A Natalie Observed

Tag: Suicide

  • Ba-Ba-Ba-Baby Steps

    Yesterday, while at Walk Woof Wag, I checked the time to see it was 11:11am. On the 11-month anniversary of you being declared dead, I looked at the time you were declared. I have screenshot or photographed every single time I see 11:11am since you died. So far, I have been able to capture it 58 times. This means, I just happen to glance the time 58 times at 11:11. Like, what is that? Is my internal clock just oriented to that time? I feel like I must be looking for it. I have an album of the screenshots on my phone. I do not know the purpose of having these moments documented, but something about capturing the experiences where I remember you died feels important to me. The other day it occurred to me that I might not want to do this forever and probably need to identify a time when I stop tracking it. Will it become compulsive? I tend to navigate toward compulsive behaviors, a moth to structured and degenerative frame, but I catch myself doing it. I know the familiar feeling of shame as it leeches and unleashes on my body, causing horses to run inside my chest and wet cement to anchor my intestines. That feeling is when it is time to stop wearing the apple watch, to break the 110-day streak on Peloton, or end the diet. Balance, Natalie. There can be balance.

    I was introduced to a Widow in the wild last weekend. She was near my age and also lost a partner to addiction. I trauma-dumped on her. Four beers, two cocktails, and a dance party later, I had no filter between my mountain of trauma and this woman. She received the energy of my great uncorking as I explained through disorganized, intoxicated, and triggered thoughts, how it felt to tell someone who understood how alone I feel all the time. Drunk me assumed she got it, which I feel embarrassed by now. After many apologies for how drunk I was and my haranguing this poor person who just met me, I hit the point when I drink too much where I know it’s time to go home. I called an Uber and left, a Natalie-Goodbye. I did manage to let people know I was leaving, but then, embarrassed, I could not let anyone walk me out. As I waited for the Uber, I watched a young, confident Latina college-aged student face-plant out of a pedicab. She did not lose her leopard print tube-top dress or scrape her 5” heels. She laughed and popped right back up. A queen in her own right.  I would not have survived going to college here, I thought.

    The next day in my alcohol and emotional hangover, I zoomed in on what it felt like to realize just how alone I feel. I feel alone in my grief all the time and loneliness is this new assaulting aroma in the air. I am not sure if I got so used to loneliness that I could no longer feel it’s suffocating and icy fingers or have I never seen it as clearly before? A jacket of brisk, fall air wafted in through the windows and I sat in what it feels like to be this completely alone in my experience of you dying. Talking to that woman, even as drunk unfiltered me who would never normally open like that without a lot of consent first, shifted my view out to a higher altitude. I got to see from another dimension a glimpse of how alone I am. I feel like I felt for the first time the enormity of my sadness since you died. A drone’s view of the grief palace.

    Now as I write this, I am both sitting in the corner of the sectional and also sitting above me watching warm tears slowly slide down my dehydrated face. I can feel the heat of the tears, so I know I am still here in the room. I jump between both views when I need a break from one or the other. Eleven months after you died, and I still struggle to fully integrate your death with the feelings of absolute despair about it. This lack of integration is so devastating. I am in 16 hours of therapy a month. I pay for it all on a credit card because I cannot afford it, but I do not know how else to help myself. I allocate 4 hours to verbally talking about what happened and continues to happen as I open new layers to my grief. I spend 4 hours in an art therapy group procesing in a collective the experience of grief by making art about it. I have 4 hours (2 sessions for 2 hours) of 1:1 grief art therapy because 4 in the group once a month was not enough. And I am now adding one hour a week of brain spotting to help with the panic attacks and overwhelm in my body. 16 whole hours trying to process what happened when you died and the fact that you are not here anymore. And it is still not enough and I would do more if I could. I do not want to keep jumping from reality to not reality. I am exhausted by it. And I am terrified I will always feel like this.

    And here we are again. We found the trigger thought that prompts me to take deep breaths so I do not have a panic attack. It will not always feel like this, Natalie. I at least have to believe that it will not always feel like this. Or else, I am not really sure why I am doing this at all.

    I am still not sure what to do for the 1-year milestone of your passing. November 8-12 is the horrible period of time from my finding you to you being declared dead on 11/11/24 at 11:11am. Also, October 27th would have been our 5-year anniversary. That is a Monday. At first I wondered if work and my clients would help get me through these anniversaries, but I worried I’d need to cancel everyone and why not just take the time off? I think I need to take off from work. But what do I do with all those days? Do I make plans? Spend money to be distracted? Can I afford to do anything? What does one do for the first anniversary of their partner’s death? What does one do to mark the occasion that started the trauma they are still trying to understand and heal from? Do I go for a hike? Do I drive somewhere for the day? For the weekend? At one point I thought maybe I could visit Seattle, but then I realized the last time I was there was when you died. I had a panic attack as I thought about the fact Seattle is not possible. I miss Seattle so much, but I want Seattle to still be somewhere I love even though you died there. I want it to be the good of us, not the end of us.

    Taking the time off is a loss of income over 4 days in just November, not planning for Thanksgiving and inevitable holiday slowdown. This has been a difficult financial year. I am down 20% to last year in my income and no longer have a two income home. I have to make financial decisions as well as decisions in the best interests of my clients. I know I will need the time off. Taking care of myself is in the best interest of my clients. I think my body deserves the time off. My body is so rigid as it is. My massage therapist kept reminding me to let her move me. Let me take care of you, she kept saying as I stiffly coiled my body in an attempt to hold in all the sadness one can experience in a lifetime. Sometimes I wonder if your sadness transferred into me. Part of me feels like I understand you better, understand the holes in your body where your mom used to live, caverns excavated and quarantined by the trauma of her sudden and unexpected loss. I hope you get to frolic in the sunshine with her now. I hope it is warm there.

    A pet psychic at Walk, Woof, Wag told me Dottie was proud of me. That Dottie was sad you left, but glad she could be there for you. Dottie wants me to get out of the house more, she thinks we’re home too much. I’m trying, Dottie. I promise to keep trying to be better for you. The psychic told me you were there, that you were as surprised by your dying as I am. I do not know how much credence I give to all of this, but I do find comfort from it. I miss you so much. It is so nice, in the most distressing way, to remember that missing you also means I love you. The loving part is coming up more than it used to. Baby steps. (Thank you, Olivia Dean).

  • Is That All There Is?

    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.

    August 26, 2022

  • 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.