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engagedtobefree · 11 months ago

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My friend Craig died last month. I knew it was coming, but it still doesn’t take any of the pain away. His mom texted me and our boss just before noon the day of his passing, saying that he went peacefully. He didn’t even know. He consciously had no idea he was dying. I don’t know whether that’s a blessing or a tragedy, though I really can’t see this situation as anything but the latter. I spent most of that day crying. Succeeded in not crying at Walmart, but then cried at the laundromat. My apartment’s washing machines were unusable because the water was frozen between the coldness and all the snow we got that week. Frozen, just like Craig’s life. Frozen at 33.

Craig went into the hospital the morning of December 28th. I remember this vividly for several reasons, the first being that I had taken off the next day to attend another friend’s wedding. The second reason being I immediately knew he wasn’t going to come home. His mom is my co-worker, and Craig also worked at our company. There’s only 3 of us in my department: her, me, and our boss. She told me some time before lunch. I had gone into her office to give her some paperwork and she told me Craig was in the hospital for the flu, that he woke up that morning and couldn’t breathe. She said that whenever he gets sick he has breathing issues, regardless of what it is, but that he doesn’t have any type of disorder. I thought that was strange because I have asthma and that doesn’t even happen to me. But the thing is, right before she told me what he went into the hospital for, I had an intuitive feeling, you know the ones that come from right beneath your lower left ribs. It came from there. I had the specific feeling that he wouldn’t leave the hospital alive. I have been trying to listen to my intuition more to make it even stronger than it already is, but naturally I didn’t want to listen to this. Joyce told me Craig was in the hospital, the feeling washed over me he wouldn't come back, then I asked her what was wrong and she told me, and I thought maybe for the first time ever, my intuition was wrong. I wanted it to be. Craig has the flu, I rationalized. He will be fine. Except he wasn’t fine. The flu turned into an infection, which led to sepsis, which then led to bleeding around his brain, causing several strokes and brain damage that he would never recover from. I want to be angry at myself, that my first initial reaction, regardless of it being my intuition, was that he wasn’t going to come home alive. But I can’t feel anything other than grief right now. I tried so hard to rationalize my first feeling away, I tried so hard not to be worried or concerned, I tried so hard to believe he was somehow going to pull out of this, even as things got worse and worse. I just kept telling myself he’d be fine. Being dead is so far from being fine. It’s the furthest thing away from it.

Craig was 33, just a year older than me. He has a 4-year-old son and a wife, who I believe is my age. I cannot even fucking imagine being widowed and left a single mom at the age I am at right now. I know his wife also lost her father a few years ago; he had a heart attack during Thanksgiving dinner. Joyce, Craig’s mom, is also no stranger to tragic loss. She lost a brother when she was a kid, I think she was like 8 or 9 and her brother was 12. They were walking home from school and he just dropped dead from a brain aneurysm. Now she lost her son in a similar way. I know she lost several close friends, and I think she was pretty young when she lost her parents. She has two other children; Craig was the oldest. Her youngest, Jason, who I believe is 25, has been struggling a lot with his mental health. I met Jason a few years ago when he joined a D&D group I was in with some friends. Craig was a new father at the time, his son was maybe 1 or so, and he had mentioned to me at work how hard it was and he felt like he barely got to go out anymore. Him being a nerd like myself, I invited him to join my group, and then eventually he had his brother join too. Jason didn’t stay in our group very long, maybe a few months tops, because of his severe anxiety. We all thought he was doing okay, but of course anxiety being an internal thing, it’s not always easy to tell. Jason has been struggling even more, his anxiety morphing into depression because of them having to put down their dog last year. Joyce said their dog was Jason’s best friend, and now he just lost his older brother. Last year on several different occasions, I gave Joyce some tips for helping Jason, since he hasn’t responded positively to any medication. One suggestion I gave her was pharmacogenetic testing, another was TMS Therapy, and the third was this video game therapy program (I forget the name at the moment). Both Jason and Joyce were really grateful for my help, and Jason even came into the office one day back in maybe late November/early December after a therapy session (he doesn’t drive and Joyce had to stop by the office). I could tell he was nervous but trying to open up, so I just started talking in the hopes I could help ease his nerves a bit. I think it worked, cuz before Joyce left to take him back home, he said we should all plan a game night where I can come over. I don’t know how I am supposed to do that now. It would just be so weird without Craig. But good God, Jason is going to need help more than ever now. Joyce was trying not to bury one son and ended up having to bury the other. This whole situation is so fucked. The only light I can see is that hopefully Joyce can help him in some way because she knows what it’s like to lose a brother. I was telling my friend Amanda some of this and she said Jason will need support now more than ever, and I know that. Just right now, it is so hard to see beyond my own grief for my friend, not knowing how I’ll be able to help when I am also grieving, but I know what I feel is absolutely nowhere near as devastating as it is for his family. My heart breaks for all of them.

This just doesn’t feel real to me. I haven’t known Craig a very long time, since 2018 I think. It wasn’t long after I started that he did too. He worked in my building first, out in the warehouse, so I got to interact and talk with him often. It was some time in 2021 he got a position in our other building, and then he left our D&D group to spend more time with his family since he usually worked long hours in his new role. He didn’t want to be a dad at first, but he did start to adjust to it better eventually. I was looking back over our work messages and we continued to talk at work throughout all of 2022, but it phased out in the new year. I occasionally got to see him at work, and I think the last time I saw him was the end of last summer. He worked from home the day of our Christmas party, so I would’ve seen him then but that didn’t happen. I had been thinking all of last year how I should reach out and eventually I did, on his birthday, September 8th, the same as my dad’s. I think that was the last time I talked to him. Joyce knows he shares a birthday with my dad, and what’s even more fucked up is our boss’s birthday is the day Craig passed, January 18th. We are both now going to be reminders of her dead son. Joyce hates it at our company (really don’t blame her tbh) and I know how she has been looking to leave for a long time now. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if at some point this year she turned in her resignation. Not only did she work with her son, but they all lived together: her, her husband, Craig, Craig’s wife & son, and Jason. Her daughter is the only one who doesn’t, as she lives with just her husband and her son. So not only does Joyce have to deal with Craig’s absence at work, she has to deal with it at home too. I just feel so sorry for her. I feel so sorry for everyone.

Craig was such a tough person. I really had high hopes that he was going to pull through. He was in a car accident a little over a decade ago that left him with brain damage and a lot of physical problems, but he wasn’t a complainer. He worked hard and didn’t let his pain get in the way. He even helped me move into my new apartment 3 years ago, and drove me to it in his Tesla, and then he helped my mom move like 6 months later. He had hit her neighbor’s car with the moving truck and since his dad is a mechanic, he promised to come back and fix it. Craig was a man of his word. He was a good friend. He was incredibly funny, though he said things with an ounce of dryness or sarcasm. He always had sassy comebacks that were either given in good faith with some playfulness underneath or said out of brutal honesty. The former was reserved for family and friends, the latter was reserved only for those who truly deserved it. He had a biting sarcasm that not everyone appreciated, but I found it funny. He was honest. He defended himself if you treated him poorly. He didn’t take shit from anyone. He would only tolerate things for so long before he would say you know what, I’m out, screw you. He looked just like Joyce. I’m pretty sure the first exact thing I thought when meeting Craig was, “Oh my God, he’s Joyce’s twin.” I remember one time at work he told me everyone called me his work wife, which I thought was weird because it wasn’t like we talked all the time, but I guess because I don’t talk to many people there, that’s why they came up with that. Apparently, some people, including his mom, even speculated we were having an affair. By that point, I had already survived affair rumors about Scott and I, so I was mostly unphased; people already thought I was some sort of homewrecker, so my reputation was already tainted beyond the point of salvation. Craig handled the situation a lot better than Scott had though. Scott was dismissive and mean towards me about it, but Craig’s attitude was more of a “Fuck ‘em” approach, which I appreciated, and it made me feel better despite another ridiculous rumor going around about me. Thinking about it now, I can only imagine what smartass comeback he had for people saying stuff to him about it. I can’t even begin to imagine what wildly insane reply he would have, but it makes me smile just knowing that that is how he would respond. I keep my friend group relatively small. The fact that Craig was a part of it says a lot. I am going to miss my honest, hard-working, funny friend.

It is so hard for me to wrap my head around all of this. I guess it always is when someone dies young, but even more so when that person especially it is hard to picture their light going out. I don’t know if they mis-diagnosed Craig with the flu at first, or if that is what he had and maybe something else on top of it. Joyce had only been online for a handful of hours for those several weeks, and even though she was texting Pete and I updates all the time, the info she gave was brief. When I would ask questions, I tried to limit it to one or two because I didn’t want to bombard her. Since then, I have given her her space, and I have only seen her in person 3 times this year, so there hasn't been a ton of interactions for more info to come up. I know Craig was pro-vaccine, because I remember talking to him about vaccines in the past. I don’t know if this year he missed his flu shot or if he just got seriously fucking unlucky. I don’t know. It’s just absolutely mind-boggling. This is also the first time I’ve lost a friend. I have lost some family members throughout my life, but this is just different. Friends really are the family you choose. Unlike family, friends are people you consciously let into your life. You choose to spend time with them, make memories, and genuinely enjoy each other’s company. It just hits a bit differently, losing a friend. This is a new experience for me.

One of my best friends, Amanda, lost her other best friend Cassie to brain cancer back in November. Cassie fought long and hard, despite there being no hope for her, and she extended her life another two-and-a-half years. Like Craig, she was only 33 when she died. She had first had cancer back when she was like 19 but was able to enter remission, and she found out at 31 she had cancer again when she went for a check-up because her and her husband planned on having a baby. She wanted to make sure everything was okay since she had been having some headaches, and ended up leaving with devastating news. I only met her once: she came to a donation-based yoga class I did for the Ukraine back in early 2022. During savasana, her and her husband held hands as they laid there. I had never seen any couples do that in class before and I thought it was really cute. I am 100% a believer in romantic soulmates and true love, and it just made my heart feel so warm. Amanda has told me a bit about their relationship and it seemed like they really had a healthy, loving, thriving partnership together. It makes Cassie’s story even that much sadder. Her and Amanda had been friends for probably as long as Stacy and I, and I couldn’t even imagine losing Stacy (or Amanda, who I’ve only been friends with for like 7 years). I put together a grief basket for her, which I was only able to give her right before Christmas. It included: a sticker (Amanda loves traditional tattoos, so the style was perfect for her), a grief notebook (I glued on the starfish since starfish were Cassie’s thing), a book on grief, a pocket hug (yellow, her current favorite color because her one son loves yellow so much), a Doodlebob pen holder (for shits and giggles, to break up the seriousness of everything), and of course a card. I put everything in a little basket, which wasn’t as fully thought through as everything else because as you can see below, it’s easy for stuff to fall out. Cassie got married on the beach and she had two tattoos of starfish below her collarbones. Amanda told me that the two of them designed her tattoos together. Amanda had a dream about starfish one night; there was a bucket of water in front of her with starfish swimming, but when she picked them up, they died. When she put them back in the water, they were alive again. She thought it was strange because she never remembers her dreams, but this one she remembered very vividly. Ian, Cassie’s husband, called her that same day, to tell her it was time to say goodbye. Cassie was gone I think about 12 hours later. Cassie had been unconscious already when Amanda had her dream, and Amanda believes she had been communicating with her in some way. I think so too.

The book I got for Amanda I found a PDF online of, just to make sure it would be a good fit, which it was. It wasn’t preachy, or dismissive, or religious; it gave actual decent, constructive advice, and every day came with an affirmation. I really wanted Amanda to have it before the new year started so that she could decide for herself when exactly she wanted to start it, since it’s a 365 day kind of book. Amanda’s wifi password has always been a Doodlebob-related thing, and that item randomly popped up when I was searching up grief items on Etsy. I knew I had to include it. The card is something similar to Amanda’s dream. I only briefly searched through cards before that one popped up. Before I even clicked on it, I had this instinctual feeling of “This is the one”. I had ordered from that particular Etsy shop before and really loved the cards, so I knew the quality would be good. It took me some time to decide on everything I ordered, and when I was ready to checkout with the card, I started to second-guess it, thinking maybe I should look back over my options just in case. I remembered that intuitive feeling I had though, and decided before I let my thinking mind get in the way that I was just gonna get it. The day it arrived in the mail I was so excited, as I already had planned what I was going to write in it. Well, I flipped the card over and started crying. On the back, near the bottom, were the astrological symbols for the sun, Aries, and Aquarius. Amanda is an Aries sun and Cassie was an Aquarius sun. I grabbed the previous cards I purchased and checked the backs, even though I already knew that they were all different, which they were. Some didn’t even have any symbols, the rest were all random, like this one, some of the signs being astrological as well and others not, like a peace sign. This Etsy shop has probably hundred of cards and only a handful for grief, and I don’t know how to calculate those odds of getting that particular random ass combination, but I know they’re very slim. I had asked Cassie a few times, just put it out there, to help me pick out only the best for Amanda, and here she was giving her confirmation that she helped. I told Amanda all this and we both cried. I think this is actually what hit Amanda the hardest. Amanda isn’t spiritual like I am, and she has her doubts about a lot of things, but she confided in me that losing Cassie helped her understand what it means like to still feel a person around you after they’re gone. She doesn’t know where Cassie is, but she knows she is still around, and I think my card helped her believe too that what she feels is real. Cassie is still here, she’s just no longer in her body.

I want to get something for Joyce, though I don’t know what yet. I had thought of getting something made with a picture of her and Craig on it, but I don’t know how I’d manage to do that. I’m friends with Craig on Facebook, but he doesn’t have many pictures, and the only ones of him and his mom are from his wedding, but there’s always other people in them. I am going to think about it a bit more this month. A few days after Craig passed, my mom chipped in with me to bring Joyce a catered meal from Olive Garden. It was the Tuesday before Craig’s viewing, and Joyce had the rest of the week off for bereavement. I didn’t want to stop by on any of her days off so she could have some space. She had worked from home that Monday and Tuesday, so I came by her house with the food after work. I had also picked up Thai for myself, and they invited me in to have dinner with them. I got to meet Craig’s wife and son for the first time, and Jason was also there. I stayed for a bit and it was nice. I had kept thinking for well over a week how badly I needed a hug, and Joyce was the first person I was able to receive a hug from. I don’t generally long for physical affection outside of romantic partnerships and with my pets, so this was out of character for me, but after hugging Joyce I did feel better and that yearning went away. Joyce’s husband wasn’t there because he was in the hospital since what happened to Craig also happened to him, except he recovered and is now in rehab. He wasn’t even able to say goodbye to his son. The more I think about this whole situation, the more I realize how fucked up it is. For everyone. Like it’s not even that Craig just died young; there’s all these fucking layers on top of it to make it so much worse.

Craig’s viewing was on January 27th. I had bought a new black dress right before the new year began, and I couldn’t have fathomed that the first time I’d wear it would be to my friend’s viewing. I didn’t want to arrive too early, so I got there about 15-20 minutes before the service was about to start. I had wanted to practice a speech just in case I had to speak, but then I thought I wouldn’t have to do that. Turned out, I did end up giving a little speech. Craig’s best friend had gone first, and he was an absolute mess, understandably. A few other people talked for maybe a minute or so. Then there wasn’t anyone else. I thought, This won’t do, Craig deserves better, and next thing I knew, my legs were walking me up to the podium. I mentioned the first time I met Craig and my first thought about him, which made Joyce bark out a laugh. I also mentioned how Craig helped me move and took me to my new apartment in his Tesla. I mentioned how he hit my mom’s neighbor’s car on her moving day, and how she didn’t think he would come back but he did because he was honest. It was a bit more fleshed out than that, but you get the gist. I did want to say more than I did though. I wanted to say what I put in my obituary condolence about how I was looking back over our work messages from the past few years, and no matter how the conversations started, he always somehow managed to bring the topic around to Star Wars or video games. I wanted to say how he joined my D&D group (which is Dungeons and Dragons for all you non-nerds out there) and how he was able to just be himself always, all the time, even when fully surrounded by people he was meeting for the first time. I wanted to say how generous he was, how hard-working, how tough. But I couldn’t continue. I kept looking over at his casket as I talked, which was a mistake, and being up in front of everyone with their eyes on me was just a bit more unsettling than I thought it would be. I started choking on my words, the tears were building up too much, and I had to end my short little speech that was only half of what I wanted it to be. Later on, it did get me thinking though, how I always remember meeting people for the first time that I either ended up becoming friends with or ended up dating. It’s like a part of me knows, hey this person will be important to you at some point. That inner knowing extends far beyond my capacity to always consciously recognize it.

There was a part of me, for the first few days after Craig’s passing, that was afraid, because you know, death always comes in 3’s, and both Cassie and Craig were 33. I’ll be 33 later this year, Amanda is already 33, and then I have a bunch of other friends who will be turning 33 either this year or next. I was really worried about a third death happening in my personal sphere. Then, one day I had remembered how my dad’s “girlfriend” (long story) has cancer, and I thought, Oh, maybe he will tell me she’s been in the hospital 33 days or something. I kid you not, 5 minutes after I thought that, my dad called me to say he was sorry about my friend, and then he tells me he just took his girlfriend home after she was in the hospital 33 days and that her cancer spread to her brain. I stopped what I was doing when he said that. There it was, the 33, and not only that, but the brain connection too. I know this is going to sound terrible, but I found some relief in that. Of course, I don’t like hearing about anyone dying or even being close to death, but my dad’s girlfriend has at least lived life almost twice as long as any 33-year-old. I do feel sorry, but I also know it was a sign telling me not to needlessly worry, and since then, I haven’t.

I have been thinking about death a lot lately, which I guess has to do with it hitting so close to home. I don’t want to get too much into my own personal beliefs here, but I do believe in reincarnation after a particular event that happened last year made me recognize that I’ve been here before. I was always open to the idea previously, but never fully committed to it prior to that event, which left me absolutely no wiggle-room to ever be unsure about it ever again. I also know that consciousness, that energy, never really dies, and that a person lives on, for however long, in some other world parallel to ours before coming here again. Or not. I am not sure that we all come back to earth. Maybe we get some say in the matter, that we can forever peace-out to some blissful afterlife or we can dive headfirst down into the chaotic wonder of being human again. I believe too, that we choose all of this, this life we have, at least to a certain degree, before we come here. Idk, I won’t pretend to fully know the afterlife rules. Saying all of that, I’ve thought about Craig, trying to find some relief in any of that, and I can’t. Regardless of whether he will one day get another life, his current life has ended, and that is still a tragedy. He won’t get this life back ever again. It was a one-time deal and now it’s gone for good. I’ve been thinking about that, and how his life was tragically short, and how we, as humans, always act like we have all the time in the world. We are so arrogant to think that we always have time, that being young somehow prevents us from meeting an early death. This is part of the reason why for the past year I have been trying desperately to find the right ADHD medication (more on this later). ADHD is possibly one of the biggest time-wasters there is, and I’m tired of living my life the way I am when I try so hard every goddamn day to use my time wisely and fail miserably because my brain doesn’t have all the chemicals it needs. This is why I am a bit frustrated with Chris at the moment (more on this later too). Like, we do not have all the time in the world!!! What are you waiting for!!!!???? Wake up!!!! There is no better time than the present to get things moving along!!! None of us know when our last day on this earth is going to be. Like why are we always waiting and waiting and waiting when literally the next day isn’t even guaranteed?? There is only the present moment always. That’s all there ever is. We are all foolish to believe we have an infinite amount of time before us. Time itself is endless, but it will end for each of us. At least on this physical plane. We’re not guaranteed 80 or 90 years on this planet. We don’t all get that lucky, and it’s time to really wake up to that fact if we haven't already.

This year so far has been pretty shitty. I was sick with a really bad virus two days before new years, and stayed sick two weeks into January. I didn’t even take off, which I think prolonged my sickness, because I didn’t want my boss to have to be by himself since Joyce was only working sporadically because of what was going on with Craig and her husband. That first week was brutal, and I feel bad because being sick kept me in my ego more than I like. I kept rationalizing that Craig would be fine, and I felt a bit bitter for having to work, even though really I could have just taken off a day or two and my boss would have been fine by himself. I am not usually like that, and I have some guilt over feeling that way while my friend was much worse off - dying, in fact. Then Craig passed, my illness faded into just a cough, and there was a week and a half where I was just grieving. Then two days after Craig’s viewing, I started not feeling well. Turned out I had contracted covid for the very first time in my life. I also realized a few days later that the day my symptoms started showing was the 9 year anniversary of my suicide attempt. Go figure. I took off the rest of the week, though I did try to work one day but felt too sick to continue. That leads us to this past week, where I having been slowly getting back to feeling better, but I continued to test positive up until Thursday, so yesterday was the first day in almost two weeks since I left my apartment. So yeah, that’s been my new year. A lot of people have been sick though, and my friend (Amanda) that I was supposed to see today has also been dealing with back-to-back illnesses in her own household. There have been some positives, mainly due to my utter determination to make big changes in my life this year. If not for my own attitude and determination, I’d feel way more dejected than I currently do. Amanda and I were supposed to see Lisa Frankenstein together, which I had invited Chris first to go see with me, but he never got back to me on it. I didn’t want to follow-up because while he said he would definitely go, a part of me knew it wasn’t a priority for him to make it happen, so as the movie date drew closer, I made plans with Amanda. I put out on Snapchat if anyone was able to go to to let me know since my friend had to cancel, and my one friend did say he could go if I changed the time, but after sleeping on it, I decided to just go alone. I really wanted to see the movie in theaters, but it’s only showing for a week, and for some reason while I originally wanted to go with someone special, albeit Chris or a good friend, in the end I just wanted to be alone. So I went to the movies by myself feeling okay, but then I left wishing I had someone *cough*Chris*cough* else there with me. The movie was so cute and it put me in a romantic sort of mood, I guess. I feel like being sick helped me not focus on too many things except maintaining a determined mindset to keep going despite current circumstances, but now that being sick is (hopefully) over, I am left with an empty feeling of sorts. I am not where I want to be, and my life currently has taken several turns that I wish it hadn’t: my friend is dead, my mental health is still a struggle, Scott has been reaching out to me again, and I’m fairly positive I somehow ruined things with Chris before they even began.

I already talked about Craig, and I don’t really have much more to say about my ADHD aside from the fact that I’m trying my best to find solutions and have only made a tiny bit of progress. I am finally getting the pharmacogenetic testing done, though it wasn’t covered fully by my insurance like I was led to believe, and I have had to wait to do it since I had covid. Nevertheless, I’m hoping it can help me find the right meds and dosage. This has been a struggle all my life, but I am determined to get to a balanced mental state where I can live as close to neurotypical as possible. It's going to happen this year because I am doing everything in my power to make it happen. I've also been researching and trying to find ways that I can help myself more. Some stuff hasn't stuck, but other things are showing potential, so I'm hopeful about that as well.

So I guess that leads us to Scott now. I was really hoping that by now this man would be completely irrelevant in my life, and for the most part, he is. The only internal connection I feel towards him is the lingering trauma I have from him, but now he keeps trying to reinsert himself into my life, which is partially my fault since I told him we could still be friends. When I told him last summer I didn’t want to try again, I made it very clear so that there was no room for him to interpret my words differently. I know that being direct is the best approach and that’s what I wanted to do since I didn’t want him to think there would ever be a chance of us happening again. Then, out of kindness, I said we could still be friends. I didn’t think he’d actually try to talk to me because he never put in much effort previously when we were in a “situationship”. (Side note: I really despise that word, but I don’t know what else to call our previous situation aside from that, so unfortunately that’s the word I have to use here.) Since then, he has occasionally responded to my snap stories when I post a selfie, sending me bitmoji stickers telling me I look good or whatever. I have always just responded with “Thanks!”, no emojis or anything beyond that, in the hopes that he will see that I truly do not have any feelings left. His birthday was back in January, and I remembered the day of, so I figured I would be nice and just tell him Happy Birthday. I should have known better, I really, really should have, but I guess I have yet to learn that being nice does not always pay off. After I wished Scott a Happy Birthday, he continued to message me, and then asked me for a selfie. Before responding, I remembered how it was a special birthday for him: it was his 50th. Then, with that knowledge, I told him no 😊. Stacy told me to send him a picture of Weasley’s butt, but he isn’t even deserving of that much. Scott then proceeded to message me for the next two Fridays asking if he could come hang out. I turned him down the first Friday by saying I had to get up the next day for Craig’s viewing and just wanted to rest and go to bed early. He didn’t know Craig had passed. I thought someone from my work would have told him since he’s still in contact with a bunch of people from there, but I guess not. Then he tried to be all supportive and whatnot, which annoyed me. He never previously gave a fuck about anything I went through and never had any kind encouragement when I was going through something. The fact that he treats me like I am some idiot is honestly what annoys me the most about him reaching out to me. I know he isn’t genuine and that he’s doing it in the hopes that eventually it will benefit him in some way. The second Friday he reached out, I told him I had Covid. He didn’t reach out yesterday, thankfully, but I do need to think about how I want to approach this if he asks again. So far, I have had legitimate excuses, but I do not know what I want to say next time. I still have his beers in my fridge; they are on my top shelf, which is as high up as it can go and therefore rarely gets used. Also, ADHD keeps me from not doing things I should do immediately, like dumping beers from a guy I used to see but no longer have any interest in reconnecting with. Actually, screw him. I’m gonna go dump them right now. Okay, I’m back. They were expired anyway, but while I was typing this I realized I truly do not want to see him again. I had toyed with the idea of just letting him come over so that I could make it clear, yet again, that I truly have zero interest in this being anything at all, but then I realized that I have already given this man so much of my time and I do not owe him any more of it. I want to work through the trauma and be able to move forward without worrying about this anymore.

This brings me around to Chris. I don’t think I’ve written about him since my last appointment, aside from posting about him telling me he’s single and that we should go out on a date. That was around mid-December. He did reach out to me when he saw me in my dress at my friend’s wedding, but beyond giving me a few compliments, he didn’t seem to have much interest in continuing the conversation. I reached out to him two times since then and pretty much got the same reaction from him. He is clearly not a phone person, which I already deducted, and that’s fine. I had tried to set up us meeting up twice so that I could get to know him better, but so far it hasn’t happened. Logically, I know it couldn’t have. It was the holiday season and then I have spent the entirety of this new year either physically sick or sick with grief, so it would have been impossible for us to meet up even if we scheduled something. Even if he really did want to see Lisa Frankenstein with me and we set it up, he might not have been comfortable being around me since I had covid, even though I tested negative two days ago. It was the way he responded to me asking him to go that has me confused, and I’m not sure if I’m overthinking it. He said he would definitely be interested in seeing something like that, that it’s cool it was playing near my apartment (which I mentioned), then he said he hopes we get snow and that he hopes I have a wonderful day. It was weird. It’s nice he told me to have a wonderful day, but then I’m wondering if he said that just to end the conversation. I’m not sure. I post on my Snapchat stories about once a week or so, and I noticed he hasn’t viewed any for at least the past month. I think I’m not going to post on there for awhile until I’m sure I won’t have any anxiety about this. I don’t know how to describe how I feel except as patiently impatient. I am not a patient person, but I will wait nonetheless, and I won’t be super obvious about my impatience. I don’t want my mind to continue to circle around to Chris, but I can’t help it. It just happens. I place a lot of focus on myself and my own life and making the improvements that I need to (or well, trying to, anyway), but my heart keeps guiding my attention back towards him. I am completely enamored, even now, despite there not being much contact between us. I know it can’t happen yet because I still have a few things to sort out, but my progress on those things has been painfully slow. I keep feeling like until those things are taken care of, nothing can happen with Chris either, which frustrates me. I am not even certain whether anything can happen between us at all. I am just hoping for the best at this point.

One of the biggest barriers is my lingering trauma from Scott. Scott always made me feel like I was asking for too much by wanting to talk to him or for him to come over. With Chris, this has manifested as me hesitating in reaching out too often, and it’s gotten to the point where I also feel like me reaching out is burdening or annoying him. To be clear, he hasn’t explicitly made me feel this way, he just usually doesn’t say much back to me or continue the conversations. Scott did explicitly make me feel this way. He always told me he couldn’t talk, and when I would ask him to come over, which I only ever did every few months or so, he’d hesitate and then say he was tired or whatever. It took me a long time to realize that he kept mentioning people from our work he had talked to, and then I finally saw the situation for what it was: it wasn’t that he was busy or didn’t have time, he just wasn’t making the time for me. It got to the point where I realized that I was at the very bottom of his list of priorities, coming last, behind everything and everyone else. I started to feel like he could bump into a stranger on the street and he’d make more time for them than he did for me. I don't expect to be anywhere near the top of someone's list if we're not even in a relationship, but I feel like it's okay for me to not want to be in the very last space. Scott made me feel like that was asking too much, and I haven't been able to shake that feeling despite the situationship with him ending a year and a half ago. He was only ever eager to reach out when he was horny and wanted some pictures, and those were the only times he could ever even spare me a compliment, if you could even call it that. He would just tell me I was “hot”, but I never actually felt that way. He didn’t ever make me feel pretty or valued, so his “hot” was always meaningless and unsexy. I’m glad we never had sex, at least. That probably would have done some damage too.

When Chris told me before he’s “busy”, of course my mind circled back around to all this. I always like to give people the benefit of the doubt, and I thought Chris was very much deserving of that. He was, at the time at least, the only full-time dental hygienist at his work since the other two quit, and I know he is on two hockey teams; both of these things he told me at my last appointment with him. There have been so many parallels between the two situations with them, which has been really confusing for me. I am not sure if it all has been unfortunate coincidences or if it’s really the same stuff repeating all over again. There’s been so many things that I don’t think I could remember them all even if I tried to list them all out right now. That being said, they are two completely different people, which is great for Chris. I feel like I can trust him, and I never felt that way with Scott. With Scott, the deceitfulness and the selfishness, while shocking to me at the time, lined up with who he is. I don’t know Chris that well, but being this deceitful, selfish person just doesn’t fit him. At all. I could tell from day one that he is a genuinely good guy, and that was something I felt before I was even willing to acknowledge my romantic interest in him. Also, both situations have been incredibly different as well, even despite the comparisons my mind keeps making. I want to stop thinking about it and just focus on healing. There are some meditation techniques I want to practice to help me out, and journaling is always super cathartic. So is writing poetry, but I haven’t yet gotten around to the poem I want to write to process everything with Scott. Hopefully soon.

It’s weird because I am always a what-is-this-trying-to-teach-me person, but I haven’t been able to do that in quite some time. I think I am just tired. I have been single for over 6 years now, mostly by choice to focus on improving myself, and while I haven’t regretted that choice at all, I am kind of tired of it at this point. I don’t want to just be with anyone, because that would never satisfy me, but I am ready to grow alongside someone now. I don’t think I am 100% there yet, as I’ve already mentioned, but I’m getting there. It’s just my impatience again, asking “Are we there yet?” despite there being a few more miles until we reach our exit. I really am at a loss for words on how to describe this feeling. I wouldn’t say I’m lonely because that’s not entirely accurate. It’s more of a type of yearning, I guess. I don’t know why, but I have felt this really strongly since my last appointment with Chris. It’s strange. I feel like it has probably been building since I first met him, but for whatever reason after seeing him last time, it has reached its full capacity. It is like this low hum now that is constant. I can’t turn it off. Even when I’m not thinking about Chris and am preoccupied with my day-to-day life, it is a feeling that is still there all the time. I always feel this way; even if I’m not consciously acknowledging it, it’s always there. I can’t make sense of it to be honest. I have never felt this way before and I don’t know what to do about it. I’ve been asking myself recently what I can do, what lesson is here, trying to get myself back into that mindset, but the only thing I can come up with is to keep working on myself. But I’ve been doing that and it hasn’t changed anything, so then I think maybe it’s not that, but that I have to find peace on my own first. I have to shift into a certain state, and then everything will right itself. I have done that before, so I know I can do it again, it’s just that the previous time I was able to make that internal shift, it went to hell because covid happened. I didn’t build up a strong enough foundation to sustain that state while a worldwide pandemic happened and I was trapped inside 24/7 with my abusive mother. That’s understandable though, but this time I know I need to make that shift permanently, to give myself the tools and build the foundation well this time so that I can withstand anything. I won’t be immune to life’s happenings, but I will be able to face them and approach them from a place of love. I don’t want to think about the outcome of that, of whether that is the key needed to me finally moving forward romantically, but there is this part of me telling me that once I do get there again, everything will begin working out, better than I can even currently imagine. I find that once I even start thinking about any outcomes at all, I don’t even care, then I remember that any life benefits I get from that isn’t even the point. The point is my existence. The point is me reaching that place because that’s what I need, and that’s what the world needs. That’s what matters more than anything else. In those moments where I do remember that purpose, everything feels okay again. I’m going to be okay. I know I’m going to be okay.

Edits: Adding my edits down here because it's too much effort atm to go back through and find where to add them. I want to clarify a few things, the first being that saying I'm frustrated with Chris isn't entirely accurate. I don't mean that in the way it sounds. The more appropriate word would probably be "disappointed", though I guess that also doesn't sound great lol. I would feel much better about things if there was even the tiniest bit of communication. He mentioned a date, interacted with me a few more times, and now has seemingly dropped off the face of the earth. I would wait for as long as he needs, but knowing why I am waiting would help with that. I just really don't like disappearing acts, because then I start to wonder if I did something wrong, or if he lost interest, or if there's someone else, or if I'm just being ghosted. I could ask, which I briefly considered, but idk how "what's the hold up" would sound in a message. I don't want to sound impatient or pushy, especially because I am willing to wait, but leaving me completely in the dark after showing so much interest in me is also kinda a shitty thing to do. I would be understanding no matter what it is. On the flipside, I am still appreciative of this time to tie up some lose ends in my life and tackle some lingering problems that would affect me starting anything with anyone. So there is still that.

Right now more than anything, I'm frustrated with myself. So many things have been dragged out for so long, despite my determined efforts to move forward. I am trying to be more patient and understanding with myself, because honestly, I'm the person I need to give that to the most. This week I have been trying to really give myself to space to process things I haven't been able to because of all of the chaos going on since at least last summer. It's difficult, but only because it's hard to find the time right now. I fell behind on so many things since I have spent 4 out of 6 weeks this year physically sick and incapable of doing pretty much anything. I've been doubling up on trying to get stuff done, which doesn't always happen because of my ADD, but even when it does, there's still a mountain of things to take care of, more than there was previously. I feel like there's so many big things I'm trying to tackle, especially in regards to processing past traumas, which I started years ago. There has been so much trauma in my life that untangling it all, processing it, and healing it is pretty much a non-stop ongoing thing. Then there's my mental health, with me trying one medication after another to try and find something that fits, and even then, ADHD meds are so high-risk, it's a tug of war in my brain trying to determine if it's worth it. But then I see the tiniest improvements where I can function at even the smallest fraction of a how neurotypical person does, and Idk how I can ever go back to unmedicated. It makes me want to cry. I have spent my entire life battling mental illness, and there seems to be no end to trying to stabilize myself. I had my first panic attack when I was 6, then eating disorders started a few years later, then the depression, which I think was secondary to something else, then the ADD for as long as I can remember. I see very clearly how I have really never been thriving, but that's only because I spent so much of my life focused on surviving. I didn't get to start at the same starting point as many others because of my brain. And I'm tired. I'm so tired. I just sent back my swab today for my pharmacogenetic test. I'm hoping those results can help me find the better balance of meds that will work for me. I still would like to try Strattera again, but my psych wants to hold off on that for the time being. Taking natural stuff is a difficult path to navigate because I'm on a TCA, which interacts with so many things. Even the ADHD meds I can be on are very limited because of interaction risks. I need the TCA for my bladder though, so as of right now, I can't be off it. Maybe one day, but my current finances don't leave me a ton of room right now to navigate testing a ton of products to see what works and what doesn't. Plus, I'd also have to be prepared to tackle my anxiety and depression completely naturally if I went off the TCA, which I am also not currently equipped to do. Everything is just such a long process, and everything interconnects. I don't plan on staying on all these meds the rest of my life, but as of right now where I'm currently at, I really, really, really could use full functionality like I've never known before. It would help me out incredibly with so much of what I'm currently trying to get in order.

I'm also trying to implement new routines and habits, make time for things I love, and tackle decluttering, organizing, and maintaining my entire living space. I'm also doing this thing where I'm writing a new poem everyday this year, which I've somehow kept up despite the days I was really sick. Those were haiku days lol. But I also would love to speed along my more personal poems that I've been writing for forever to process past traumas. Writing poetry really helps me think over, process, and get out everything I need to, so it's a great healing tool for me. My problem is that I mull over each word, making sure everything is accurate to how things how happened, and that the overall feeling of the poem accurately captures the essence and energy of that time in my life. It's not stuff I can write in a day and be done with. Also, I overthink everything, if that wasn't already apparent lol. I think I might seriously take a vacation in March if I'm feeling mentally well enough where I know I can be healthily productive with my time off.

Anyway, I feel better adding in all these little tidbits that have been sitting on my brain that I didn't get to the first time around. I think there was more. Actually, there was definitely more, but I'm too tired right now to think or care. I'll deal with those thoughts later. Editing officially over. 😎

#yay super duper long post #personal #craig #amanda #chris #we are only like 6 weeks into the new year and it has been absolutely insane #i need like 12 vacations #back to back #i was skimming this back over and need to do some hella edits later #no one read this yet plz lol #if anyone actually does #okeeee #edits are done #added at the end

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