Lost and Found

Sometimes it just can’t be helped.

People move on. Life moves along, but still I can’t stop this nagging feeling that something, somewhere veered off the rails. Something that I could have stopped, despite everyone's insistence that it was out of my hands.

Don’t get me wrong. I know the universe has its own plan. I know to trust “the divine”. But shit, if this is what the universe has in mind for my life I want off this ride now. Seriously!?

My grandmother hates when I say that “I want off this ride”. Brings her too many flashbacks of suicide attempts in my teens, back when I thought I was at the lowest. Back when I thought I had finally hit rock bottom and everything was going to be looking up, because how could it not? Boy was I wrong!

Childhood trauma follows you, like a stray dog that you just can’t shake, or that creepy gas station guy who likes to lean just a little too far into your car window.

Abuse, abandonment, neglect, I hit the trifecta!

But I survived.

I survived long enough for the other adults in my life to wake the fuck up and see the truth of my life. I was moved into my grandparents house just in time for my grandfather to have a stroke in his sleep and not wake up.

Finding someone you love dead. Just one more box to tick off on my trauma bingo card.

The real kicker is that he was supposed to be taking care of me that day, driving me to school, picking me up, and feeding me dinner. Gran had already left for work, where she could rarely be reached, as reliable phone service was not a thing her company invested in. So what did 9 year old me do? I survived.

I called in my own school absence, due to a death in the family of course, using my highly trained adult voice. Then set off on completing my grandfather’s daily to-do list, that I had memorized within my first 2 days of being in my new home. First breakfast, then washing the dishes, dusting and vacuuming the living room, grabbing the mail from the box, lunch, getting things prepped for dinner, a few episodes of some afternoon cable tv (judge shows, talk shows, game shows) then into the oven dinner went so it would be ready by the time Gran got home.

I had copied everything so well, to the tee, that when Gran went into her room to change, and found Grandpa’s body, she screamed so loud, the neighbors rushed over, and tried to herd me out the door. I protested that the oven only had 5 more minutes and I didn’t want dinner to burn, and stood my ground, until one of them said she would keep an eye on it to make sure it didn’t, as another remarked that this was no place for a child right now, and calmly told me something was wrong with my grandfather.

“Something’s not wrong.” I said matter of factly. “He’s dead. He has been since this morning. Why else would I have been doing his chores all day.” Silence.

“I told the school I would be absent due to a death in the family?” The looks of shock, horror, and confusion on their faces live in my head to this day.

I’m not gonna lie, a feeling of pride is highly associated with these memories even as I look back. Being able to cause such a reaction from these “adults”, a word I was officially taught meant “knows more than I do, is more capable than me”, but that life had taught me actually often meant “unreliable and can’t see past their own nose”.

“Why didn’t I call for help?” You may ask. All of them surely did, in every possible form in which you could. But I just shrugged my shoulders back then, unwilling to tell them that when you grow up in a house where dad is always drunk, Mom is always away, and sometimes they both bring home people who do things that are possibly illegal, if not just completely immoral and dangerous, you tend to learn “Snitches need stitches” pretty quickly, especially when one of daddy’s friends decides to give you a little “sneak peek” to remember. The scar on my arm was still a rather fresh reminder, though it has faded and is covered by a tattoo meaning strength now. Family business was kept in the family, plain and simple.

In my young mind I did the right thing, I kept life going. I kept our family business quiet. I didn’t holler and carry on like some “baby”. I was a good girl. And yet everyone was treating me like I did the worst possible thing they could imagine, like I was a monster. Or drowned me in a sea of pity so deep I couldn’t see the surface. It wasn’t until 4 years later, when I first started to try taking my own life, that I realized how much this had hurt me.

I was just so numb.

Dissociation, a mental process of disconnecting from one's thoughts, feelings, memories or sense of identity, and from reality in general, often in order to protect oneself from said thoughts/feelings/memories. A term I only learned relatively recently but a bodily process akin to breathing for most of my first 18 years. A habit that I had spent the last few years trying to train myself out of, and one that at this moment I desperately wished I hadn’t.

What I wouldn’t give to be anyone else, anywhere else right now.

But here I am sitting in front of the smoking ruins of what was quite possibly the happiest, stableist thing ever to come into my life. Healed enough from the past to feel every stabbing pain and ache in my shaking body, as my heart screams. Healed enough to feel everything, all the pain, but apparently not healed enough to have not been partly to blame for it.

The thing that people don’t realize about surviving trauma, is that it is a lot like fixing everything with duct tape. Sure you can get a solid hold and seal with it, but all it takes is one person obliviously picking at or peeling off the tape and all hell can let loose.

Jackson was my picker.

He came into my life, when dating and a relationship were honestly the last things on my mind. Like, literally the day before he slid into my DM’s with his witty remark about my most recent post, I had made the conscious decision to abandon my online dating profile and stop accepting all the blind dates and setups my friends were so caringly throwing my way. Situations that never really panned out well if at all, and just drained my social battery.

After a quick peek at his profile page, I replied back, content in the fact that he was far, far away, merely some stranger on the internet, who had no preconceived expectations for me to live up to, or any real connection to me or my life. “I would never meet this guy”, I told myself as I answered back every message with a brutal honesty that not even my closest friends, let alone my family would recognize. I was able to be completely and authentically myself for the first time, and it felt better than words can describe.

The act of finally sharing the person that I had spent my life hiding, tied with his acceptance, support, and interest in that person, knocked me off my feet in a way I had never felt before. I let my guard down, flew my freak flag, and started breaking some of the “safety rules” I had always lived by. And when he had asked to meet in real life for the 6th or so time, I finally agreed.

Next day, the most gorgeous man I have ever laid eyes on shows up to my work, just as I am leaving, with a big bouquet of wildflowers, a bag of my favorite chocolates, and a bottle of aged bourbon.

“You mentioned a few days ago that you had the day from hell scheduled for today, so I figured I would bring you some pieces of heaven to recover.” His voice oozed out of those lips that just begged to be bitten.

I felt shock in a way I hadn’t before, old fears of how did he find me? Was I really being that careless online? Would they be able to find me too? mixed with a thrill of excitement that not only was this guy real but he was here in the flesh, bearing my favorite things, after a truly horrific day. A couple of deep breaths, some thought diversion , silent affirmations, and I was able to croak out a “Thank you”.

He didn’t seem phased by my dazed and delayed response.

“That bad of a day, huh?” He threw a sympathetic, understanding smile and looked like he just wanted to pull me into his arms and make it all disappear for me, but wasn’t sure if we were there yet.

For a moment I was tempted to dive into his full arms, craving that affection, that comforting touch, but something held me back.

“Yeah. A real shit show.” I replied, finally calming to normal. “By the way, how the fuck are you here? Last I checked you lived on the opposite side the country”

He smirked a little embarrassed.

“An opportunity may have come up at work that brought me closer, and I may have jumped on it like a kid on ice cream, because the sweetest girl I’ve ever met just happened to be a few towns away.”

“You…”

“You’ve talked about people in your life disappearing or just not being there. I don’t want to be one of those.” he stated earnestly. “The way I saw it was that if I had any real shot at you giving me a chance to be the one to treat you the way you deserve to be treated, proximity would be crucial.”

“Okay.”

“So consider this my official declaration of intentions. I care about you alot, bordering on love, if I am being honest. I want to be the one to take care of you and be with you for as long as you will let me. Will you go out with me?”

The word “yes” slipped out of my mouth before I really registered what had happened, and just as mindlessly I followed him back to his new condo, where we talked for hours, barely touching the bourbon, drunk off of each other’s proximity, and then our lips became occupied with other activities.

This became our weekly friday ritual, even when he had to fly back for work meetings, he always made sure he was back in time on friday for our nights. He never pushed or pressured me to move any quicker than I was ready to. He knew I was healing some pretty deep wounds, and was there to lean on, talk to, and be a very welcome distraction when needed.

I learned his favorite foods and perfected my recipes for each until they made that look of pure bliss come across his face. I had always been better at expressing my love through food.

And every night we could get away with it, we would spend in each other’s arms, just soaking in the comfort of each other’s presence while we drifted off to sleep.

My friends saw how happy I was. Drowning in this joyful feeling of home, and safety Jackson had finally brought into my life, but warned me not to get carried away. They had all been skeptical about how we met and had been sure to never let me forget it.

I guess in part they might hold some blame for my current predicament, feeding my anxious thoughts, fears, and negative beliefs, all things I was trying to fight, I was trying to heal from, that ultimately spiraled out of control, turning me into someone I hated, someone I had been before who I thought I had all but buried. Someone who Jackson wasn’t ready for, and who I didn’t want him to see. Because it was one thing to hear about the past, about old me, and what created her, but it was a whole other to experience her.

Fight or flight kicked in and both decided to take their turns. Fight egging me on to pick on his smallest unimportant actions and blow them out of proportion: him having one too many with his guy friends leading me to accuse him of having a drinking problem just like my dad did, him getting caught up in a meeting and unable to make it home in time one friday leading me to say “ I should know better than to think I can rely on you.” Everytime angling for a big blowout fight like my parents’ weeky ritual. And everytime meeting an apology and “let’s talk this through.” Each overexaggerated reaction, met with patience and understanding.

So flight kicked in.

A note left on his table one morning, changing my phone number, taking a sabbatical from work and running back to Gran’s house. No explanation, just “This is over. Don’t ever talk to me again.”

I wish I could say that I couldn’t explain why I did what I did, but we all know that is crap. I survived, I let all the “advice” from my family and friends drag me back to that feeling of needing to be entirely in control. I was “too happy”, just like I had been that week after moving into my grandparents house.

I am no longer that little girl straightening the house while her grandfather lays dead in his bed, and I am grateful for that, but at least that little girl was able to rely on her own instincts and stand up for herself when she needed to.

Sometimes when we are letting go of and healing from the past, we can go a little too far, “throwing the baby out with the bath water” as my Gran’s friends would say. That little girl was me, just as I am me today, as hard as it may be to think about. I need to love her just as much as I loved the “new” real me, cause we are one in the same. I need to find my voice again.

A few days alone in a hotel, halfway home, and I am finally feeling myself again.

I’ve cried. I screamed. I’ve fought, the person I needed to, me.

I’ve learned that that little girl deserved to be taken care of, to feel loved, to have someone to rely on, just because she existed, and she still does.

I don’t know how to say I’m sorry to Jackson, I don’t know if I have the strength to search him out when I return, or if he will even still be there. All I know is I’ve got to keep moving forward.

My workload is of course mountainous when I get back to my office, but by the end of my day on Friday I feel like I finally have a handle on things as I walk to my car.

A note sits on my windshield. “Sorry darling, I can’t never talk to you again. It can’t be over. Continued on other side —> Peace sign if you want to talk. Middle finger for “try again next time”, because I will try again, I will play out this same scene every friday until I see those beautiful 2 fingers of yours.”

With a sigh, and butterflies in my chest, I threw up my “beautiful” fingers.

“Thank god!” I heard coming from right behind me almost immediately. I jumped a bit. Then his hand laced into my outstretched one, and spun me around to face him. “I missed you, my crazy girl!” he said, holding my gaze in his, hesitant to get much closer.

“ I don’t know what to say.” I choked out, tears already threatening to trail down my cheeks.

“That’s okay.” he replied, opening my door and helping me into my car. “I bought a new soft blanket and I’ve been stocking up on chocolate, ice cream, those mochi things you love for weeks, so we are fully stocked on comfort food. Let’s get you home before those dams break.”

I started my car and without even a thought drove right to his place.

Home, I liked the sound of that.