am doing a good job of surviving. Even when vibrating, I am enough.

    I woke up this morning, and my hips are no longer hurting. I do not know if it was the hours spent in the park, the stretching before and after, the heated blanket while writing, or the writing itself, but somewhere in this distracted grasping for anchor, in the living alongside Grief, I found relief. This story is still in process.  

  • Unattractive Gray Box

    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.

  • A Wishing Flower

    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.

  • 11:11

    11:11

    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.

  • Orange Sky

    Yesterday, I found a poem you wrote me while deleting random notes on my phone. You wrote the poem on September 30, 2024, a month before you died. I had not read it in a while and I started crying. Then I had to work and put away my feelings for everyone else.

    Mornings
    The sky blushes softly, the night fades away,
    As dawn breaks the silence with whispers of day.
    Golden hues scatter, the twilight’s unspun,
    The world stirs in awe at the rise of the sun.

    Birdsong floats on a breeze through the trees,
    Carrying secrets found flitting o’er soft morning seas.
    Each leaf seems to tremble with joy at the sight,
    Light spilling forth, golden, pure, and bright.

    There’s dew on the grass, tiny diamonds alight,
    Each moment a wonder, each second delight.
    In the stillness, the future reaches out with the sun
    Every dawn a promise of a day with you begun.

    Last night, while Alexi Murdoch sang to me about an orange sky, I remembered what it felt like to be absolutely enamored with you. The first chord strummed on the acoustic guitar, and I froze in place, closing my eyes to limit sensory input. I felt my breathing slow, and my stomach relax as joy filled my center, the feeling of warm chocolate chip cookies. I tried to hold my attention there, on the feeling of utter relief. My body is exhausted trying to hold me together, a rigid container bursting, a small aquarium for an orca. I tried to keep my attention on the sensation of buoyancy in the ocean. I felt like I feel in those moments of serenity when I finally notice I am drifting to sleep.

    I managed to stay there for the first in your love before I started sobbing and hyperventilating. The impression of you so close to me feels like every shiver in every horror film. Am I cold or is this you? I touched the feeling of your warmth and was slapped by how far I have fallen from it. My body cannot hold both realities without panic. It is almost a year, and I still cannot hold the pain of your dying alongside how much I love you. Realizing I still cannot hold both caused me to panic and hyperventilate more. I stood up to splash water on my face and fill my water bottle. As I walked back to my bed, I realized this panic attack is because my whole body remembered what it feels like to lose you, that, if I could have felt it all, this is how I would have reacted to finding you on my floor. I split in two when you died and have not yet integrated the halves back together.  

    Tonight, I was reading what I wrote above and realized that I was able to stay in the feeling of loving you for thirty seconds before panic took over. Given I could not feel how much I love you at all 363 days ago, thirty seconds feels like a big accomplishment. Shifts are happening after all.

  • Manifesting

    Tonight, while walking Dottie, I remembered the sensation when the air felt like the exact temperature of my skin that I wrote about last entry. This feeling is how I imagine the feeling of “total neutrality” to feel. It is so comforting. The air is thick, giving slightest awareness of a density as I breath it. The sky is a dull, faded blue except the emboldened neon and citrus sunset magnified by a layer of smoke from a fire in another county. If I think about the smoke layer, I feel claustrophobic. What if we suffocate? I began to go down that rabbit hole and quickly distracted myself by encouraging Dottie to follow me inside. She followed and got a treat. We’ve made progress.

    I had a wonderful day. I felt joy. I woke up in a good mood and felt accomplished in my workout. I added dumbbells to my fitness routine and while I cannot complete all exercises or use the recommended weights they do, I am at least committing to trying the whole time. And I’m learning the form.

    I met with a woman who invited me to join a grief support art therapy group just for therapists! You guys! This is the best and most exciting thing I can think of happening to me right now! I am so thrilled to finally have a space with other people who know Grief, will have the skills to hold mine AND create art about it. I felt so seen and understood. Is this what hope feels like?

    I felt really “on” with my clients. I cannot explain what went well or what happened because my job is private. I did collaborate with another therapist on a shared client. We aligned on our conceptualization of the case and that felt really good. In summary, I can see the impact I have on clients and the feedback I am receiving is positive. In a job with a constant evaluation of what did or did not go well and what to do next and questions about whether I am thinking of everything I should be and how do I know what to do next and who can help me figure out that new thing I do not know and did I do everything I can to keep everyone as safe and alive as I know how to… getting confirmation that your clients see change and are accomplishing their goals is such a gift. I do not take it for granted.  

    I helped my friends navigate a problem that I could help them with because of my training. And that felt really, really good. I think the thing I am realizing is that I am growing more confident in my skillset. I still do not know and will never know everything. But I am learning to trust my thinking. The quieting of my skeptical analyst is really, really peaceful. Anxiety is a little bitch – to all of those constantly questioning, I see you.

    I got myself a television for the bedroom so I can fall asleep to a tv and not to my iPad in the bed. This is a privileged, first-world luxury. I feel ridiculous for how much absolute joy it brought me to lay on my bed and feel what it’s like to lay on my back facing forward instead of on my side. What a fucking gift.

    My 37th birthday is tomorrow, and I have been dreading it. My birthday is the 8 month anniversary since they declared you dead, since we said they could take your organs. That is what you wanted. Every first event without you is so painful. I have been stuck in the terrible fear that I would feel too sad to actually enjoy celebrating a day where I am reminded in so many layers that you are not here anymore. I am still terrified I will get stuck in this pain, that I will have to surrender to it, that I will not get to celebrate. This is the PTSD. The fear of never having joy again. That’s why today felt so special. The fear was largely absent.

    Finally, while watching Love Island, I felt a feeling that immediately reminded me of what it felt like to have you sitting next to me, hand in my hand as we watched a show together. I could feel the weight of your body sitting next to mine, the warmth and bumpiness of your dry skin. The starchy nature of the button-up shirt you were wearing. I felt what it felt like when you smiled at me or when I caught you watching me. That feeling of pure admiration I loved and love so much, the admiration I felt directly back. I recognized the feeling and started sobbing in a longing that could not be contained or silent. Dottie tried to lick my face out of crying, but I pushed her off me. I wanted to stay in that feeling of loss. It felt so deep within me, a cavern I had not seen before. I tried to look, to follow it down. How far does it go? If I keep following the pathway, will I fall in? Can I get back? What if I suffocate? 

    Dottie jumped back up as I started to hyperventilate. This time I let her. I kept sobbing as her paws lay on my chest, petting her so she would get reassurance that I was okay. Stroking her gives me a version of a right-to-left brain connection. Pet EMDR.

    As my body relaxed and sobs slowed, I felt a wave of relief. Or was that serotonin rebalancing? Regardless, a connection was made between the feeling of relief and the feeling of how sad I am that I lost you. Feeling the despair, looking down the cavern, also allowed me to feel you. It was incredible and intoxicating. I feel bewildered by it. I am a cliché as I quite literally wonder how love could also feel like this.

    Can my birthday be that terrible when this is is my mind the night before?

    She manifests that it is not.  

  • Yet.

    I do not want to write still. I am depressed. Trying to maintain any sort of existence feels heavy and burdensome. I know writing, finding time to reflect on what I am going through, is the right thing to do. It would help me navigate this. But I am struggling to want to sit and touch what this feels like. I want it to go away, for the weighted blanket to dissolve into wispy, floaty air. The weather is warmer lately, high sixties, seventies and a hint of eighties. We are all shedding layers to allow our skin to absorb the warmth of the sun between wafts of the cool breeze. Spring and Autumn are when the residents of Sacramento Valley take advantage of pleasurable heat. Heat that you plant and harvest your gardens in. Heat that allows families to gather for brisket on the barrel in the backyard. Heat mostly absent from wildfire unless it is not. Not the heat of July and August, the heat that brings children out to experiment with cooking eggs on cement or a brownie in a coffee mug. And yet, with the warmth happening now, I do not feel the recharging of the sun. I feel rigidity in my entire body as I try to carry myself through every day without having a complete mental breakdown. I am tired. I am sleeping more. I do not feel creative. I am struggling to win the “why am I doing this?” battle. I am depressed.

    I cannot even recount with significant detail the number of events this past week that contributed to my inward spiral. I am not sure if it is the fact you were honored by Washington State for your organ donation and I was not there. If it was the Seattle apartment charging me $5,131.67 for breaking our lease because you died and I could not live there anymore? Or was it the lingering reality that this was not where I thought I would be in my life? Or it is very high odds I will not have a family the way I thought I would? Or is it that today marks five months without you?

    I miss you terribly and every single thing that happens in my life, good or bad, reminds me that you are not here. How do I capture that feeling? The weight of loss. The layers of this grief, a grief that has lived in my body for so many years before you died and has decided now is the time for me to deal with it. I am somewhere between concrete and the soil. How do you write about that? How do you explain it to people? I spend my days thinking about it, telling myself to write it down so I can work it out, but then ultimately not being able to do anything. To write about what is happening, is to confront losing you. And it still feels impossible to comprehend.

    Thinking about how to talk about this horrible, excruciating feeling makes my heart rate jump 128 beats per minute and gives me a stomachache. It makes being in my body feel dreadful. I started working out every day because I need to feel anything else in my body. I need to feel it do something else but feel this pain. It is the closest I think I have ever understood what you talked about when you described missing riding your bike before your spinal injury. It feels like a sadistic takeover that makes my clothes seem inside out and full of static. This feeling, the feeling of Anguish, is foreign. I hope no one ever has to feel it like this. If I could devise a world without it, right now I would. It certainly is not worth it. 

    Part of me, somewhere deep, deep down inside, chimes in when I get to this place, when I get to the place where it certainly is not worth it. This Part chimes in with a small, barely audible “yet”. Then, without hesitation, I restate the phrase with yet added in. “It certainly is not worth it… yet.”. I do not know what that Part is or how I got so lucky to have her. I am definitely waking up and going through this for her. She needs me to see what “yet” is. I am very anxious to know.