My crying quickly turned into sobbing as I wondered if I hadn’t been a good enough friend, hadn’t been enough of a support network. Had I failed her? Would she be here if I’d been better?
“Lei had mental health problems. You were essentially her sister, always there for her, and she knew it.” Jack’s words were lost on me. I continued to cry, my sobs evolving into the silent kind that conveyed more pain than even noisy heart wrenching ones could.
“You are not to blame.”
How did Jack know I needed to hear that?
My emotions quickly switched. It was much easier to rely on resentment than the pain of loss. How could Leila do this to me? I was having flashbacks to Gideon, finding his lifeless body and feeling so angry, so devastated that all I could do was switch my emotions from utter heartbreak to anger. Left alone to deal with life.
Again.
“You’re not alone, Snuggs,” Jack whispered.
“Jack, I can never express how thankful I am for you. How thankful that you know me so well, know my needs, and know my thoughts and emotions before I’m even aware of them or willing to express them. But right now, despite the fact that I need you, I can’t discuss how I feel.”
With that, I got up and left the room.
***
“Babe. Eve,” I was being shaken awake. “I’ve been trying to wake you for a while.” I heard Jack’s concerned tone, but I was groggy.
“You went to bed, but it’s been hours and I was worried.” Leave it to Jack to be worried, and to me to curl up in the darkness.
Leave it to me to selfishly abandon him with his own grief.
We are always working to be our better self, but sometimes you slip and screw up. Sometimes you are selfish and forget to think of others first, despite what I try to instill in my clients. Then again, I am constantly reminding them that none of us are perfect and that perfection isn’t what we should strive for. We owe it to ourselves to strive to be our best selves as much and as often as possible, while accepting that this also means that there will be times when we fall short…and that’s ok.
This is one of those times where I fell short. Instead of thinking about the larger picture, instead of considering the wide reaching effects of Leila’s choice, I internalized. I focused inward and in doing so, left Jack trapped in his worst fear: being alone.
Not that it isn’t healthy to focus on ourselves. To the contrary, it’s essential to emotional well being to take time to check in with oneself, to feel grounded and find a certain level of inner peace. It is necessary to be present in order to be a support for anyone else.
But this wasn’t one of those instances. Jack needed me, and I’d abandoned him. Worse yet, I’d needed Jack and by ignoring that need, I’d abandoned myself.
Pulling myself out of this reverie, I sat up and encircled Jack’s neck with my arms. Feeling him pull me against him and bury his face in against his chest, I sensed him relaxing before I even registered his slowing of breath, his heart beat calming. I knew that despite all of our heartache, all of our speed bumps along the way, we could handle anything as long as we handled it together.
Life is often too hard and help is not a shameful thing to accept. Jack and I could do it.
Epilogue
It took me a long time to finally understand the intricate and wide reaching phenomenon of mental illness. I’d been labeled as such, and I was…I always will fall into the category. But my version is as different as everyone else’s. I was a victim circumstance. My psychological problems stemmed from outside sources and how my brain and my psyche choice to handle those external stimuli, how I internalized my experiences. Others, like Jack, have only chemicals to hold responsible, neuropathways and intricate workings of an even more intricate machine, the brain. But even to call it a machine is an over simplifications, because there is still so much unknown about the workings of the brain, and there seems like there may always be an unidentifiable and indefinable mystical element that varies from individual to individual. Something that tests and experiments and top of the line electroencephalography can never determine. We’re all special little snowflakes. Good luck, Neuroscience.
So to downplay any form of mental illness would be an injustice to any and all who live with it. The cause is not what matters. And while I went through a period of time when I was not healing, when I had given up and given in, I never once cast judgment on anyone else who was fighting their own battle. Perhaps I was being too self-involved at the time to be empathetic either, but my flippant attitude towards my “craziness” was just that: flippant. It was a band-aid over an amputation site. It was a defense mechanism to the core.
So while I may no longer live in a world where feelings are my enemy, where darkness is my savior, I will always have that experience as a part of me. Along with everything I have survived, and will go through in the future, it has molded who I am. My struggle will always be a side of myself that I will live with and sometimes have to battle. And I embrace that.
Others will have to battle their own darkness, some even losing their fight. Gideon lost his fight, and this is something else I will always have to live with. All those kids I went to camp with, they will each have their own peaks and valleys and we will hope that we all do our best. But we do need help, we do need support, and it is essential that we always remember that…even when we don’t wish to accept it for ourselves. I will think of Greg for the rest of my life. My personal little cheerleader who put up with all of my shit and then every once in a while, gave it to me right back.
There is no magic pill. There are no perfect words, no exact correct phrasing that will flip the switch from ill to well, from struggle to peace. Each day can be hard; each day will be hard. But there are joys in the least expected places. There will be rewards when it seems like everything is bleak. The monumental, like getting off your meds or living a satisfying life of contribution and respect. Or the things that mean just as much, like the sapphire gaze of the one you love, or simply choosing to get up in the morning and face what life has thrown at you.
As long as we are trying, we are succeeding.
And every day I do think of Gideon and all he missed out on. I regret that he felt he had no options, but I’ve finally learned to forgive myself and acknowledge that I was not at fault for his choice. Not that this was an easy task. And despite how I loved him, because I know to this day that I did in fact love him, I know we were not in love. I’ve had a hard time reconciling the fact that while he never should have left this world alone, and that for a long time I resented him for what I viewed as his abandonment of me, his choices forced me to have to rely on myself. Losing Gideon, in the end, resulted in me finding myself, finding the Eve who’d long been buried and who was nearly unidentifiable to me. And no matter what happens, I will always be thankful for the role Gideon played in my life, as my best friend and other half, and for the extent he went to in order to protect me from my abuser.
The funny thing is that, first with Gideon and then with Jack, I saw I was drawn to those who weren’t shiny and perfect, those who were broken. Many are drawn to such because they are fixers, nurturers, saviors. Me? I was as broken as they were and I found a mirror to my soul. And in realizing that, I discovered that they weren’t broken and neither was I. My past self would have thought that if we were broken, that was as good as being perfect. There was a completeness to the cycle, almost like a clock where perfection is 12:00 and perfect destruction is 12:00. I’d have argued that if it’s broke, why fix it?
But the reality is that we weren’t broken. Broken-in, perhaps, worn a bit around the edges, for sure. Damaged? No. Damage implies an irreparable condition. We may have been imperfect…well, we were Definitely imperfect. But we were so proud of our imperfections, and while that was foolhardy and a bit superficial, denying our true feelings and how our imperfections affected our lives, that fierce determination to own ourselves was what got us through. That was what allowed us to accept help, to let pe
ople, something we normally would never have consented to, have access to our most prized possession: ourselves.
So while I was drawn to people like Gideon and Jack and Leila, who I miss now as much, if not more, than I miss Gideon, I realize and accept that the attraction was primarily due to our souls recognizing each other. We knew what it was like to feel empty inside, to have no one to turn to, and how it felt to fight against everything just to maintain some semblance of truth: just a tiny piece of me, just a tiny piece of control. It was all we asked for.
So I know now that I wasn’t drawn to the broken. I know now that the very fact that I viewed myself as such showed that I was still fighting, that I still had the fire inside me to close doors and open others, to shut things down for the sake of never losing the very essence of myself.
I was not drawn to damage or brokenness or ruin. I was drawn to life, and vibrancy, and passion. We just had to swim our way up to the surface to make it happen.
But we refused to drown.
Acknowledgement
Thank you to everyone and their support, for encouraging me to turn my musings into a cohesive piece that could be shared with others. Writing has always brought me solace, given me peace, and essentially been a therapeutic outlet. I am proud to have been able to bring what was a personal passion to a welcoming audience. Especially, thanks to my husband for allowing me to spend hours typing away, understanding that I’d share my written thoughts with him when I felt both they, and I, were ready.
Mental health is an often neglected or taboo topic, but so many suffer from mental health issues; It is important for there to be an acknowledgment of the prevalence of the issue. People need to know that they’re not alone, that they need not suffer without support. Abuse, is also something frequently shied away from, both the acknowledgement of its existence and the rightful placement of responsibility. Survivors of abuse are too often abandoned by society, left alone to exist in the aftermath of undeserving atrocities. Hopefully Eve’s journey has shed some light on these two issues, providing insight into, as well as a sense of, what too many experience.
Additionally, thank you to http://selfpubbookcovers.com/SFcovers for the beautiful custom cover art.
About The Author
Kathryn Hewitt
Kathryn Hewitt was born and raised in California, where she currently resides with her husband, son, and menagerie of birds.
Forgiving Eve: A Novel Page 17
