To Love and Let Go

by Rachel Brathen

  • • •

  At some point in our lives, whether we like it or not, we are going to find ourselves face-to-face with the very thing we fear the most. That’s the thing about fear; we can’t ignore it. It guides us to all the places we are trying to avoid and we can’t escape it however hard we try. We try to keep our fears at a distance but they stay within arm’s reach; close enough to maintain the ideas we have of ourselves but far enough away to pretend they don’t affect our lives. But they do.

  I was faced with a fear that week I never in a million years thought I’d have to encounter. Still, I was expecting it. Somewhere deep inside I knew it was coming. My heart had been trembling with terrified anticipation, waiting for this moment to come for more than twenty years. It happened. My entire body was stiff with shock. Everything hurt. But I was alive.

  A few days later I was sitting on a small wooden deck, trying to write and process and meditate. I felt like my heart had been thrown into a washing machine—I didn’t know which side was up anymore. In the scope of a few months I’d had surgery, lost my best friend, lost my grandmother, buried my dog, and almost lost my mom to suicide. As the sun rose, I wrote in big letters across the page: “IS THERE A REASON THIS IS HAPPENING TO ME?” The pain sitting inside of my chest was so big for a moment, I feared it would suffocate me. It was unbearable—I couldn’t take it. Out of all the moments of pain I’d experienced throughout the past year—and there had been so many—this one was one of the worst. I felt something worse than sadness; I felt numb. My heart was a big, cold empty space. Suddenly, the deck was filled with specks of light. It was everywhere; tiny glimmers of light glittering across the wooden floor. Immediately, I pulled a deep, full breath all the way into the bottom of my lungs. As I exhaled, I looked out at the ocean. The first rays of the sun were rising from the horizon and were hitting a wind chime hanging in a tree branch above me, illuminating the deck. This was the light that had followed me since Andrea died. The light I’d seen again and again, during my most challenging moments. I put the pen down and sat in quiet meditation for a long time, allowing the numbness to stay as it was. I reminded myself that the biggest pain always came from resisting it. I took a deep breath, feeling it all. When I opened my eyes the sky was a warm orange, golden clouds passing above me. It was one of those sunrises that stay with you; a remarkably beautiful one. I stayed there for a long time, letting the light warm my skin. I picked up my notebook again, looking at the sentence I’d just written across the page. IS THERE A REASON THIS IS HAPPENING TO ME? What if this wasn’t happening to me, but for me? What if there was a purpose, a reason for all this, somewhere? I wasn’t sure, but I had to believe it. I had to hope.

  The little girl within me whispered, “Soon, we’ll be grateful for this.”

  let go

  17

  * * *

  FEEL

  Dennis met me in Thailand and we flew to Costa Rica for Envision Festival 2015. A year had passed since I’d been there with Andrea. I was nervous about reliving our time together, but happy to be back in my second home.

  Last year when I was there my social media accounts were just beginning to take off and now I had a team traveling with me. Besides Dennis and Ringo, my friend Rose joined us as well as Ben, the photographer who’d been with us all around the world over the last year. I’d gone from “that yoga teacher” to “Yoga Girl” and it seemed as if half of the people at the festival had found their way there from my posts.

  I wasn’t just living with my heart on my sleeve—I was living with my heart on the Internet. People knew the most personal aspects of my life. I walked up to the ticketing office and the whole line went silent. I overheard a group of girls whispering. “That’s yoga girl . . . OMG, did you hear what happened to her? . . . I think she is teaching on Saturday.” We went to grab food at the local market and a girl pulled out her phone and snapped a photo of me without even asking. It felt like a violation and I decided to address it. “Hi!” I said, walking up to her and her friends. “How are you?” My voice was angry. I was expecting them to be cocky, to pretend like they hadn’t just taken a photo of me without my permission. The girl holding the phone looked at me, her eyes tearing up. “I’m so sorry!” she said. “I love you so much. You are my biggest inspiration. I didn’t think you wanted to be bothered here with everything that has happened this past year, but I just wanted to remember this moment. I’ll delete it.”

  I almost cried. There was a part of me that still didn’t understand why I was getting so much attention. People related to my very human struggles. I put it all out there and they really did care. I felt myself soften. The girl didn’t have bad intentions. “Let’s take a proper picture instead,” I said.

  I took a few photos with the group. They were thrilled.

  “We came here from Connecticut to take your class,” the girl said.

  “You are going to love Costa Rica,” I replied. “It’s so beautiful here.”

  The girl nodded. “I’m just excited to take your class,” she said. “It’s the center of our trip. We wouldn’t have come here if it weren’t for you teaching. Can I hug you?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  We embraced and when she let me go she was crying. “I lost someone, too,” she said. “Thank you for putting into words everything I could never say.”

  The moment with that girl could have turned out so differently. I had learned a valuable lesson from her. After that, I looked around with loving eyes at the people at the festival who recognized me, rather than feel like an animal in a zoo. Through yoga and social media, I was building a community of people who had been through pain and loss. I had touched people I would normally have never had the chance to meet. And they touched me.

  This moment is the perfect teacher, I wrote on Instagram. Notice the signs and how the universe speaks to us all. There are not wrong turns. Everything is exactly the way it is supposed to be.

  Sometimes I felt that if I’d just repeat it enough, eventually I’d actually believe it.

  • • •

  My mom decided to come to Costa Rica while I was there for the festival. Why? I wondered. We had barely spoken in the month since her suicide attempt. I didn’t want her to come. Costa Rica was my place—my country. It was how I escaped her in the first place. And now she was coming here?

  The little girl inside of me wanted to see my mother. The grown-up me wanted to say, “Go to hell! You’re too fucked up. I’m done dealing with your shit.” I didn’t say any of that.

  We decided to meet at a café we knew in Dominical, which was a short drive from the festival. I knew I was harboring a lot of anger toward her, but I didn’t know what to do with it. She was in the process of “healing,” she said, so I couldn’t direct it at her. I had never known how to be angry with my mother.

  We hugged. Actually, she hugged me. I couldn’t respond. I just stood there stiffly. Dennis and Rose filled in the silence with small talk. I feared that if I spoke I would start to cry, and I didn’t want my mother to see me sad.

  “How has the festival been so far?” she asked. “Was your class nice?”

  In spite of myself, I told her about something that happened the night before—a terrible situation involving Andrea’s boyfriend, Gabriel.

  Driving to the festival to see one of our favorite bands, I got a phone call. It was Gabriel’s mom. I knew him well, but I’d never spoken to his mom before. “Have you seen him?” she asked. I hadn’t, not since the day before. He was supposed to stay with us but had changed his mind last minute. “I got a strange phone call from him and now I can’t reach him. I’m worried. He hasn’t been himself since . . . since the accident.” “I’ll look for him,” I said. “I’ll call you as soon as I see him.” I told everyone to keep their eyes and ears open. We didn’t have to look for long. Walking through the main gates, we heard a commotion. A big crowd had gathered around whatever was taking place. There was lots of noise. We didn’t give it too much thought,
but then suddenly I heard someone scream. I know that voice, I thought. I know that scream. Dennis asked someone in the crowd what was happening. Some guy was tripping out, they’d said. It had been going on for a while.

  I walked closer, fearing the worst. “Andrea!” the voice cried. “Andrea!” I started to run, elbowing my way through the crowd. “Let me through! I know him!”

  Gabriel was on the ground with five big men holding him down. I barely recognized him. His eyes were wild and he was foaming at the mouth. He was strapped onto a stretcher. “Rachel!” he cried when he saw me. “Macha! Help me!”

  People were staring and making comments. “That guy is fucking nuts” . . . “Tripping his fucking balls off” . . . “Psycho.”

  I squatted down next to him. His chest was heaving and he looked panicked. I asked one of the EMTs what was happening. “He is having some sort of episode,” he said. “We believe it’s drug induced. He was hurting himself and when his friend tried to stop him he went for him.”

  I turned around and saw Luigi standing there. “What happened?” I cried. “I don’t know,” Luigi said. “He lost his mind. He was hurting himself, kicking himself. I tried to stop him. I don’t know what he is on. But he flipped and tried to hit me. It took so many people to hold him down. We had to call the ambulance.” Luigi almost started to cry. “He was crying for her,” he said. “For Andrea. Screaming for her. Again and again.”

  I watched as he was loaded into an ambulance. I couldn’t let him go alone. As I climbed into the rig, an EMT ordered me to leave. It was against regulation, he said. I refused to budge, pushing my boots up against the ambulance door for leverage. “Please,” I said. “His girlfriend died. That’s what is happening to him. She was my best friend. There is no one else here for him.” I saw a glint of recognition. “She had an accident?” the man asked. “The one they sent to the wrong hospital?”

  I nodded. He knew. Everyone did. It had made national news. Afterward, every hospital in the capital held emergency meetings to implement new rules mandating that residents were no longer allowed to be in charge of emergency room admissions. “Yes, her,” I said. “This is her boyfriend.” The EMT nodded. “Okay,” he said. “You can stay.”

  I held Gabriel’s hand for the long ride. I had hardly seen him since the days after the funeral—he barely returned my texts. I had heard from Andrea’s family that he was in bad shape. As I looked at him lying there, my heart ached. He was sick with grief over Andrea. I could only imagine what it had been like for him. She was the love of his life. He’d been there with her. He’d ridden with her in the ambulance as the life drained from her body. For a second I remembered the overwhelming guilt I felt when Pepper died, holding his lifeless body in my arms, feeling like I somehow could have prevented it. I remembered feeling so numb, thinking about walking out into the ocean and not coming back. I could not for a second begin to imagine what this past year had been like for Gabriel. Maybe he was blaming himself for not being able to save her. Maybe the guilt was eating him alive. His chest was still heaving, but he was beginning to calm down.

  “Does he have to be strapped down like this?” I asked the EMTs. No one answered. Finally we got to the hospital. Juliana, Andrea’s sister, arrived and I was relieved to have her take over. “I got this,” she said. I went back to the festival, and it wasn’t until now, telling the story, that I realized how traumatic the whole thing had been.

  As I told my mom the story, I began to cry. My mother moved close and held me. If only she hadn’t spoken. “Why are you always the one fixing these situations?” she asked. “Who made you the savior? It wasn’t your job to get into that ambulance. You have one job and that is to take care of yourself.”

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It had only been a month since she’d sent her suicide text telling me to take care of my little sisters. Her children. I had been taking care of her since I was a little kid. Who made me the savior? You did, I wanted to say. You’re the reason I’m like this. I stayed quiet and pulled away from her embrace. Her words had cut me like a million shards of glass. We were never going to be okay.

  love

  18

  * * *

  SHARE

  I only had a few days at home in Aruba before I was off again, this time for my biggest tour yet: the Happiness Tour. My book debuted in the United States in late March and I was committed to do a twenty-seven-stop tour with huge classes, press events, and book signings. It kicked off in New York and lasted through mid-May. As grateful as I was for my success as Yoga Girl, for the millions who joined my Instagram account, for the thousands who had come to my classes, I missed Dennis and our puppies and I longed for quiet nights in my own bed.

  Life on the road was hard. The days were long and I never got enough sleep—rushing from meetings to interviews to airports to car rentals to yoga classes to hotels to more airports. My body was aching for routine. Rituals helped to keep me grounded and sane. I traveled with crystals and gems, my angel cards, and palo santo.

  I posted on social media three times a day. It helped me to feel connected. Sometimes I thought I had to be crazy, baring my soul on such a superficial platform that seemed only to care about Kardashians and thigh gaps and discounted weight loss teas. Everyone tried so hard to show how perfect their lives were with Photoshopped pictures and stories to match, and there I was, telling more than two million people about my pain. But then I thought, There are people out there who long for the relief of knowing that others feel pain, too. Instagram doesn’t have to be a highlight reel of all the things we fear we are not. It can be more than perfect angles and perfect bodies and perfect food and perfect lives. It can be real. Human. Raw. It can be a companion for lonely moments, to remind us we are not alone. It was for me.

  When the Happiness Tour ended I traveled to Europe for more signings and classes. Sweden was on the schedule and Mom insisted that Hedda, Maia, and I meet with her to talk.

  We all met in the lobby of my hotel. Five months had passed since her suicide attempt and she hadn’t had a proper conversation with any of us about what happened. The only thing she had told us was that a few days earlier, she was feeling good and decided she didn’t need to take her antidepressants anymore. So she stopped. She didn’t tell anyone. A fight with a loved one sent her over the edge into a pit of depression and she couldn’t climb out. That’s all she shared.

  She didn’t explain anything more than that and the conversation began and ended with her, how she was having such a hard time and she’d always had a hard time and poor her. Her whole life had been poor her, and normally I would sympathize, but I just couldn’t do it anymore. I was sick of her being a victim, of her being so fragile. I was done with it. We started to argue. She accused us of not being supportive of her. We were shutting her out. We had our own clique. My sisters and I looked at one another. Damn right we did. We wanted answers, support. Maybe it was still too sore, too painful, but she didn’t want to talk about any of it. Instead, she talked about what good friends she had and how supportive they were, and she still wasn’t taking antidepressants, or seeing a therapist, but she was taking vitamins and drinking green juice, and getting some sort of treatment for her adrenals, she said. She could do this on her own. It would all be fine!

  I saw red. “You need to be on medication,” I said. “At the very least, you need to commit to seeing a professional. I am not going to trust you—we are not going to be able to trust you—until you have professional help.” My mother refused. She had had an awakening, she said. This time was different. She could take care of herself.

  I had heard that story so many times I wanted to vomit. If all it took for us to feel secure, for us to be able to heal a little more, was for her to commit to seeing a therapist, was that too much to ask? Is that too big of a commitment to your children? The children you were so willing to abandon? I couldn’t comprehend it.

  “Go for us,” I implored her.

  “I’m done doing anything t
hat isn’t for me anymore,” she said. In a big way, I recognized that feeling. Were we all having a similar awakening, but on two opposite ends of the spectrum? Hedda broke down crying. I knew what she was thinking. What happens the next time she gets sad? The next time she cries? What then? Will we have to live like this forever—wondering when our mother might kill herself? Why doesn’t she want to get better?

  Mom stood and walked out of the lobby, leaving me with Hedda under one arm and Maia under the other. Both were crying. I had had enough. If my mother wasn’t willing to give of herself—not even to her own children, who were suffering—I was finished protecting her.

  I went back to my hotel room, picked up my phone, and logged into my Instagram account and started writing.

  July 17

  My name is Rachel and I am not ok. I haven’t shared this properly before even though I always share most of everything but in February of this year, my mom tried to commit suicide. It shattered me on a level so profound; I’ve lost my sense of identity. She abandoned me and it’s not the first time and now our family is in a million pieces.

  When it happened, I’m five years old again but this time it’s not after my birthday party, it’s during a trip I took to Thailand and she is in Sweden. It’s not her fiancé crashing his plane into the ocean but her husband divorcing her. It’s not suicide letters neatly left in sealed envelopes, one for me, one for my brother and one for everyone else, it’s a message through WhatsApp and she is telling me to take care of my sisters and my brother and she’s so sorry she didn’t make it. It’s still vodka and enough pills to ensure a certain death.