One Year

Jason was supposed to turn 33 today. It always felt weird that between the beginning of January and the end of April our ages were off. For a few short months we were three years apart instead of four. When I was younger I liked the feeling of catching up for a little while, but it always felt like resetting to the way it was supposed to be when April 30 rolled around and I made fun of Jason for being old. I keep remembering a conversation we had on his 30th birthday. I was 26 and 30 sounded far away and vaguely scary. Jason was so excited to turn 30. He said he had enjoyed his 20s but was glad they were behind him. He said he felt like he had figured some things out and was ready to move forward and be in his 30s. A new and different kind of adventure. It made me feel glad and hopeful that he felt that way. I hoped that would be how I felt when I turned 30. Then I made some more jokes about how he was old and he'd always be the old one.

He only got two years of his 30s. It's so goddamn fucking unfair. The only person I knew who wasn't on some level freaking out about getting older but was instead excited to start a new decade and he only got two years. I am so goddamn angry. I'm angry that so much time was stolen from him. I fucking hate the people who did this to him. Hate is a strong word and blah blah blah but I do. I hate them. I don't really believe in God or Fate or any specific higher power but I hate all of them, too. They took my brother. They took his life. He had so much left. He and Gaea lived in their new house for six days. They took his future. They took their future. They took our future

I wanted so much to be different between Jason and me. We talked about it the summer before. He came to Florida for work and we each drove two hours to meet for dinner. We wanted to be more honest with each other. We wanted to be more involved. We wanted our relationship to be more real and deep and we vowed to work on that. It was off to a slow and bumpy start and I was unhappy about that at the beginning of 2017. I was frustrated and feeling hurt and a little angry but for the first time ever I was starting to feel like it was okay to feel angry. After all, Jason was the safest person in the world to feel angry at. We had literal decades to work all this out. He was the only person I felt confident I wouldn't lose.

Fuck this whole goddamn world.

And now for the first time the balance isn't being restored. Jason isn't turning 33. Next year I'll turn 30 and I won't get to ask my brother how to feel excited instead of scared. How to treat a new decade like an adventure. In three years, assuming I'm still here, I'll be older than my brother. That was never supposed to happen. If I live a long life I might be decades older than my big brother who, no matter what, was always supposed to be the old one.

I am so angry at reality. I am so angry at everything. Nothing was ever supposed to be like this and there's nothing anyone can do to make it any better.

I miss my brother. I am so scared of a long life without him. I would say that I want just one last hug from him but that's a lie. I want at least 50 more years of them.

Fuck Star Wars

You know what I want most from the Star Wars universe? More than land speeders, more than ATATs, more than Leia's hair or Wookies or BB-8? More than fucking Ewoks???? Force ghosts. I want to look up at the end of The Last Jedi and see a wiggly blue outline of my brother sitting next to me, smiling his goofy smile and lifting a glass to me like he's fucking Obi-Wan. Even if he was inexplicably Teenage Jason like after they remastered the originals to include Anakin for no good reason. I'd be fine with that.

This is not fair. This is so fucking unfair and unjust. I don't want there to be a Star Wars movie that I've seen and he hasn't. I couldn't wait to tell him after The Force Awakens how I'd started crying in the theatre because all my life Star Wars felt like it was made for him and I just loved it from the sidelines but now finally, FINALLY  there was a Star Wars movie that was made for ME! But I didn't mean just me. I was excited to be able to share it more fully. I will also be crying in the theatre for The Last Jedi. Probably the whole time. Like, from beginning to end, no matter what is happening on screen, just that weird lady sobbing in the back of the theatre. That's me.

Some of my clearest and youngest family memories are of watching the Original Trilogy together. Jason was obsessed. I can't count the number of times I watched those movies and I never watched them without him until my senior year of high school. We went to see all of the Prequels together. By the time Episode III came out he was old enough to drive us to the theatre and to this day that is the only movie I can think of that we ever went to see just the two of us. Makes that whole volcano scene worth it.

He had all the books. He had light sabers. He had Darth Maul's double-sided lightsaber. I'm pretty sure he dressed up as Darth Maul one Halloween. All our favorite puns were Star Wars-themed. Two years ago he got me a Rey shirt for Christmas that I wear all the time now. I stole the Rey doll he used to keep at his desk at work. You get the picture, right? Star Wars was a huge part of Jason and a huge part of our relationship.

And I'm not even really sad. I mean, I'm sure there's a giant ocean of sadness lurking somewhere underneath but my primary emotion is anger. I am just so fucking angry. Why isn't he here for this?? How can the world be moving on? How can it possibly have been seven months already? Every passing day feels like it takes me farther and farther away from my living brother and I just want it to fucking stop. He should be here for this. He should be here for all of it. This isn't what was supposed to happen. This isn't fair. This isn't right. I am just so goddamn angry at the whole fucking universe and I can't imagine ever not feeling like this, deep down, just under the surface, somewhere in my heart for the rest of my life. Fuck this. Fuck you. Fuck the people who did this. Fuck everyone who gets to just be excited about this movie. Fuck everyone who gets to see this movie. Fuck 2017 and every year that comes after it. Fuck Star Wars.

Useless Words

Tomorrow is the six month anniversary of my brother's death. Tomorrow, one of the people who killed him is being sentenced to 92 months in prison. I have tried and failed to write about what the legal process has been like for me. It's been heart-wrenching. It's given me whiplash more than once. It makes me question basic human decency. And it's only over for one of them.

The most significant change since I heard the whole story, since the charges for Vehicular Homicide were handed down, is that I have stopped thinking "my brother died" and have started thinking "my brother was killed". It seems like a small thing but the correct words make a world of difference. I don't have the correct words. That's why this is the fourth draft of this blog post I've written this month. It's why I didn't write a victim impact statement. The judge can't increase the sentence because the defendant took a plea deal, so my words will not affect his jail time. I do hate the people who did this but it is not the kind of hate that fuels me or stirs me to action. It is a useless, sad, tired hate. The kind of hate that won't be made better by seeing Meekins' face, by humanizing or dehumanizing him, by trying to make him feel guilty or express remorse before he goes to prison. I don't think it would work, anyway. He hasn't done either in his hearings so far.

It's not as if this is justice, anyway. I do not want these people who use cars as weapons indiscriminately to be allowed on the streets, but that doesn't mean that either of them going to prison is justice for my brother being killed. It isn't. There isn't any justice.

The lawyer told us that the victim impact statement was "really about honoring Jason". By trying to sum up and speak out in a court of law what my only sibling meant to me and what my life looks like now that he is gone. By trying desperately to make people who don't care about my individual story or his individual life, care. I don't believe that would honor Jason. I believe I honored him with puns and stories and glitter and enormous hugs at his memorial, his wake, and at the 100 Days. I believe I honored him by giving up on changing the past and just grieving for the person and the future that was lost. I believe I honor him by thinking about him every day, and by trying to live my life without him even though I still have no idea what that looks like.

I worship words, but I don't have the correct words for this. I don't have any words for this. Pain renders words useless.

"It Comes in Waves"

I've had some pretty intense grief waves the last couple of days. I keep writing and erasing ways to express it because I want it to be new and interesting and poignant and well-written and extremely personal but also unobtrusive and small and in no way inconvenient to anyone and not scary to share. Fuck that.

I miss my brother and I want him back. I'm angry that I don't get to make new memories with him. I'm trying desperately to remember absolutely everything we shared these last 28 years but the more I try to cling to memories we have the more they'll change and fade away (which is a real cognitive truth that I only know about because Jason gave me all of the episodes of RadioLab and I listened to them obsessively while I was living in the middle of nowhere in Texas).

I'm mad and I'm sad and I don't really need anything from anyone, I just need to keep living my life while I feel like this because it's never, ever, ever going to go away. I'll get better at handling it, I'll get more used to it, it won't take me by surprise as much, but this is my life now: Waking up from a dream where I can see 10 year old Jason clearly, running barefoot in the thick summer grass catching fireflies with me at Gram and Pop's house, and having to remember. Outright crying in a cafe because I wanted to participate in the "Compare pictures from 2012 to 2017" thing on Facebook and the only pictures I'm tagged in during 2012 were from the last Christmas I spent with Jason. Swallowing the urge to punch people in the face for mentioning their living siblings that they get to see.

I'm trying to make new friends down here but it's hard. I feel like if you didn't already know me before April 30, 2017 you will never really know all of me. Part of me is gone. And how close can you really get to people who can't ever see all of you?

I can't decide how to end this blog so we're going to do a Choose Your Own Ending. You pick:

1.(Shame) But all that being said, I'm being pretty self-involved right now because a lot of other people are hurting and there are so many disasters going on in the world right now that my own pain shouldn't matter.

2. (Optimism) But all that being said, I'm going to be totally fine because I have friends and family and love and graduate school and I know I'll move forward and get better.

3. (Gratitude) But all that being said, I am really grateful for getting to have my brother for the 28 years that I did. I'd rather have the pain of missing him now than never to have gotten to have Jason as my brother. Thank you so much for staying with me as I go through this painful journey.

4. (Defeat/Depression) And all that being said, I'm going to go back to bed to watch Firefly and replay all of the scenes where Simon is real sweet and brotherly to River over and over again and cry.

5. (Guilt) But all that being said, I am going to ruminate on what I could have done throughout the past 28 years if I had had the knowledge and emotional maturity of an adult when I was a child and also if I knew the future so that I could have *both* forced us to be closer sooner and talk a lot more *and* somehow convinced Jason and/or Gaea not to drive that day because if I think about it hard enough maybe I can change the past, even though that is literally insane.

6. (Honesty) All of these endings are a little true and a little not true and oversimplified and unrealistic. I'm glad I wrote all this stuff down. It's good to get it out but it's not really going to help that much. All that's really going to help is time, which is the absolute fucking worst and I hate it. Now I'm going to try to get some work done and then try to relax some and enjoy things and try not to let the grief take over but also try not to go numb because it's easier.

On Mental Illness, Grief, and The Way Forward

I post a lot of stuff about self-care on Facebook. I want to share it to help other people take better care of themselves. To be totally honest I am probably the actual worst at self-care in the whole world. I'm working to get better but it's a long slow process during which Gordon and Andrea have quadruple-handedly been keeping me alive. Seriously, they are basically the only reason I haven't been eating nothing but ice cream for four months. Why I sometimes get to work. Why I drink any amount of water. Gordon has been carrying me. Andrea too. For the most part I have acted less grateful and more like the gravely wounded guy in a war movie, all "I'm done for, just leave me, go on and live your own lives and let me die in the mud."

Because you know what? Feeling bad feels good. It feels warm and comfortable and safe. It feels just and righteous to spend all my time going over how everything could have been different and feeling blame and shame. I don't know how being raised by agnostics got me this crazy intense Catholic guilt but it snuck in there somehow and it stuck hard. It's like scratching a mosquito bite for ten minutes. It feels so good while you're doing it and you know as soon as you stop you'll feel terrible and realize how much you've hurt yourself but in the meantime it feels like sweet release so you do it for as long as you can before the "Ow ow ow I wish I hadn't done that" sets in.

These are obviously all deep-seated problems I've had for a very long time but I was getting (slowly, a little bit) better at them. Then I lost my brother and with him any feeling that I had any control over anything in the world and honestly a huge sense of self. So much of my identity and feeling of safety in this world - way more than I'd ever realized before - hinged on the knowledge that I would always be Jason's little sister. I mean, I always will. But he was supposed to be here for it. I've panicked and agonized over what would happen if any number of people I love died but Jason was not on that list. It was taken as a given that he just...wouldn't. It seemed impossible to the extent that I never even considered the option.

I had a dream last night - among a huge number of anxiety dreams - that the car accident was just a cover-up. That Jason had been killed by the government because he'd invented a software that would revolutionize virtual reality as we know it and [dreamlogic dreamlogic] the government couldn't let that happen. I was finding out about this from crazy news stories, no one had told me, but now there was a huge investigation being launched. And while it was terrifying and gut-wrenching I woke up feeling a little sad that I was back to a reality where there was no reason. Not even dreamlogic. Just garbage people driving like garbage and a split second of time in the exact wrong place.

 There are supposed to be reasons for things. If there's no reason then feeling like it's my fault, no matter how nonsensical that is, is better than confronting the idea that there is almost nothing in this life that we can really control. And I mean, of course, this is the response to a traumatic event - falling back on comfort and old habits and things that feel safe. But I've been kind of shitty to everyone in my life during this time. Especially Gordon. I rely on him and a few friends, then I get scared to rely on anyone and I push them away. Rinse, repeat.

It's time to be done. I've been so jealous of the beautiful and wonderful community that Jason and Gaea built for themselves, together and separately. I want it. But I don't think you can build a community without letting yourself/admitting that you need to rely on other people. As both Gordon and Gaea have said separately and in different ways, "This is not the way forward." The 100 Days...Celebration? Ceremony? Thing? The 100 Days Thing was about welcoming the family back into society. It took me about a week longer and some really poor treatment of my partner to understand what that means. I don't have to stop being sad. This will hurt forever. I don't have to stop processing, it's important to keep doing that. But it's time to stop consuming my entire life with grief and pain and self-hate. I recognize that I didn't come to this decision on my own but I have made it mine now.

I hate it when people say what dead people would or wouldn't have wanted. It usually seems disingenuous and presumptive to me. But I do know that my brother wouldn't want me to use his death to fuel my own self-hate or self-pity. Anyone who knew anything about Jason would know that. I do know that he wouldn't want me to dwell on the parts of our lifetime together where we disagreed, where we hurt each other, where we took things too personally. Even though it isn't fair, I am still alive. He would want me to act like it.

"Everyone knows you're going to live
So you might as well start trying"
-Regina Spektor

So I am actually self-caring: paying attention to what I eat and drink, resting, meditating, finding outlets, staying off Facebook (hopefully not forever but long enough to break my obsession that makes me think more about how to post about what I'm doing (and what people will say about what I'm doing) than what I'm actually doing and that keeps me scrolling and feeling jealous of my friends doing amazing things in California, Australia, Alaska, wherever, instead of paying attention to what I actually get to do). And I'm trying to remember that I am excited about graduate school, that I've wanted this for most of my life and I have it right now and I'm up for the challenge. That I have a fantastic partner and some great friends and that I will make more. That I can dance and move my body and fight for social justice and the fact that Jason can't anymore should not make me feel so guilty that I don't do what I can do.

My eternal gratitude to Gordon, for giving me way more strength than he had to give. To Andrea for keeping me fed and keeping me company, to Maggie and Jenny and Emmy and Gaea and my Mom and my Dad and Lizzie and Lizzi and Madie and everyone from my extended community who reached out and to Nell and everyone in Jason's extended community that reached out to me, too. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I'm going to start finding the way forward now. But I'm also still going to need you all.

My Non-Instagram, Non-Facebook-Worthy Emotions

I am not okay. I'm pretty good at hiding it, I'm really good at obfuscating or omitting details or denying it even to myself but I am just not okay. I haven't been okay for a really long time. About a year ago I was diagnosed with a long-untreated mental illness and have been trying to deal with it (I'm not comfortable talking about it much yet). I confided in Jason. We were trying to let it bring us closer together, but there were a lot of ups and downs and a lot of painful hashing out that had to happen first. And then 84 days ago my brother died and I have just fucking disintegrated.

I am hurting the people I love the most. I am feeling disconnected and far away from everyone I love. I am awful to be around. I am barely working. I am numb or having panic attacks, with no middle ground. I don't want to live in this world. I don't want to be me. I have gotten it into my head that the way to fix all of the problems would be for me to go back in time and surreptitiously unbuckle my seatbelt just before my car accident two years ago. If I could be 100% positive that me flying through my windshield at 70 miles an hour would prevent Jason and Gaea from being hit by those fucking psychotic drivers, I would do it in a heartbeat. If you're reading this and you love me, I'm sure that hurts to hear. I'm sorry. It hurts to think. It hurts to say. It sure as fuck hurts my partner. It hurts like hell not to be able to stop thinking.

I have people I love. I have a partner, I have friends, I have family.  I have a snake. I have a lovely house and I get to garden and do things I love. I can make more friends. I live in a city with my fambly. I am getting my master's degree at a fantastic school in a fantastic program with a fantastic project, which is a dream at least 6+ years in the making. I have a hard time feeling any of it.

I don't want to be here. I don't want to stop feeling devastated. I don't want the pain to stop. I don't want to admit this is real and can't be changed. I don't want to heal or move forward. I want to want all those things. I want to want them so badly. But honestly, I don't want anything. I want to take other people's pain away but I can't.

I'm not suicidal. This is not a cry for help. I'm in therapy and I'm going to a Coping Skills group and I'm meditating and I'm on medication. It just all fucking sucks and as a culture we don't talk about mental health and as a person I have been posting nothing but happy nonsense and political reposts and I didn't want to be lying like that anymore.

Good Advice

Mock me for having 10,000+ emails in my inbox all the time if you want, but I'm telling you you're missing out.

I was searching for something unrelated and found the sweetest email from my big brother while he was in the Peace Corps in Vanuatu to his terrified little sister who had recently graduated college and was feeling lost. I turned to a book on Buddhism he'd given me before he left ("lent", "gave"...what is the difference, really?), something I keep telling myself I'm going to do again any day now and haven't yet. There was a lot and it was all great but my favorite passage was this one:

"We get so wrapped up in our delusions, desires, attachments, plans, fears, expectations, etc. that we forget to actually live our life.  Yes, we need to do things like plan and save for retirement.  We don't, however, need to save every penny we can so that our life sucks today but will be full of comforts in 20 years.  What if you get hit by a bus in 19?  The practice is about finding the balance of living like you'll die tomorrow and planning like you'll live forever.  Of course you need to make plans, improve yourself, build relationships, get an education, and save for the future.  You also need to live your life.  There is so much in our experience every day that we ignore.  So much beauty we miss when we are stuck in our heads.  I will find myself striding down the road to Melsisi, thinking about my lesson for the day or what I'm going to eat for dinner, or what witty comeback I should have made hours earlier.  Then something will catch my attention and I'll realize that I've been completely ignoring this beautiful place in which I live."

It's good advice. Advice I've heard from everyone, advice that is easy to think about and (at least in my case) almost impossible to follow. But it felt so good, hearing it from him. Hearing that your self is just a story that you cling to even though it's always changing and that "Suffering is caused by our desire for the world to be other than as it is." 

My last post is an example of me 100% rebelling against all of this advice. Dwelling on the story that we weren't where we wanted to be as siblings and now we don't get to get there. Clinging to the idea that he isn't really dead, that it's my job to save him and also everyone. I am not good at following this advice no matter how many times I hear it or who I hear it from. I will not get better at it just because I read the words he wrote to me five years ago.

But just for a minute, while I was reading them, I got to feel pure, unattached grief without shame or blame or clinging or terror or anxiety. Just love with no place to go.