At age ten, my 16-year old uncle died. One year later, it was my grandfather. Soon after, great-grandfather, then great-grandmother, and on and on You get the idea At 19, my best girl friend, murdered; my best guy friend's dad, cardiac arrest; my 94-year old Alzheimer Aunt, well, being 94 I suppose, all within 30 days of each other. Since then, aunt's, cousins, friends, falling by the wayside as if it were inevitable or something. Yet, the impact on me, was minimal at best. Then, of course, it gets to be my turn. No, I didn't die. But I did get a clinical death sentence. I was crushed. I was special, right? Turns out, what I am, is naïve, a little self-centered, and overly dramatic.
Scleroderma. I wasn't even sure how to pronounce it. But there it was. The doctors never said I would die. All the books sure did though. So I spent about two years mourning my own mortality. Two years! And almost nine years later, here I sit. Healthier than I was then. I still have the disease; that will never change. But last year, a man I used to love, still love, died. The disease, the aunts, cousins, friends, were all a blur. A man I love, died. A man I shared a bed with, died. A man, who days before, told me he loved me, he was proud of me, he missed me, he wanted to be the man who fixed all the wrongs in my life, died. He managed to do the exact opposite of what he intended in a day. And it's been the worst thing that has ever happened to me.
Every day since has been random outbursts of stomach pains, steaming tears, suicidal moments, thoughts of laying on his grave until my body sinks into the ground and I am with him again. Death is hard. Loss of love is hard. And it makes me wonder why we bother. What is it that drives us all to continue forward, seeking out new ways to hurt each other, unintentionally of course. We lose every day of our lives. We lose time, youth, experience, jobs, opportunity, friends, answers, risks, pets, family, sanity, and so much more. So what drives us to stay here, in this life, every day, knowing today may even be worse than yesterday?
Anyone who has ever had a glimpse of love, unconditional, authentic love, knows that answer already. This blog isn't morbid, though it will focus on some difficult topics. But my ultimate goal is to share with all of you, every loss I've endured, a vast plethora of deterioration and disease, and answer the question, why do I keep going. We "face the end" of something each day. I want to talk about how we handle that.
If you have topic suggestions you would like me to explore, please feel free to ask. I haven't had a plentiful life But I've had quite a manic one. I told someone today, I am not one of those people who were put on this earth to flourish, to have a great life; I was put on this earth to demonstrate to others that even when life is shitty and destructive, one can still manage to live it with a little dignity, a little grace, and even be kind to others in between. I hope you join me in learning some of the ways I've survived. And by the way, the topics I've mentioned, merely scratch the surface. No one in my life knows it all. But its time to share, to face the end of everything, together.
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