The past year of my life has been one of pretty serious turbulence and upheaval.....again. The entire status quo of the previous 6 years evaporated nearly in an instant when my mother passed away early last June. Mom left absolutely everything to me and I found myself financially solvent for the first time since I moved to Kauai. That's not to say that mom's death wasn't difficult for me since she was the largest (but not only) source of abuse during my childhood and I had an extreme amount of conflicting emotions regarding our relationship. The circumstances of my relationship with my mother were extremely volatile and complex, something most anyone outside of abuse survivors wouldn't be able to understand or appreciate. This wasn't the first major death in my immediate for me within the previous 5 years though. I lost my only sibling to suicide 4 years prior to mom's death and also was an extremely complex event for me to deal with.
It is during that summer following Carly's suicide that my best friend started to complicate things for me. I'm not going to name my friend because I think it would be unfair to do so without his explicit permission, which I have no intention of asking for. I'm just going to refer to him as "my friend from Spokane" during this post.
I met my friend from Spokane back in 2001 when we students doing our clinical internships at one of the hospitals in Spokane. It turned out that we both had an interest in mountain biking and skiing/snowboarding and we spent a fair amount of time doing both activities together up until my wife and I's decision to move to Kauai. It should also be known that my friend was a big enough part of my life that he was a member of my wedding entourage. As I've mentioned several times in previous blog posts, my marriage fell apart within weeks after moving to the island and my wife ended up moving back to Spokane while I remained on the island. Though I did my best to keep our separation and eventual divorce as amicable as possible, my now ex-wife had no such intentions and she basically made all of our mutual friends choose sides.......and most everyone sided with her, which is perfectly okay. My friend from Spokane and his wife were pretty much the only friends from that period that stuck with me and they even came to visit me on the island (the only people to do so other than my sister when things fell apart at the end of my stay on Kauai). This is something that I will be eternally grateful for, it was so nice to be around familiar company at the time and I genuinely enjoyed all of the activities we did together during their visit.
My friend from Spokane was there for me when I crash landed back on the mainland and he picked Jack and myself up at the airport in Seattle and drove us back to Spokane. I ended up settling in Missoula shortly thereafter. Both he and his wife are from Missoula and both of their families still live here, which meant I would see the two of them at least every other month and I would occasionally go over to Spokane to visit with them. My first year in Missoula was a pretty dark one for me, I was completely in debt, I didn't have a comfortable living space, and I carried a lot of shame from the divorce and failing to make things work on the island. As a result of all of this, I fell into a pretty deep depression and gained about 20 pounds during that first year. I went back to mountain biking that following spring and went a time or two with my friend. It was at this point that he started making comments about my lifestyle choices and weight issues. These were subtle at first and I'm only aware of all of this in hindsight.
Carly took her life in late May of that spring and that naturally had a huge impact on me. My friend was familiar with my sister's troubles from conversations I had with him about the subject. In fact, I had mentioned some time in the early 2000's that I was pretty sure that Carly was going to succeed in taking her own life within the next 5 to 10 years. Now, though we were good friends and I told him a lot of intimate things in confidence, I wouldn't describe my friend as the most compassionate or emotional individuals that I have ever met.......which is fine, some people are just that way and I accept him for it. However, he had a very difficult time in understanding the complexities of my emotions involving Carly's death and how much I was grieving at the time. At one point in time, in what would become one of the coldest things anyone has ever said to me, he said that he didn't understand my emotions or grief on the subject since I had been saying for years that I thought Carly was going to take her life at some point in time. Though this was indeed a very cold thing to say to anyone in grief, I would never say that it was a statement he made out of malice, it was just a statement from someone who is not emotionally sensitive, has ever suffered a loss, or has never had a life changing negative event occur to them. My friend grew up in a normal home, free from abuse and I don't think he ever suffered any bullying at the hands of classmates. To be honest, I don't think he had any reference for any of the complex experiences I've had growing up and I don't think he was capable of processing the things I experienced on the island, or the fallout from my time there.
It's at this point that I should say that I've known all of these things about my friend, but I've always accepted them because it is who he is. Though I am bitter about things I'm about to say here, I will always defend my friend's character because though he is not very emotional or compassionate, he is a very nice, genuine and intelligent man.
Exactly one month after Carly's death, I went out late one evening for a mountain bike ride with Jack on a trail that I am very familiar with. I was very emotional at that point and I really pushed things on the downhill in an attempt to purge some of the intense feeling I was having. Well, I clipped a rock, went over the handlebars, and broke my right arm along with several ribs because of how aggressively I was riding that night. This meant I spent all of my summer grieving my sister, unable to get out and enjoy the weather, nursing an arm with a new plate in it, and waiting for my ribs to mend.......which meant I put on another 15 or so pounds and I fell even further into a near crippling depression. I finally shed my arm cast about 3 days before my trip to Dave Matthews Band at the gorge with my then girlfriend. That trip proved to be a serious disaster for me and I returned home almost despondent from everything that had transpired over the previous 4 months. My friend and his wife came over to Missoula about 3 weeks later to attend a Michael Franti concert with me. We had a pretty good time at the show but when I was purchasing a concert shirt after the show, he made note of the fact that I had gotten a XXL shirt and mentioned "You are going to do something about that, right?" Needless to say I was extremely embarrassed and more than a little hurt. To make things even worse, I saw the two of them in the parking lot of a grocery store then next day and he inquired if I had gone mountain biking that day. I explained that I had not since I was working a graveyard shift that night and needed to rest up for it that day. He called me a "lazy fuck" on the spot. Stunned beyond words, I bid them goodbye. Needless to say, I didn't speak to him for a couple of months after that incident. He did eventually call and apologize, but combined with his comments about Carly's death, the damage had been done and my opinion of him along with my willingness to talk about any sensitive issues with him changed dramatically. I had forgiven him, but his words continue to hurt and haunt me to this day.
Things with my long distance girlfriend exploded the following year and with it came serious thoughts of harming myself on a regular basis. He did his best to try to support me during this time, especially during my two hospitalizations and subsequent 6 week stay at an intensive outpatient mental health center in Seattle. We did have a couple of rough episodes though. He came to Missoula one weekend insisting that I go up skiing with him and his friend up at the local ski resort. I had completely lost interest in winter sports before moving to the island and didn't want to go at all, especially since I was completely out of shape and severely depressed at the time. He absolutely insisted that I go with them (because of the weight issue again) and it was pretty much a complete disaster for me.
I came home from the program in Seattle in the best frame of mind that I had been in in over 5 years, possibly the best I had ever been in my entire. I went back to mountain biking with an energy and enthusiasm I hadn't seen since I had been in college in Bozeman. He was pleased by this and came over to ride with me numerous times........though he would push absolutely as hard as he could, which is not something I appreciate at all. I ride to have fun, not to be pushed to go harder so I can lose weight. It got to the point that I didn't want to ride at all with him because of the anxiety it caused me and I even cancelled a trip over to Spokane to go riding with him and a friend of his (someone who I've never liked).
It should be noted that my current physical condition causes me a tremendous amount of anxiety and shame. I weighed 100 pounds less than I do today back in 1994 and I was in really good shape all up to and including my time on the island. Since coming home, I have been assaulted with one major event after another and the severity of my underlying mental illness has increased exponentially. I went from kind of having mental illness problems to crossing over into non-functional territory over the last 6 years. I'm fat, there is no sugar coating my physical condition and my friend's visible displeasure with this has been a constant source of anxiety for me. His pressure for me to constantly be mountain biking, in the gym, and/or rigorously hiking with the dogs had driven me to the point of completely abandoning mountain biking over the last two years because I felt I had to go as much as possible or he was going to be angry with me. It even got to the point where I would lie to him as to what my activities were to avoid his displeasure over the year preceding my mother's death. By the time last spring had arrived, I had gotten to the point that I was trying to avoid contact with him altogether because of the anxiety it would give me and the extent I felt I needed to lie to him.
The news of my mother's terminal cancer and 6 to 8 month prognosis once again shattered the very tenuous stability I was able to maintain in life at that point. The last time I saw my friend was in early March, a few days after I had gotten the news about mom. My relationship and feelings regarding my mother were even more complicated that those that I had about my sister. At the time, I didn't want to have anything to do with trying to take care of mom in her dying days (please don't judge, there are very, very painful reasons for this involving how I was treated by her growing up with severe asthma). I'm not even sure why I even bothered to discuss any of this with my friend since I knew he was unable to showing any sort of compassion, understanding or support toward me on this very complicated subject. Worse than that, he made numerous references toward my weight and questioned me on my activity levels and how much I was getting out with the dogs.
At this point I was now becoming very resentful toward him and very afraid of his judgements (perceived or real) of me. I came to my senses over what I was going to do about mom's suffering and decided that I was going to take family medical leave from work to stay with her in Helena until she passed away. During this two month period I didn't hear once from my friend in Spokane, which was a very difficult time for me because of all the issues I was facing. Mom passed away a few days before I was going to take my leave and I didn't bother to call my friend and tell him because I was so afraid of what he would say to me.......because I wasn't doing anything for exercise at all.
I finally got a phone call from him about 4 days after the funeral. I had posted a picture of myself dressed in a tie for the funeral (something that I never wear) on my Instagram account mentioning the funeral and put he 2 and 2 together about what had. That phone call was a little surreal, I hadn't heard from him in months, a LOT had occurred during that time, and I was in a very strange place at the time. Of course he asked about what I had been doing for exercise, which really got under my skin, almost to the point of me telling him to go fuck himself. He told me to make sure to get out and mountain bike with the the dogs and to keep in touch......which was now an extremely remote possibility on my part. The last time I heard from was a week later he texted me asking me how the mountain biking in Helena was going. I told him I was far too busy to do anything of that nature. You know, because I was far too busy going through everything at mom's condo, taking care of the estate, and all the other small things one has to do when a major family member dies and you are the only living heir.
That was almost a year ago now and I'm still very hot under the collar about all of it. I've struggled really hard over the last year and I've pretty much done it all alone. Things finally came completely unglued for me back in January and I had to take a leave of absence from work. I went back too early, nearly lost my job in a very unfortunate and unprecedented incident where there were no clear guidelines or policies about what course of action should be taken in that kind of situation. The lab manager came hunting for my head and showed an impressive amount of zeal while assassination my character. I'm almost completely alone save from a few online interactions via Facebook........and I trust absolutely no one. During all of this time I haven't heard from my friend even once......and it hurts. Worse yet, I'm scared to death he is going to show up out of the blue and be more than happy to express his displeasure with me over being fat.
My subconscious mind tells me that I have no right to feel hurt or angry with him. It tells me that I deserve to be punished and/or abandoned by him because I'm fat and am too lazy to do anything about it. My subconscious mind also tell me that I finally ran off the last of my friends and that I have finally fulfilled my destiny of being completely alone. I could deal with all of this if another part of my mind wasn't so pissed off over being pressured, judged and eventually abandoned by another person who was important to me. I could call him up and express my feelings to him, but that has always proven to be a disastrous idea in the past. I can't seem to move on from it either, I obsess about it nearly every day. The worst by far is that I ran into his brother this week at restaurant, just by chance. I knew this was going to happen eventually, but that doesn't mean I was even remotely ready for it. "Hey Jon, when was the last time you heard from Matt? Did you know he bought a BMW?".......... I've never wanted to run away so much in my life. I spoke the truth though, that I hadn't heard from him since very shortly after my mom had passed away. I also mentioned that he hadn't been very happy with me and my lifestyle choices for quite some time. His brother mentioned that I should just call him. I should call him? I should call HIM? Yes, that sounds like an absolutely STERLING IDEA, how about I do that right now so you can listen to him ask me how much I've been mountain biking with the dogs so I can be less fat than I am now. HOW ABOUT NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In fact, your brother can GO FUCK HIMSELF.
Here's what I really want to say to my so called friend. Fuck you. Fuck you and your easy fucking life. Fuck you and your lack of understanding and compassion. Fuck you and your "happy" little marriage. Did I ever mention how I feel sorry for your poor wife? Judging from the utter lack of compassion that you've shown me over the last 5 years, I'm guessing you must reserve all of it for her emotional needs. NOT. I've watched you unfairly push her to lose weight over the last 10 years. In fact, I've always wanted to ask her what it's like to be married to a man who has the emotional depth and maturity of the average slime covered rock you find in the mud at the bottom of a fucking swamp. She must be sensationally happy with your marriage. Have you ever even considered her wants or emotional needs? I'm sure you have been more than happy to push her to lose as much weight as possible and make her feel less than attractive and undeserving of your nonexistent love. I can't even begin to imagine what any sort of intimate contact you have with her. Have you ever even made love to her? I'm sure you read a manual on the subject and followed the procedure down to the last letter, minus all of the emotion, tenderness, and connection you are supposed to show to her. Oh yeah, fuck you and all the new and expensive fucking toys you flaunted in my face over the last 6 years. Being completely broke, it's not like I was sensitive about those sort of things. Finally, fuck you for abandoning me, it's not like I need people in my life who accept and understand me for who I am. Up until now, I've always done that for you. I hope some day your fucking life comes crashing down around you......and doesn't let up for a 7 year period. I hope you get an intimate experience for what it's like to get tossed around so badly by life that you don't know which way is up, or what you even stand for anymore. I hope you find yourself in a brand new city, with no money, nowhere to live, a brand new job and nothing other than the shirt on your back, your dog, and your car. I hope you look around for support from people, only to find that it isn't there at all. I hope those people you look to for that support either judge you, betray you, or abandon you at the worst moment possible.I hope you wind up fatter than I am right now and that your own wife will treat you with derision because you are too "lazy" to do anything about it. I hope you get to feel what it's like to wake up each day without any sense of fucking hope whatsoever, knowing that you are always going to be alone, and waiting for that fateful day when you finally muster up the courage to take your own life......and when you've experienced all of that for yourself, I hope you come crawling back to ask for my help and forgiveness. Here's the rub, after I finish telling you how much of an insensitive asshole you've been to me and how much pain you've caused me....... I'll offer you my hand and help you get back up on your feet, because that place is exactly where I live every single day and I know what it's like when no one is there to help you. Ultimately I would do that for you because despite all of the things that have occurred in my life, I've learned what compassion is, how important it is, and how to show it to people.....even the ones who have injured us the most.
No comments:
Post a Comment