Grief, loss, and all words to describe terrible things

The past three months have probably been the most emotionally trying months that I’ve experienced in some time. I lived by this code for a long time that it was best to never let that guard down and think, “Okay the coast is clear, nothing that bad could possibly happen now. The worst has to be over.” Yeah… not so much.

I’ll summarize the bullet points and then get to the big bad…

-  A new co-worker came on to the mid-shift from working overnights and has been… unprofessional since she started. I honestly couldn’t answer why she has behaved the way she has but all speculation aside, it’s been unpleasant to work with her and it’s resulting in a “conversation” with the managers. For once, I’m not on the receiving end of this conversation.

- My cat got sick and required surgery to remove a blockage. She is okay now though and I’m grateful to my friend for being generous enough to help out.

- I reconnected with a friend who was supposedly extremely excited to be reunited but after a metric ton of excuses that didn’t make sense, I had to distance myself from it. She has baby daddy drama and some other shit that she wouldn’t get into. I told her I would be there for her but she didn’t respond so… bye.

- The friend who helped me with my cat has been acting distant toward me after we had a spat. It started with me going to a movie that she believed I had made a plan to see with her. That was not the case. We talked it out and I thought things were cool. After this conversation I see she posted online that she was going to a convention with a friend of hers after we had planned to go together. She swears up and down that her decision to go had nothing to do with the movie thing and that’s all well and good but when I said I was bothered/bummed about the change in plan I was accused of acting like a jealous boyfriend and apparently her friends think I’m nuts. Now she’s tagging people in posts that she would’ve tagged me in and it’s all just fucked up. It is what it is and I’m just not playing anymore. I’ve taken my ball and gone home as the saying goes.

Now for the big bad… My cousin Joe and I were talking the other day via FB Messenger as we usually do and my mother calls me in her usual “ohhh my goddd, all this shit is so fucked up” way and proceeds to tell me that my cousin hasn’t been doing well. He had been passing out a lot and just didn’t feel well overall. He went away with his parents on this trip to Martha’s Vineyard which is usual for them since they live on the Cape. He had been staying with my grandparents and I guess when they went down to his room they found a bunch of bad shit. Booze bottles to name one. They were fed up with him drinking and said he couldn’t stay with them any longer. Aside: They’re both raging alcoholics who have no business judging anyone so… yeah.

Anyway, my mother flips out and says we need to tag team him to get him to go to rehab before some shit goes down. She’s telling me about how he carries a gun around and she’s insistent that he will do something if we don’t help him. I tell her I’ve been trying for years to get him help and he just wouldn’t do it for reasons that were his own. Just the same though I talked with him most of the day on Sunday and kept trying to get him to commit to going to the hospital since his symptoms sounded pretty serious. He kept saying no and changed the subject to ask how I was. He sounded okay but… that’s the internet. You can’t HEAR the person. Our conversation ends and I go about the rest of my night. The next day my mother calls to tell me that Joe had his gun taken away and he was staying with his parents. I tell her this is good and I give her a number to call for crisis services on Cape Cod to consult with ways to get him help. I don’t know if she made the call or not. Joe and I talked for almost the entire day again. It was another round robin of me asking him to go to the hospital and using a ton of motivational interviewing to try and get to the bottom of why he wouldn’t go. His reasons will never made sense to me but I’m not him. We finish our conversation just before 6pm and I go on with my night. I get things ready for work and I go to bed. At 2:30AM I’m awoken by my phone. It’s my mother.

“D---……” Long long pause. I knew what she was going to say. No call after midnight is a good call.

“Joey’s gone…”
“What do you mean he’s gone mom? Where is he?”
“He’s gone…”
“No.”
“He passed away…” She starts crying and I just keep saying no over and over again like it’s going to change something. When I can finally speak I ask her what happened. She didn’t know at the time. Only that he had been in a tub and said “Don’t call 911.” I tell her I have to go and I lose it. Wailing. Choking. The whole thing. My husband is hanging on to me and I think he was trying to literally hold me together because I was shattering with every sob that came out.

When I was able to get myself together, I text my mother to ask her more. She didn’t have enough info. But she said she would call me. Shaun takes me for a drive and I pop several benzos in order to stop the shaking and sobbing. It works and I finally sleep for a little while.

When I wake up, I’m thinking maybe it was all a bad dream and I check my phone. It wasn’t. I see the call log and I see the texts I sent. I re-read my cousin’s messages to me trying to make sense. I’m a mental health recovery counselor trained to look for signs of potential suicide risk. There were none from what I read. But just the same, my mother calls me later to tell me the whole story as it went down. Blow by blow by blow of the horrific detail of his death and the events thereafter. Due to the triggering nature of that, I will not share it. But just know that every time I close my eyes I see it and my heart hurts. So. Much.

I’ve spent the day in a stupor of opiates and benzos combined with the shock of losing a person who was for all intents and purposes my little brother. I was 5 years old when he was born and from the day he was born, he was always around my brother and me. We were the three muskateers. We looked out for each other. Did vacation stuff. We were bonded. The pain that comes when the drug haze lifts is excruciating beyond anything I can even describe. I couldn’t even try if I wanted to. It just… hurts.

I’ve received so much support from people I’ve never met, people I have met, and people whom I never would’ve expected it from. The words, “Anything you need” have been repeated over and over. It’s a sentiment that means so much even if there’s nothing anyone can do. I try to see that in this dark fucking place but there’s another part of the pain here too and that’s the fact that my friend, the movie one, is so distant right now. Of everyone I know, I would have thought she would’ve been the first person to drop everything and come to help keep me together but that was not the case. Instead, she posted pictures online and tagged people that she said called me nuts. I think it’s juvenile of me to care about something so trivial when my cousin just died but the whole point to being a best friend is to be here for these very situations and she failed me. Again.

My cousin’s death hurts worse than anything she could do or not do. But it doesn’t make this shit any easier. The solace I find in this though is that the support has come from the least likely of sources and I will never question that again.

When people say tragedy is when you learn who your real friends are… they aren’t kidding. I’m not saying to manufacture a tragedy to test loyalties because that would be fucked up. But if you ever have the slightest doubt about someone… believe it. I didn’t. I rationalized it all until I was blue in the face… The way she bailed on me because she thought I didn’t have enough time for her, the way she never looked for me in the years we were separated, the way she could so easy throw barbs at me when I questioned her motives, and the way she now has stepped back from me in my time of need.

I’ve received the message loud and clear and now I know. I wish I didn’t but I do.

So yeah… fuck this week, fuck death, and fuck whatever the hell happened between me and this friend. I’m sure she will read this and tell me what a piece of shit I am after she helped pay for my cat’s medical bills. I watched her do the same to a friend of hers after the friend questioned her previous decision to co-sign on a loan for my friend. Her wrath was telling…. Throwing all she did in the girl’s face all because she violated some rule she was playing by when no one else knows what those rules are. I place a great deal of importance on how friends treat their other friends in a fight because it’s a barometer for how I will be treated when I make the grievous error of crossing them. Lesson learned.

To the friend: if you read this, which you probably won’t, don’t bother throwing your good deeds in my face. I’ve already tallied it all up and when I am in the position to do so, I’ll pay you back and you can forget I exist again.