*Writing this was therapeutic. The entire reason that I am the way I am today is because of what happened. This is the day that the word vomit began. This is probably the last time I will say most of these things.
And just like that, in what I feel was shorter than the blink of an eye, it’s May again. I probably wouldn’t know this if it weren’t for May the 4th followed by Cinco De Mayo which gave us so many good Taco Baby Yoda memes. As far as I’m concerned, it could still be March. When did March end?
I can’t stop myself from going there. Not now that it’s May and I feel the anxiety slowly coming back. I’ve always sort of measured things by thinking “a year (or two, three years) ago I was doing this”. I’ll even do it in shorter periods, like weeks or months. Three weeks ago I was sick, three months ago none of us knew this shut down was coming. It’s that this doesn’t feel like it’s been a year. This doesn’t even feel like it actually happened. Maybe in some other parallel dimension.
I knew Christopher was a part of me. We moved as one person. Worked together as two halves that made a whole. I guess I didn’t know that he could go away and take my life with him, leaving my hollow body behind. I remember saying, “he took everything” during several fits of hysteria. I meant that he took my life with him when he left. I was physically there still but I was empty.
My mother carried that lifeless shell that was me. She lived for me. She thought for me. Protected me. Gave my brain enough love and devotion to function on a much lower than human level. For months my thoughts had to stay at the third-grade level—eat this, now go here, pick that up, carry it there—or I’d slip back into the darkness. I couldn’t even drive. A person can only take so much. What I couldn’t handle anymore she put on her plate.
“You’re only as happy as your saddest child”
I could feel the physical hole in my stomach. It never went away. No matter what I did it wouldn’t lessen the nausea. I knew the people around me were working so hard to create any form of distraction from the feeling in my gut and emptiness that I felt. Just a moment of relief from the constant agony I so desperately wanted to end.
The problem is, my brain went frantic. The word vomit started. You don’t know what a narcissist is, I do. You don’t know how they think or react, I do. You don’t know the way Christopher is. I do. I had read his diaries, been to counselors, read books, and did endless research. I talked to mental health professionals who knew both of us and one who had seen him have an episode before. I had spent years just watching him be. I knew what had just happened. You didn’t. You couldn’t. I knew something so complicated and tried to explain it to anyone who would listen.
Because how could he not have been planning this? Nobody just does this. To them, I was the person who didn’t see something. How could I not have seen this coming? There was nothing for them to try and understand.
I would explain how my flight for the next day was still booked, how 36 hours prior he was doing some organizing to make room for HIS things in OUR bathroom. I explained we had just discussed sleeping arrangements for the upcoming weekend in Tampa and how much he loved the dresses I had gotten for the baptism and our birthday dinner. How we had been planning our themed birthday party for months and he had just watched me start putting up decorations.
I would explain all of that and a switch would flip. Whoever I was word vomiting on was now slightly confused. Because nobody does that. Nobody just leaves and takes everything. Nobody hurts someone they absolutely loved like that with so much intention. Nobody sends their other half a text that says “I moved out while you were at work” and then turns off their phone. He does. He did. And he took Sandy with him.
***IF you were actually planning to leave someone like this, you would PROBABLY disconnect your Credit Cards from their Amazon and other accounts BEFORE leaving...I guess cruelty and common sense don’t mesh well.***
Trauma. It even hurt when I slept. When was the last time you were able to control your dreams? Because in my dreams, my reasons for being were still with me and everything was okay. Dreams feel so real. I’d wake up confused and then feel that loss all over again. That is when I actually was able to fall asleep. I had never ever before experienced insomnia. It’s hell. Eventually, I was given Ativan and Ambien to knock me out at night. You can’t heal if you’re sleep-deprived and suffering from malnutrition. You can’t sleep if you’re brain is manic.
If I was awake, I was in pain. If I was sleeping, I’d dream about something that would hit me with a serious blow when I woke up. There is no winning in heartbreak.
You know how people do things on Ambien that they never remember? Just weeks before this, in an episode of Big Little Lies, Nicole Kidman’s character had driven and crashed her car and was supposedly on Ambien. It’s a real thing.
Was I about to commit a crime they couldn’t even charge me with? Blame the Ambien.
That didn’t happen though. You know when your doctor tells you not to drink with a certain prescription and you think, “a glass of wine won’t hurt”? Let me swear to you, as someone who is no stranger to some drugs but has never ever, ever taken a hallucinogen, alcohol is not something you want to mix with a medication like Ambien. Read that last bit again.
It was only one time. I wasn’t really “drinking” but I must’ve had a few sips of something that soaked right through my empty stomach (and I had been a lightweight before I was down to 117lbs). That night, Sandy was scratching the bedroom door to come in, like she always did if the door happened to be shut and she wanted in or out. A sound I wouldn’t ever mistake. After we put the bookshelf next to the bed it was nearly impossible to reach the door handle while laying down. I got up, actually got out of my bed, and opened the door. She wasn’t there. I was confused because I knew she had just been right outside. I had clearly heard her. This is a sound I was used to hearing multiple times a day.
You already know where this is going. She wasn’t scratching to get into our room. She wasn’t even in the apartment. I had hallucinated it. Once I came to and realized that’s what was happening (I don’t really know the term for leaving a hallucination), I lost it. And that was the last time I’d take a sleeping pill if I had so much as smelled anything alcoholic. I would rather be tortured than think I’m somewhere I wasn’t hearing something I hadn’t.
I think the thing with PTSD is that your emotions at that moment become photographic as well as your thoughts. I hardly remember getting out of my car or getting through the back gate or getting up to the door and unlocking it. But I remember which foot I stepped into the kitchen with first. How my head immediately turned to see the empty closet. I can still see it, feel the shock, put myself right back in that moment. After that pit in my stomach hit, it gets a little blurry. I remember a phone call to his dad. The empty living room and being on my knees. Our bedroom looked like a bomb went off with my clothes all over the floor. I can’t feel those moments anymore but I can go right back to opening the door and getting slammed by a wave of shock.
If you told me a year ago that today my life would like this, I would’ve laughed in your face. But you all got me through. You and the pills.
Deep breaths and baby steps.
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