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.
