Rabbit Write

A story of hope  and strength to those who feel there is none. Keep fighting!

Two years ago this month marks the murder of a family member. “M” was incredibly bright and pretty with honey-blonde hair and huge glittering brown eyes. She was a few years older than me and my idol during childhood. I don’t know her whole story but I do have pieces. M had trouble with drugs, alcohol and also school; she’d done her first line at age 13, with her Father. I once received an e-mail that had gone around town, linking to M’s porn site, and when I heard she had became a stripper, my first thought was, “she would be able to pull of lucite platforms.”  Knowing M, I am pretty sure she was bi-polar but I’m not sure if she was ever treated or even diagnosed. In the few years before her death, M became a mother to a baby girl. From the outside it looked like she was beginning to clean up her act, yet clearly struggling to do so.

When someone dies, this part of the story is hidden. True to the words whispered at her funeral, M was a brilliant woman, truly full of life… but tragedy was inflicted upon her from a very young age. The Christian idea of death, I think, centers on the fear of dying. The idea of heaven reflects this and more directly, the fear of hell and Satan. According to Christianity, I don’t think M fit into the heaven-bound mold. But with angel wings tattooed on her back and a large black cross on her arm, M was a Christian herself, alleviating some of those fears at her Christian funeral.  When I look at M’s life I don’t see sin, or sin forgiven, I see a bright young child damaged by the fucked up and abusive adults around her.

Before M’s death I’d received multiple calls and the story unfolded: M had been badly beaten by her significant other/father of their daughter. She was hospitalized and they weren’t sure that she was going to make it. At the time my own life was falling apart around me. I was in between apartments and crashing for a month with a friend. Since this friend had moved into the apartment, she had just never picked up after herself: mud streaked mail stuck to the floor, dishes and food in the couch cushions and random trash in the bookshelves. I was aware of how gross it was and shocked that one could create a mess of that caliber, but I lived in it and it felt almost normal, strangely comfortable. I filled the extra bedroom with the boxes of my belongings and with no space left slept on a mattress on the dirty kitchen floor.

The next couple days passed as I tried not to think about M. Then I got the call,  M had died, the funeral would be in a week.  I curled up on the crumb covered couch,  sobbing and unable to move.

I returned home for the funeral. Upon my arrival my Mother informed me that before her death M had been dating “J”, my long-term on-again/off-again boyfriend. “She was in love with him” my Mother said coldly. This hurt, but all I remember thinking is that their match somehow made sense. Like M, he was also something of a bright light. J was incredibly likable, he was smart and could play virtually any instrument he picked up. He appeared passionate, his robust spirit sucking everyone around him into his whirlwind. Additionally, he was verbally and physically abusive, and he always seemed to have an endless supply of pills and blow. In our relationship my position was distant, unavailable, calculating and manipulative. It was a perfect storm, our every move seemed to touch on some old and deep wounds in the other. No matter how painful or scary it got we couldn’t quit each other.

The days  passed in a fog of attacks from my Mother, drinking, pills and renewed vows of love and fights with J. I dissociated through most of the funeral. I don’t remember much that was said, just pieces of prayers and promises of M being in a better place and mystic babble about the universe and stars from my Mother. My mind stayed clouded. I had once been sharp and young, telling my Mother I knew there was no God. But in this mess of my life I had begun to lose myself, unsure where I stood, unsure how to swallow what lay before me.

A week later I was back in the city. I was on the bus when my phone rang displaying a number from my home-town. I picked up to the crackling voice of an old woman. She told me she had seen me at M’s funeral. “Something bad is going to happen to you” she croaked. She went on to say that I needed saving and began reading bible excerpts. My mother had apparently given her my phone number after she called explaining that I needed saving. I hung up, shaken and scared, feeling attacked.

I had actually already decided to save myself. Like M, my life was also set on a tragic path. I was corroded with drugs, alcohol, an eating disorder, compulsive sex and abusive relationships. I had vowed to break this cycle, to live. I was slowly learning to love myself, trying to find and hold onto the bright light within.

A few weeks later J showed up in the city. He had new tattoos, twin butterflies on his inner arm… they were supposed to be us, he said. He too, it seems had decided to change something. He was going to get out of the small town and move to the city, go to school. He wanted to be with me. The visit was tumultuous, I wanted to help him but I began to fear that being with him might literally be the death of me.

Weeks passed, J had enrolled in school and was living in a tiny apartment next to the John Hancock building. It took all the strength I had when I broke from that relationship.  He didn’t take it well, threatening that when I closed the door to his apartment he would jump out the 12th story window. We had been together so long that he felt almost like a part of me, and I wanted to take care of him too.  But I needed to take care of me, I knew recovery…or life could not happen if  J and I were together.

That low I felt on the crumb-covered couch became my lowest. I had spent my whole life walking around in a haze of depression, uneasiness and escapism. I thought I was fine, happy enough. But at the heart of me something tugged and I finally listened. I devoted myself to understanding what had happened to me, to living and growing on a day-to-day basis. I began to feel free for the first time.  I held onto hope and I slowly began to wake up from my life, able to see.

A year later I received a frantic phone call from my Mother. J had died. He was in the city, he had gone out, gotten wasted and went home with a couple to afterparty. He had vomited in his sleep and asphyxiated.

I mourned his death privately, with anger, depression and ultimately with  acceptance. I decided to not go home for the funeral.  I felt it would do more harm than help. My mind no longer felt foggy. I knew that J was gone and that there was no afterlife, his bright light had been blown out and that is all there was. Having re-claimed myself as a strong atheist in the last year I found it really helped me understand his death and survive. With atheism, there is no stress of wondering if you will see that person again, waiting for that. I think there is less denial and less bargaining. Atheism meets death with reason and reality.

Another metamorphosis happened here too. After J’s death everything in my life became ultra clear. I could see how much I had changed in the past year, I was so grateful to myself for beginning to change and for having enough love for myself to do it. Life had flourished within me in the last year. I had begun to truly know happiness and love and had began to heal all of the broken parts within me.

J’s death accelerated these changes. It became apparent in which areas of my life I remained imprisoned. I had gotten better, but some of my relationships with family and friends were negative, abusive and preventing me from further growth. I made serious commitments to healing, growing and working through my past to begin to create the future I knew I deserved. I had seen how brief and beautiful life is and decided to claim mine, to survive. Telling this story is hard and painful for me. I feel vulnerable and even with therapy and self-work under my belt it is hard to connect to my past self and realize that girl on the couch was really me. I am doing everything I can to make a virtuous and beautiful life for myself, my husband and future family. Becoming truly happy and loving yourself makes life all the more precious, I know that we will not live forever and when we die we are gone, but I have decided to make my time here mine, and use to it build the most full and free life I can.

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