Epilogue

There's a story I shall call November 16th which I have written in bits and pieces over the years. A few weeks ago I did some writing that connected some things, and brought some things to light that had previously been hidden in the shadows. I pulled the post because it was just too much...too raw, but it opened the door for me to look at the whole picture; to see the prologue and the epilogue, not just The Event. Today's telling is of the aftermath. The fears, the worries, the insecurities, the new narratives that ran rampant through my head. It's a story of losing my power, my volition, and eventually my will to live. And a story of having no more resources to deal with a storage unit full of hurts.

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First, a little prologue:

Prior to Nov 16 I had been my dad's caretaker following his cirrhosis diagnosis. No family support, no close friends to share my burden with. (Even if I had had friends in my life, I had learned from my family at a very young age not to talk about what was going on, for example when my mother learned that my teacher had sent me to see the school counselor her response was "Don't say anything about your dad's drinking or the social workers will take you away." Getting the notice of my mother in general was giving her an opportunity to shame me, so talking about shit just wasn't in my tool box.) In September, just days after my 20th birthday my father died. With his death was the loss of many things...my ties to the ranch I had grown up on and had thought as a child I would never leave, a sense of family; the one living relative I had who shared my surname, all the things that I wanted to learn from him, and the home/safe haven I shared with him. All gone.

Then came November 16, 1991, The Event. Pounding on my apartment door woke me in the darkness of predawn, and shot me into a heart-racing panic; the only reason anyone would be pounding on my door this early is if my mom's boyfriend had finally shot her and the police were at my door to tell me she was dead. I raced to the door in my night gown trying to shake off the sleep haze. I peered through the peep-hole wishing I could afford a damn robe before opening the door. Jeff. The guy I'd met at my new security guard gig who showed up in my life at random times, always drunk, but at this hour surely he was sober?

I opened the door relieved that it wasn't the police, and annoyed that he had woken me from my sleep, ashamed I didn't own a robe, and wondering why he had showed up in wee hours of the morning.

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Epilogue

A few years back my mother had spoken the line, "Oh honey, we're just not meant to have good things in our lives." Although I hadn't explicitly heard the line during The Event, it was certainly a belief I had even if I couldn't state as succinctly as my mother had during that conversation. I had allowed myself a little bit of hope in my early college years that maybe if I did the right things life could be something other than shit. Challenge after challenge came along, and I trudged on thinking things would get better. When November 16th happened I gave up hope that life would ever be anything but shitty...I was just not meant to have good things in my life. 

Since becoming an adult up until November 16, 1991 I had believed I was finally big enough and strong enough to protect myself. I believed I was no longer weak and vulnerable. I had a strong narrative about myself as a bad-ass, strong woman, but that morning that narrative was shattered. What was I then? Weak, and vulnerable. Useless. A useless body, a useless voice, a useless will. I was useless, and in my darkest moments my life was pointless, and I was also pointless.

Then there were the months of absolute terror that I might be pregnant, and the absolute resolve to kill blow my brains out if I was pregnant. The terror that lasted for years that I might have contracted AIDS (back then what we talked about was AIDS, not HIV). And AIDS was still a death sentence back then, and tests weren't readily available. Every cold, every flu, every weird skin thing that showed up I was sure was a sign that I had AIDS and was going to die from it. I wasn't finally convinced I was in the clear until years later was I was finally able to get a test.

And lets not forget about shame. The shame that it happened. The shame of losing my closely guarded virginity...the later shame of the lesbian community that values the "righteous" lesbian. The shame of not fighting "hard enough" whatever the fuck that means. The shame of well-meaning people assuring me without knowing my story that their's was far worse so I didn't have to be ashamed which furthered the narrative of "well, it wasn't that bad"...and if it wasn't really that bad I'm just weak/wrong/stupid for not being okay?

Like my dad's death 2 months prior, I tried to put the experience of November 16th, and whatever unidentified emotions in to a box and bury them. In late December that same year when my roommates were once again away, and as the snow blanketed the city on a quiet, peaceful night, I took my dad's .357 revolver out of my gun cabinet and crawled under the table. Sobbing, drowning in the pain of countless wounds to mind and spirit, and blinded by hopelessness and isolation I put the loaded gun to my temple. The fleeting thought, "What if tomorrow is better," bumped me out of my tunnel vision just enough to get me to put the gun away. If you would have asked me then why I was so engulfed in sorrow I would not have stated November 16th as one of the reasons; but as I look back with clearer vision I can see that it was the proverbial "straw that broke that camels back." Hell, I believed that crying at my dad's viewing and funeral meant I was supposed to be done grieving and should have been over it. There were so many things I thought I should be over, and that fact that I wasn't just created another layer of shame, one more wet blanket to carry around on top of everything else. And if I still wasn't over any of this shit, then surely there was no escape; I would never be over it.

I hid in self imposed isolation through the worst of the darkness. My roommate would have supported me through some of this shit had I let her, but I didn't know how or was too terrified of the vulnerability of sharing my burden. I didn't get into therapy until a couple years later, and still this event didn't get talked about until years later. I'm only now, 28 years later talking about carrying the terror of having contracted AIDS.

I always try to end on some high note, some positive take-away. I have no Polly-Anna platitude today. Sometimes shit sucks, and it's really hard, and it just needs to be acknowledged as such.