The Value in Breaking Points

It seems as though these moments are those we so often run away from. We fear the breaking point. We avoid it at all costs. Here’s the thing: in my experiences , I have found some of my most valuable revelations and moments of self love come from these edges.

I’ll explore one of the worst breaking moments I have had to this day. Even with all of the horrible things my family has done and how they have acted.. nothing will ever beat the day I found out I had lost my best friend.

On my third 10 hour shift of the week at a job that was mundane and repetitive but always smelled of fresh bread, I came in like any other day. I always started my shifts by doing a bit of paperwork. This made the rest of the night easier as I could focus on the physical tasks more. I made my dinner, sat down, and began going through it.. To give you a bit of a time period context, this was before I had gotten an iPhone or really any touchscreen phone so I was on what appeared as a blackberry, but slightly less complicated. I could check facebook but the notification quality was about as effective as MySpace. Halfway through my paperwork, the phone rings.

What struck me as odd in this moment is that I was getting a phone call from a close friend of mine who worked with me at that job. She knew my schedule as it was the same every week. I have this fear when I get a call out of the blue that something awful has happened so I braced for impact. She asked if I was sitting down-I was, only now on the edge of the chair. She said she had bad news for me. That she needed to tell me before I found out through social media. One of my best friends in the entire world had committed suicide.

My jaw dropped. Blank space filled my head. It felt as if tears were coursing through my body searching for my eyes. I collapsed. My higher up at that time had a couple of drivers help carry me to the back of the store. I was inconsolable. That alone sticks out to me because I am not exactly the type of person who cannot pull myself together. I find the ability to laugh through just about any pain and find joy between the cracks. Not this day.

Have you ever had news that went through your ears and stuck in your throat with no signs of clearing? Suffocating, isolating, unbearable news. I couldn’t breath. This person had made up so much of who I was and where I was going and a chunk of me died in that moment.

He was an asshole- making jokes all of the time about me and pranking me at every turn. He taught me how to be able to laugh at myself.. Not in a way where I felt him being judgmental, but in a way that showed me that I could never do anything horrible enough to not laugh at later. I see this term of asshole as endearing. He redefined it for me.

He taught me what a true friend does. He was blunt and honest with me.. especially if I was making huge mistakes. At a point in my life where I was struggling so hard with my emotional state, I looked to drugs. Honestly, Xanax was my perfect drug because it was the only time thus far in life that my brain stopped screaming at me even just for a moment. It was very apparent that I needed to seek mental health professionals. But I didn’t- there’s a whole spiel on that which is not worth getting into right now. No one said anything to me. My friends who would watch me snort Xanax, even those who did not partake, they didn’t care to speak up. I needed someone to notice me. I needed someone to care enough to tell me not to let myself die. He was this person for me.

I remember one of the nights in particular I was feeling so deeply horrible about my life, my self worth, my next steps. He called me and I was driving while crying and smoking weed. Frantic and lost, I could barely carry a conversation on. He told me to come over to his house. With his mom asleep in the other room, he snuck me in. Then he held me. Truly held me. Not as a ploy to get sex. Not for selfish reasons or just to get me to shut up. He held me in a way that engulfed all of my pain and for a brief moment, I was okay.

I remember this night constantly. Tears stream down my face as a write this despite it having been 6.5 years. Some days it feels like I just found out. Some days I am able to truly focus on the positive.

Was he perfect? Absolutely not. Always a great friend? Definitely not, he had his faults and shortcomings. But what made him the perfect friend for me, a beautiful human being, reliable and memorable.. was his intention behind every action. He wanted so badly to take away my pain. To take away anyone’s pain really. He tried to spread love and laughter with every step he took. That has since bled out into everyday life.

So there I was..

Broken, shattered really, and so lost for words or thoughts or any feeling other that intense tears. This was grief. I recognized her, she was cold and motionless. There were no paths lit up or people around. She had completely taken over my mind and body and everything went dark.

In the midst of all of this, it was almost shift change and my boss wanted me to find my own replacement. Being an assistant manager, it was so odd to call my employees while breaking down. It didn’t matter, nobody was willing to come in. Eventually a GM from another store caught wind of what was happening and rushed over despite having just finished his own 11 hour shift. It was a fucked up thing for them to do and it opened my eyes to the corruption that lies within corporate America and the complete disregard for my humanity when money was on the line.

But I didn’t care about that.

I couldn’t.

I shouldn’t have even driven home that day.

But I did, I had to. I was alone with nobody on the horizon to help me. Until late that evening when a male “friend” of mine asked if I needed anything and offered to come watch movies with me. This sounded nice, as you may have read in my previous excerpt, this was a place of comfort for me as it was tradition with my dad to do so when sad. So I agreed. It felt nice that someone cared enough to come spend this time with me.

Wow, was I wrong. The irony is.. if my dead best friend had known what would happen that night, he would have kicked that guy’s ass.

So he came over. On my couch, we watched tv until early hours of the morning when I finally, miraculously really, fell asleep. Only to wake up shortly after to his hand in my pants. Me, a person who could barely muster the strength to get home or make a phone call. I still find myself lost for words when I think of this night. I didn’t even stop him for a moment because I was so confused and overwhelmed by what was happening. Why would he think this was okay? When did he decide he would do this? When he called? On his way? Once I fell asleep?

I laid there scared and confused. I though, perhaps if I pretended to be asleep and swat him away he would realize what was happening was not okay. He didn’t stop. I don’t even understand now that I have been away from it what he got out of this. But I suppose it isn’t for me to understand. Eventually I mustered up the courage, pretended like I was waking up, and he scrambled away. Funny thing is, he acted like he was asleep when I “woke up”. I wonder if he even knows today that I am aware of what happened.

That day was horrible for me. As if losing someone that meaningful to me was not enough, a close friend took advantage of the situation and molested me. In my time of need. I remember the next day, after this guy left. The first thought I had was that I wished my best friend was there. I know he would have protected me at all costs. I know he would have made sure I was okay. Because, let’s face it.. there comes a time where each of us needs protecting. So I lay there, dealing with the death of a loved one, the loss of protection, any semblance of a safe life I thought to exist.

At this time, my mother was not in my life. I didn’t reach out to my dad or family. Quite frankly, for a while there, I had to distance myself from family because the idea was muddled for me. I didn’t have a clear image of what family was meant to be. It had been proven to me that if I let someone in I would only wind up hurt. My vulnerability had put me at too high of a risk.

I found myself searching for answers where none resided. I wanted to understand the behavior, of all of them: my friend, my assaulter, my family, my mom. Switching between looking for answers and desperately trying to find even a flicker of light in the pitch black evening became the makeup of my life. But alas, I could not find any of it. The world was grey- the south, for the first time in my life, was dry and cold. My support system was gone. My hope had been diminished. My heart, trampled.

For those who have felt loss, I feel as if we all try to make sense of it. We try to find answers to questions about the meanings of life and loss. I can honestly say I do not believe in the existence of these. These answers, I believe, were never meant to be found should they exist at all. It took six years to figure out what it is I could do. Six years of searching to find that the best thing to do was to let him live in my happy memories.

The negative ones were suffocating the life force he had left. It would be a lie if I said those negative moments never crept in. How could they not? They were also a part of our relationship. I celebrate his life twice a year: his birthday and his death day. (And lets be honest, many days in between). I spend both watching old videos and looking at old pictures and AIM conversations. I talk about who he was and the many was he influenced me. I say his name and let him live through that. It will never completely heal.. I would be foolish to think so. And it will never get easier to let him go, but I do think that the happy memories will start to come to the surface more often.

My breaking point is where this all started- the entire point of my writing this. The day that I broke, I changed. It isn’t that I necessarily needed to change and I do not, by any means, believe that people must go through tragedy to live a full life. What I do know is what it did to me, and that is all I can speak to.

I realized how to value people in my life, the way they deserved to be cherished. To make the phone call and not wait to see that person. It taught me to embrace the qualities he left behind to live within me. This moment changed the people I let reside in my world.. casting out those who could not reach the level of love I need.. well, really, the level I deserve.

It has pushed me to love, extensively, those who I do let in. Eventually, it even taught me to embrace my vulnerabilities. Of course, I am still flawed, we all are. I often find that I feel everything to its deepest extent. When I mourn, my souls mourns, my body aches, my mind becomes numb. If I should fall in love, I feel it to its fullest extent. No borders, just passion. This is not meant to say I force people to return it. (My charm and whit do that enough for me haha).

Perhaps that is a scary idea- loving openly regardless of someone else’s intentions. It definitely has left me hurt in the past. The thing is, I do not fear that pain anymore. I let myself break in this moment and others only to realize that in these moments, I grow.

In the Show Good Place there is a character who is a AI. She takes care of everyone in their neighborhood and serves almost as a Siri. Anyways, on the show every time she gets rebooted, she dies. When she comes back, she is a better, updated version of herself. I think about how relative that is all the time.

We hurt, we reboot. We are all in a constant state of improvement and the way I see it, we can vehemently fight this or we can embrace it. Those I let into my life embrace this.. there’s a lot that could be unpacked for me to come to this- things regarding my past and my many traumas- but I would rather spend these words positively today.

Each day that I encourage the change within myself, I become better. More loving, more caring, more intelligent. Constantly dusting and organizing my mind to make room for the positive. Love yourself enough to embrace the moments of shatter. Love yourself enough to change what hurts you and strengthen yourself. You deserve it.

To be clear, I am no expert on these ideas. My only credentials consist of time lived and experiences had. I am of a firm volition that every individual has the best way for them to react to pain. What I write can only be considered fact to me. In hopes that one of you will connect with it. Perhaps it can even help some of you. I know I wish I had someone to say these things to me. So if you take nothing else away from this, take away the fact that you are never alone in this pain. We have a whole community of people. Not in a way that describes this world as awful (I know I feel it is sometimes) but in a way that shows the resilience of humanity. The resilience that lives within you.

The resilience to get you through this.