Springtime in the Death Lands

When someone dies before you can say all that they needed to hear from you, it makes you wish you were dead, too. And in March of 2015, I felt like I would never feel spring sunshine on my face ever again. I didn't want to. Just as I'd been given the opportunity to at least try to start making amends for the horrible things I'd said and done the year before, the only person with whom I'd ever felt truly myself was snatched away. It wasn't sudden, really, but it felt that way to me. And I was left utterly alone, holding a giant bag of shame and guilt and regrets. 

People felt compelled to tell me, "He loved you, Mo, and he knew you loved him." That made it worse. Worse because I already knew he loved me. I never doubted for one second that he loved me, that he was in love with me. He never gave me a reason to doubt that, but I know I gave him plenty. In the year prior to his death, I was genuinely evil. Not because I didn't love him, but because I'd allowed myself to get consumed once more by my need to self-destruct, to shoot as much dope and drink as much alcohol and eat as many pills as I could. I allowed that self-doubt, the piece of me that said nobody could really love me that much, to creep back in and take over. And if he didn't doubt that I loved him, I'm sure he must have questioned his own sanity in continuing to love me while I destroyed, brick by brick, everything that we'd spent so many years building together. I couldn't even pull my shit together long enough to be there for him during a family crisis; something really bad happened, I sat with him and listened, and then, when he went to work, I got a bundle and obliviated myself. That was the last time I spent the night with him until 9 months later. Even if he could forgive me that, I couldn't forgive myself. But he wanted to try. He loved me that much. 

Most people never know what that kind of love feels like. I had it for a decade. So to have the memory of something that precious marred by regret and shame and guilt feels like some kind of a sin.

In the year after his death, I tried really hard to join him. Everything short of actually slicing open a vein, and that only because I have two kids who still need me, at least in some small way. I know what it feels like to have a mother who would rather be dead, and there is no way I want to be responsible for my children feeling that. But I honestly did not give a lump of fuck whether I woke up in the morning, and would have been disappointed that I had if I could have summoned the enthusiasm to feel even disappointment. But I couldn't even feel that. I felt nothing. Nothing except a crushing sadness and the dim certainty that my life was over and everything now was just waiting to die.

The second year was much the same. I stopped shooting dope and drinking and taking pills, again only because of my girls, and I went through the motions. I moved to a smaller house with fewer people in it. It was called "improving." But I felt nothing. And every time I got close to feeling something, I fell apart. I was pretty close to making an attempt on my own life, more than once, and checked myself into the psych ward to keep that from happening. Different meds, different doctors, same Mo, and that block of ice around my heart. It would never thaw. I didn't want it to thaw. It was all I had left of him, that block of ice. And it had the added bonus of keeping potential partners away. I had no desire to date. The few times I did, it sucked. I got laid, but it was always a temporary thing. I didn't want to open myself up to the possibility of that kind of loss, not ever again. I doubted that I would find someone who measured up, anyway. It seemed greedy to want a love like that twice. Hell, it seemed greedy to have kept it for as long as I did. And God forbid I let myself get close to someone again. They were going to die on me. Everybody leaves. In fact, the one guy with whom I'd had an on-again-off-again relationship, more of a close friendship and writing partnership, wound up dying of cancer a couple of months after we reconnected that year. I was pretty sure that I was malignant.

And now it's almost March again. I've been sitting here for two weeks, waiting for that head cue that tells me to go sit it out on 1 North at St. Catherine's, coloring mandalas and taking copious amounts of prn Ativan. But it hasn't come. Yes, I'm submerged in Peter Murphy and The Cure, yes I still find myself dwelling on the date. But I'm also finding myself wanting to smile at the memories.

Now it feels like it is a disservice to a great love to shroud its memory in all of that negative energy. Because despite the way I left things, the fact remains that what we had was real, and true, and so it should be honored. I can almost guarantee you that he wouldn't want me to be sitting here by myself in the dark waiting for death. Pretty sure he'd want me to be, if not actively seeking love, at least open to the possibility. And I know for certain that he wouldn't want me to rule out a sex life for the remainder of my days. He would have laughed out loud at the suggestion. He knew me well.

So yeah, spring is almost here. But I'm not going to be moping around about it this year. I'll sing off-key to Just Like Heaven. And smile.