2 MUCH THINK 2 SLEEP

… and I know nothing?

Well that’s a horribly vague start.

The pandemic was isolating in a lot of ways. For me, this included retreating from social media nearly entirely.
The arguments, and polarizing of individuals, that seemed to throw rationality out the window instead of having meaningful conversations about what should just be good community health was just sending me down a rabbit hole.

I mean, as that run-on sentence may suggest – it was a clusterfuck in my brain.

I haven’t maintained any close relationships with *anyone* from high school I realize, and now I wasn’t even been getting snippets and snapshots through social media glimpses one or two contacts removed.

“Oh, that Person is around and doing this because they were there with So and So!”

Nope, none of that.

Well, So and So is doing alright, they just posted in Facebook.

There’s a celebration of life for that Person.

I think I have a weird relationship with death…

There were many deaths that impacted me starting at an early age, with a cousin’s suicide, then a classmate suicide, an uncle’s young death related to alcohol abuse, another high school suicide – this time the sibling of a classmate who was basically bullied to death via homophobic bullshit.

And also the confusing absence of death sometimes – as in the case of my other Uncle’s resilience and survival despite chronic polysubstance use over maaaaany years including hard opiates.
And that’s just when I got to know him, and by that point in time he was already the youngest sibling who had been told he was a mistake, and experienced some of the worst abuse out of his brothers, and also had an acquired traumatic brain injury.
(he continues to surprise by outliving siblings who were somewhat less on the risky behaviour spectrum…)
How was he leading this dance with death and not the other way around?

Then of course, there was the amount of time I spent ideating about my own death during my youth…

Moving into a career involving frontline work in a helping field, well – that’s not exactly a move further away from relationships that have a higher mortality rate.
I wish it wasn’t true – but I don’t have control over that.
If your job overlaps with communities experiencing various high risk *things* (substance use, homelessness, insecure housing, violence, exploitation, racism, systemic injustices, and plenty more) – there’s a good chance you may see more death than folks that do not interact with those systems with any regularity.

In my lived experience and professional experience, I have had the privilege to get to know so many amazing people who died under the age of 30. I cherish that I got to know these wonderful people, and hopefully we had respectful relationships, and they all deserved more than they got. I really do cherish their memories, and try to remember the lessons they taught me.

So I’ve normalized death to a certain degree – but most of the deaths since high school were either family, or profession related.

Ones like this Person, they’re weird… because they’re few and scattered on the spectrum of processing death that doesn’t feel near either of those groupings – of family or relationships related my professional role.

So, I reach into my memory, and I can pull images of this Person!
Holy shit!
They look so different!

Looked so different…

Wow, we were such kids back then… I remember braces, and damn we were both so fucking skinny… that didn’t last lol, although it looks like he stayed a bit more fit than me.

Damn, I’m only 38…

Fuck, he was only 38.

So what was our relationship…? I mean, I’m pretty sure we both started and finished high school together, so that would be 5 years for 8-12…

I *know* we had classes together…

Did we have some extracurricular shit together too?

Did we hang out with the same people?

I’m confident we went to some of the same parties…

I feel I remember this person warmly… I remember kindness…

I also feel like maybe I annoyed them, so our relationship may not have always been positive? But feel like that was probably my fault? I really was a fucking a hot mess.

It’s obvious now though – We’re both two whole ass different humans, that was 20 years ago.
It took the age regression software in my mind a solid minute to connect the person I went to school with, to this person staring back it me from the event page for their celebration of life.

I wish I could remember more than this warm blur in my memory…
It feels so fucking weird to just have this, probably slightly inaccurate, hyper-realistic puppet of the person in my mind. I can picture their body language and cadence, I can hear the tone and pitch of their voice – but there are no actual words, there’s no actual interaction…

That’s weird right?

I mean, that kind of experience is normal for me – that feels like the best I can do for most of my relationships for that period of time.

Including my own family…

That last one makes me feel guilty.

I met with my new therapist for the first full session last week.
They mentioned they don’t typically lean too hard into diagnosis stuff, because they feel that the therapy they offer is helpful independent of a diagnosis. That would be assessed and supported by a different area of psychiatry anyway.

However…

There are areas where if someone has not been assessed, and being undiagnosed and thus unsupported with biological supports (in some cases – pharmacological) may create barriers to realistic success in certain domains of behaviour.
In other words – if an assessment supports that I have behaviours that fit on an ADHD spectrum, there may be drugs that may give me a fighting chance at improving on the behaviours that have been overwhelming demons that I feel I struggle to keep at bay.
That feels hard to believe?

Anyways – on the list of items included in an assessment that seems to resonate through my soul, the most relevant to this conversation is – memory loss.

I remember multiple friends who offered to assault my father at various points in my life, because they saw my hurt – but of course I never took them seriously, they wouldn’t really, and besides – I couldn’t let that happen – even if they could hurt him that bad, it would only make the anger and violence towards me worse somehow in some exponential degree.

Father says he believes in ‘fair’ and ‘justice’ – all I’ve ever seen from him is, ‘if they hurt you, hurt them back to make sure they think about it before ever hurting you again’.
The foundation of all healthy relationships, ya know?

A critical reader will surely point out that I followed mentioning “Memory Loss” the line before saying “I remember” – And the truth is that I can’t even give you a scenario or conversation directly related to either of the previous two paragraphs off the top of my head.

But I can remember the hyper-realistic fallible puppets of my friends in the memory theatre communicating these messages of support in the form of paternal violence to me in their garbled tone and pitch, no more distinct than the adults in Charlie Brown animations.

I can remember the tone of the memory-fog that is my life at home; and it being drenched in the fear of His burning anger when I realize I’ve done something that has “pushed a button” that I’m not sure I knew existed?

I’m sorry I can’t remember you Person…

I saw a comment on the page that was apologetic of being unaware that you were ‘struggling’…

I’m sorry too?

I mean, both their apology and mine are just as useless – but I’ve seen too many people taken young in relation to their struggle – and I believe we all deserve the opportunity for better.

I’ve seen how this struggle disproportionately effects certain folks, and we got a lot of fucking work to do to get everyone that opportunity.

I really don’t want to make any assumptions on what your struggles were as a Person.
I am choosing to trust that you had people you loved, and people who loved you – and I hope you were able to share that with each other before you left.

I’m sorry if there’s something significant that I should be remembering from our relationship Person, and I’ve lost those memories.

I scrolled past the condolences for your struggle – and what I saw there I think means more.

It was all the people who did have access to their memories of you, seemingly from across the decades of your life – and they all seem to reflect that warmth that I feel when your puppet takes the stage in my rickety memory theatre.

That Person and I have not been close in relationship nor geography in quite some time.
Although from what I gleaned in the memorial post – maybe not quite as far as I thought either.

I won’t be at your celebration of life – but I’ve definitely been flooded with reflection upon hearing of your passing… I don’t think it’s even been an hour since I read those words yet.

However my big ole’ Anxiety Brain decides to poke at this for the next unknowable period of time, I’m going to lean on my ritual – and just find some comfort in that I was lucky enough to share some time and space with this Person.
That the young avatar of this Person in my memory definitely had that warmth I remember, as it is confirmed in the contributions from people to his memorial page.

So remember AB, rather than spiral, let’s keep watching for the lessons we can learn in moments like this – and try to do more to add to that warmth in the world.
I may not remember a lot, but in this moment I want the Memory of this Person’s warmth to serve as a reminder to try and be our best selves, so we can kindle that warmth in everyone around us to the best of our ability.