Everything Circles Back

This begins circa 2015. A group of people meet at a small enough juko college and more or less met amidst classes. Either way, this group of people happens to mesh together for the sake of good times and the best of conversations. Not to mention, just all around great company. Among this group is a girl (she did not see herself totally as a full fledged woman at 19 even if she put on the act as though she did.) This is her portion of the story.

At first, the group consists of a wide range of people, just anyone who is friendly really since it’s a smaller college setting. Not quite everyone knows everyone but small enough to be well known in the best or worst ways depending on one’s social skills. Primarily the group consists of five other guys and at one point another woman too.

As time goes on, these friends start to grow apart and disband a little piece by piece. Families start, new jobs, certain habits broken that can’t live on any longer. Some of the breaks were caused by strife and disputes that unfortunately had little resolve aside from parting ways. Sometimes that truly is the best attempt at peace: to part ways amicably and without any resentment. There may be a heart breaking pang of remorse and wonder if anything could have been done differently to change the outcome.

Upon the gradual change that befell them all those years ago, some of us moved elsewhere and started brand new lives and others stayed at “home” with their new families and own new beginnings. She couldn’t exactly pinpoint where or why this occurred to her but she was devastatingly afraid of being alone again in a way she’d always known. She’d grown to love the group experiences we all shared as we grew and adapted with becoming more adult. They’d all mostly clicked after graduating high school and through college experience bonding so to speak. Either way, she was terrified of losing that sense of community. She had hoped somehow they would all stay friends. A totally childish thought but one that struck me often nonetheless.

The final break happens and as a group, they go their separate ways. At least unfortunately she in particular went her own separate way with one of the other group members and became intimately involved with certain recreational habits. Habits that were a bit more borderline self destructive but recreational-ish. She honestly thought this wouldn’t lead to any loneliness. It was maybe the second or third time she’d been told she was loved by someone in an intimate way and so being told that of course she believed it.

It isn’t to say what was felt wasn’t real, it had its absolute moments of reality certainly. Moments of love and kindness. Also many days and nights blurring together lacking any sobriety that counted for anything. And that fear still sat there in the back of her mind, quietly echoing. Cooing at her almost in barely a whisper, “You’ll always be alone, you’ll die alone. Here you’ll always be; just you and me.” When she’s met her group of people she clicked with, these darker thoughts weren’t as bad. Not to say they weren’t there but they didn’t sting as much.

So there she finds herself, less sober than ever, living in a consistent daze of pleasant sex, whatever kind of highs she really wanted, whatever she wanted without ever working for any of it. The only thing really missing was the actual act of love behind any of what either of us were doing together. It was a slow, nurtured process almost. The younger, hopeful part of who they’d been as individuals, in their group of friends, then even them as a couple - they both broke at points. Together and alone. One of them was rarely ever sober again after that and the days that they were, she struggled to tell the difference anymore.

Years passed like this, acts occurred that couldn’t be taken back and one with their bare hands, tried to permanently silence the other in a bout of drunken rage. She wished she could say it only happened once. She’d received plenty of warnings from herself and from others around her after the first incident but that fear of that loneliness, that darkest part of herself still had her numb and staying put. Even if she knew it was killing her slowly to do so. The hope itself that a sober day would come had turned into a life style without her realizing until she was caught in it. She found herself one day isolated, unable to reach out any longer to anyone else she’d ever been close to. For if she did, of course there were always consequences to such acts and she knew better than that.

So eventually time goes on like this and life goes on, death comes into her life. Swift and unforgiving it presents itself and at first it starts with a childhood companion, a sudden drowning in a creek of a small dog. She was supposed to be there that very day with her grandparents but she and he had fought the evening before into the early morning. He’d been drinking again and sadly she didn’t leave (she eventually lost her job, her car died too. Repairs promised by her partner that never happened) Insensible even to her, she stayed. Though it makes little to no sense why one would stay in a situation like that, even she doesn’t know to this day. It is suspected due to past childhood encounters with a man she’d tried to protect from himself. Inevitably, a child must admit they can’t do grown up things alone in place of their parents, even if they really want to.

When this particular day came and ended the way it had, she wasn’t the only one struggling to make it through to the evening. Her grandmother felt personally responsible for the loss of their dog and after that day more death followed. Her grandmother’s brother shot himself after being diagnosed with stage 4 alzheimer's. Their mother had it and so he’d wanted to avoid the worst of it all quickly. His wife found him and shortly after this occurred, the woman’s grandfather started to show early signs of dementia which escalated within a year.

All the death that followed after the fact eventually lead to another close companion who was another small dog. The grandmother and grandfather to the woman also passed a few short years after the first encounter with death and the first small dog’s drowning. With that, the darkest parts of her loneliness returned and almost seemed deafening this time around. Her partner still drank and eventually she found herself completely facing this dark loneliness.

At first she felt this was forced upon her. As she sat with her loneliness and tried to get a better understanding of what it really was saying to her, she’d blocked it out for years so now finally straining to hear it she hears, “You need to leave. You may die alone but that is natural. Everyone will die alone but it is better than being killed by someone who says they love you.” The words were completely different than what she had thought she’d heard before, all those years ago that prompted this entire situation to take on a life of its own.

In her main attempt to avoid that loneliness she found herself facing it in the darkest moments of her life and instead of it being a monster sitting amidst her mind, it was her sense of awareness towards what she actually needed to be for herself. Not what others can bring to the table but what she brings to the table in this life. She eventually found that more and more years would pass if she stayed exactly where she was, numb and accepting of what happened around her in this part of her life. She had allowed the sense of fear to consume her sense of appreciation for her own life and being.

A day finally comes where he’s drunk again but he leaves her alone on the day when her grandfather passed away. Her grandfather was in a lot of pain and for years was waiting to pass on to rejoin her grandmother in peace. This day comes and she isn’t close with her father at all, in fact has no relation to him at all. Her adopted father she is not close with but it still offers more love than the man who biologically had connection to her. So her grandfather passed and she waits alone in their house for her partner to return and the entire night passes and he returns slightly drunk the next morning.

It is finally decided that she must not continue as she had been with him. This life would no longer last a day further as it had no place for growth of life or love. She learned from her time with him and the experiences he left her with for the rest of her life - that real love is not about ownership in any way. Real love holds no fear, anger or coldness for one’s self or anyone else. Love is kind and warm. Lonely times will always come but she knows now that no matter how lonely the world may be, she will survive it because she loves at all and has been loved in turn. She lives with her small puppy presently, never afraid again of what a drunk evening will turn into.

At 18, she had gotten a tattoo that says “Live Without Fear” she knows better now that it is not living without, but facing the fear. Understanding why she was afraid of being alone in the first place.

She experiences fear from time to time still, as such is life - but when it comes amidst her own uncertainty there is confidence in her sense of self that she CAN face it at all.

So she lives on, not without fear but more so hand in hand with fear itself: growing with it as she grows into herself and her own life.