Halloween: PTSD Not Allowed!

When you used to be in a relationship with someone that is now dead, what do you call them?

‘Ex’ doesn’t seem right, we never actually broke up. Deceased lover? Dead boyfriend?

We never had the official “can I call you my girlfriend” talk, but eventually decided to pick an anniversary date to celebrate our life together. Our work romance blossomed in October, so we picked Halloween since we both loved the holiday.

Something about corny horror movies and candy corn stuck between your teeth was romantic.

Our anniversary having been on Halloween is not what turned this day into a landfill of tears and triggers though.

All of those people you know that have been through something traumatic— he ones you never know what to say to… this is how they might feel this time of year.

Your mind is the haunted house.

After Robert died, the month of October suddenly became really hard. Harder than the other eleven months of the year. I was barely existing, crippled by a constant reel of horror movie scenes rolling through my head.

Closing my eyes just for a moment meant a front-row seat to the scene painted on the inside of my eyelids; the image that would make even haunted house workers squirm. I would be transported back in time, next to my bed where I found him with a rifle propped up against his jaw.

The grisly decorations that plastered the stores every mid-fall just reminded me of finding my love with his brains all over the headboard. The fake blood dripping off everyone’s costumes started to smell freakishly similar to the blood I had all over my hands when I found him.

The cops wanted to know why it looked like I rubbed blood through my hands like it was hand sanitizer. It was because I thought he was playing a prank on me and kept shaking him screaming “WAKE UP, this isn’t funny!”

It wasn’t just the trauma of finding his dead body that upset me though, it was everything to do with death. It was the cheap plastic bones that people love to display sticking out from their lawns that made me picture his rotting corpse lying deep in the ground. It was the abundance of paranormal shows and movies that premiere in the season that kept me up at night in the house he died; waiting for his ghost to come visit.

These are the parts of losing someone that no one talks about.

When you’ve lost someone, people feel sorry for you on Thanksgiving and Christmas, the “family” holidays. They even invite you over for dinner in the first year or two. No one ever asks if you’re okay on Halloween though. They’re too busy making cookies that look like dead fingers for their costume parties.

And I couldn’t blame them, I once adored this marvelous holiday as well. But after my life was defined as a suicide survivor, my favorite time of year made me sick. I was disgusted that people desensitized themselves to horror and death.

Falling back in love with death.

Six years later, that disdain for the spooky time of year is just now starting to fade. I still think about the scene I came home to that day, but not as often. I still see the blood, but not as vivid.

A couple of years ago I started dressing up on the thirty-first again because I believe that’s what Robert would have wanted. He would have been sad to see that I wasn’t enjoying the best day of the year.

“It’s the day that you can be anything you want to be.”

I haven’t painted any dead flesh or blood on my body yet, and I may never again, but I still dressed up.

This year, I might even spread some candles and cotton cobwebs around the ole’ dungeon.