Things Fall Apart

"Life is always on the edge of falling down again."
~The Noonday Demon*

the tipping point: [definition] The tipping point is the critical point in an evolving situation that leads to a new and irreversible development. By analogy, when a small amount of weight is added to a balanced object, it can cause it to suddenly and completely topple....

Wow. If anyone still reads this blog, please know that I'm here and have not fallen off the face of the earth. Not literally anyway, but I'll explain more later. I have 3,729 unread messages in my inbox. Have not checked, read, nor sent an email or read a blog in a little under four months. The reasons are complex and varied, but suffice it to say that I was already barely hanging on after lil' sis' murder trial. Had a lot to process. Then, some other stuff happened, then some other stuff. Then some more stuff...

And then came a day, a few months later, (August 2nd to be exact), when I got the news that my baby cousin, our Justin, our 25 year old Justin, handsome, compassionate, intelligent and about to obtain his mechanical engineering degree Justin - had been senselessly murdered in Atlanta (same place as lil' sis), and that I had another good-bye to attempt, another funeral to attend, another fresh deep jagged wound for my family to try to stumble through, and another new set of motives and circumstances and crime scene reconstructions, hitting walls over this backwards ass "NO SNITCHING" ghetto mentality. New detectives, preliminary reports, felony murder charges, trial dates, all the familiar horror...and something inside my core snapped. It was all just too much. Half a decade of continual loss and death and grief. All these attempts to hang on to this slipping down life, to collapse, to get up, only to be knocked down again. Again. And again and again. Yes, the world breaks everyone. And it finally broke me.

On that day I made two announcements. The first one, to be expected. The latter, scared the shit outta everyone. Including me.

Number #1: Fuck Atlanta. Fuck Georgia. Fuck the whole goddamn state and every other state that touches it's borders. Fuck anything associated with Georgia. I'm done. That place has snatched too much of my precious blood. I don't give a fuck how irrational it sounds. So just fuck it.

and,

Number #2: I give up.

Not even feeling as if I had anything left to prove, the kids and I flew back East to grief and family and funeral - then I simply came home, got in bed, and didn't get up for a month. A relative came to take care of me and the kids. I slept, drank Vodka, sobbed until I threw up, drank some more, refused to eat, and took too many but not enough pills. I just wanted to sleep. I sat up one hazy afternoon, amazed I was still alive. By then it was September.

Things had fallen apart; again. Gradually, then suddenly. And this year, even a trip to Jamaica hadn't saved me.

Hence, the disappearance.

Though I won't even say I'm back - just checking in. The lady who lets me be lost on her sofa every week (my therapist) suggests that I try to start writing again. This is the soft encouragement she gives after reminding me all of this is normal after suffering a "major grief-triggered depressive breakdown," with a fair amount of "post-traumatic stress" to go along with it. (All these fancy words and phrases for going crazy, nowadays.)

So I have graduated from just trying to get out of bed and brush my teeth, to taking regular showers, to coming out of my room, to speaking without crying or shouting uncontrollably. Not without the help of a whole lotta love, and whole lotta doctor's prescriptions. (the legal dope- pills.) All of it has been a humbling, frightening experience, my closest slip into pure madness. Because of it, I've alienated a bunch of folks this go around; I became impossible and simply dropped off the map with no indication of a return. A few great friendships have been tested and deeply frayed. Normal conversations still remain amazingly tedious. When I'm able, I'll communicate what I can to them..and just hope.

But you are never the same once you have acquired the knowledge that there is no part of your life that cannot crumble..you must let go and understand that the world will be re-created and may never again resemble what you knew previously...*

So, a painful progress had been sort of achieved now, I guess. Phone calls and voice and e-mails still give me an unnerving amount of anxiety. I can text, though. And eat salad. Get up. Walk the dog. That I can do.

Re: writing again: I tell my therapist: I'm sick of writing about pain. I don't wanna be that tragedy chick. You know, that person who seems to go through it..again..and again, and again and again; that person(s) you lightweight stay away from just in case their shit is contagious.

What do you want, then? she keeps asking me.

I don't know, I keep telling her. I liked it better when I didn't have to think or want. But I suppose now, since I'm up and wandering around - maybe it means I'm trying to find out. Maybe.

Until again,

Be well, Blogger Fam.

~Supa