May

Twelve years ago my little sister committed suicide by hanging herself the night of the 25th of May. My parents discovered her body and my entire existence crumbled, everything I thought I knew about the world and about myself shattered when I heard their screams. And now, every May, I am a walking bruise. My emotions swim so close to the surface that even the tiniest jab causes me to bleed and scream out in pain. Sometimes, like this time, I make it through the entire first week before something makes a tiny enough crack in my defenses to allow the darkness back in. Being a suicide survivor fucking sucks. I try to tell myself that her death made me who I am, it taught me compassion and empathy and showed me just how strong you need to be to make it in this life. It showed me that I have the ability to be that strong, to be a soldier, but I've also learned that I can't and shouldn't be that soldier all the time. I should live behind towering thick walls just to keep myself safe, I should let myself be vulnerable and feel and love with everything that is in me. Because I know better than most just how short life is, and how quickly the ground beneath your feet can drop out from under you without warning. I try to live for both of us and I've tried to live May that way, to look at it as a celebration of her life and the time she spent in this life with us. I try but I always fail miserably. Something puts that chink in my armor everything corrodes and breaks down and I'm left being that terrified 16 year old girl in her whimsical skirt, standing in the middle of that polished wooden floor in and empty room, listening her to her parents scream and rage and break, praying that this is a joke or a mistake, something that will be fixed because nothing so wrong and so awful could possibly happen to someone as normal and mundane as us. But they carried my childhood away in a body bag that day and she never came back. I still dream of her, 12 years later. My subconscious refuses to let her go so she's always there, by my side, throughout my strange, mundane, nonsensical dreamscape. Sometimes we are both kids again, sometimes she is the age she was when she died at 14, and sometimes she's older, like it never happened. And she is with me in my dreams when I'm driving to the grocery store, or standing in the center of a busy road butt naked, or playing putt putt golf in Kalamazoo, or running late with me for our French class. And then I wake up. Every morning I wake up and I get so fucking angry at my brain for doing that to me. I know she is gone, I know she isn't coming back, but in my dreams... in my dreams I don't. Sometimes, in my dreams, when she first appears I am angry and I give her the cold shoulder and dream me doesn't know why and is confused at this anger and sense of betrayal she feels. Sometimes Jessie apologizes. Sometimes dream me just tells her how happy we are that we saw the signs and saved her in time. We're so glad that, even though there was that close call when we thought she'd taken herself from us, that somehow we made it through.
And then I wake up. And for a split second I still feel that, I feel that relief that even though we almost lost her, we were able to get to her in time, to save her, and she and we are all so grateful that she is still with us. And then that split second slips away and with it all of the security and warmth I was wrapped in until that day in 2004. Now I'm covered in lacerations and scars and I'm filled with so much darkness and pain, so much sadness and even more regret. no matter how much light I let into my life nothing will ever be able to banish this shadow within me, this gaping hole that she left behind. And I'm so pissed. Hurt, Betrayed. Crest fallen. Shattered. Lost. Hopeless. I'm 16 again, for the month of May. I'm the terrified girl who called 911 while her parents imploded and told the dispatcher that something was wrong with her little sister because I just couldn't believe that she could be dead. Dead is so final. Dead wasn't a possibility or an option.
But she is. She's dead. I am the shattered pile of debris left behind and anyone who tries to sweep up my pieces winds up cutting themselves on my sharp edges and my apologies are bandaids when we all know the only was to keep yourself from being sliced is to leave the debris where it lay and head for safer land.

Not again...

I think I've discovered why I feel such an intense anxiety every night when I lay down to sleep... being bipolar I never know just which version of myself I'll be when I wake in the morning. And though I'm not always the biggest fan of myself when the lights go out I know that I'm capable of being so much darker,  so much more broken.  I can't be that me again,  I won't survive it a second time. 

Can I please be normal now?  I've played my part,  I've aced my lines,  the audience believes I am this funny, social, well dressed, stable, mature woman. A banker of all things.  They don't see the terrified little girl who resides within my mind. Disorganized,  creative, erratic, loud, irresponsible, broken, depressed, lost. They can't hear the sound of her screaming over my well rehearsed portrayal of normal. 

So please. I've earned it. Please let me stop fighting myself,  I'm so exhausted,  I feel ancient after fighting so many internal wars. I'm bleeding, always bleeding, the wounds are artfully hidden beneath my carefully constructed facade. I want to be free and safe, I want to be optimistic,  I want to smile and mean it. 

Please.