At A Loss…

We had a mutual friend. Mel introduced me to her. I dragged another friend of mine into it, and we had ourselves a group of girlfriends.

We would meet every third Saturday of each month for almost two years for a Ladies night. We would take turns dragging one guy along with us to act as our designated driver and community dance partner. Said male would wear the title “Goat Boy”.

There was nothing ever sexual between us and a Goat-Boy. A lot of them thanked us later for allowing them to be a fly on the wall. Apparently men don’t get the opportunity to listen to a gaggle of women sit around, blow off steam, and honestly talk. I remember one particular Goat-Boy just disappeared on us and we had to call a friend to come get us deposited at home that night, because we embarrassed him off with our conversation. Three of us were mothers, two of us were divorced. We were focused on our night out as friends, drinking, blowing off steam and having conversations like women do: No Filter.

We were a tight group for quite a while. Eventually boyfriends, divorce, work and location slowed the monthly gigs, but Mel and I never drifted.

Mel used to bail her out of payday loans. Mel was always there for her, but I noticed when Mel needed help, she wasn’t there for Mel. On the occasions I’d run into her at Mel’s, we were polite, and I accepted her because she was Mel’s friend and she as a rule, wasn’t an awful person to be around. She just had a weird competitive thing with Mel, but she could meet a fencepost, and start a conversation with them, as well as keep them laughing. She was funny AF.

She and I stopped communicating when I called her out on not helping Mel out when she needed a place to stay for a few months. Mel had ALWAYS opened her door to this person and her children. I was flabbergasted she told Mel no. I insisted Mel come stay with me, but the distance between my place, and her work was too much and she wound up sleeping in her Bronco with one of her kids, in a rest area off I-5 near Wild Waves. I never spoke to this person again, till after Mel died. We spoke on the phone. She wanted to know why Mel refused to ever speak to her again. She was crying, because I know she was hurt and regretted losing Mel as a friend. I told her why. I didn’t do it with malice, or cruelty, but I gave her the answers she never was able to figure out. She cried, and I felt bad for her, but I didn’t keep up any communication with her after that.

Last night I got a text from someone else who knew her. She died yesterday morning. I wasn’t told how, my contact with the source of the news, did not know. I reached out to someone who was friends with Mel and her and found out how she died. it was instantaneous.

I felt some ways about this.

I didn’t feel, “Thoughts and Prayers, Rest in Peace”, but I also didn’t feel, “Fuck you bitch, you deserved it.” I kind of immediately knew, that she went to the same place Mel went to and their energy became one. I know that in this space their energy now lives, there is no human baggage. I knew, they were OK with each other, in fact they are one. Still, something wasn’t sitting right with me. This morning I went to visit mom, and I was telling her all this and it suddenly hit me and it just slipped out.

Because of what I believe happens when our body dies, because I believe their energy returned to our original source, damnit, I’m jealous! This isn’t how any of this was supposed to happen and I want to be the one with Mel!

My poor mother’s face. She immediately asked, “But you’re not going to make that happen are you?”

No, I’m not. But none of this was supposed to happen this way.

I’m going to go see my friend I dragged into Ladies night. We are the last two left out of our little group of four and I have been home isolated since March 05, 2020. My mom, her room mate and my sister are the only ones I have socialized with since becoming fully vaccinated. A little drive to the coast will do me some good and maybe heal a little bit of this re-opened wound.

I miss you Mel.

Auntie

On being Auntie.

From the day Mel had her first baby, I was named Auntie. To all four of her kids, I had this title bestowed upon me. From that moment, it made me special. I wasn’t married into the family and entitled to the gift Melissa placed on my soul. I was chosen. I was never called Auntie “birth name”. I was just Auntie, like the Grande Damme of Aunties.

I am eternally grateful for this legacy Mel left me. Even when the kids do things Mel would knock them upside their heads for, I am grateful to be “the one” the kids have that special bond with. I love them all in ways I can’t love my own daughter. Not because I am not capable , but because she won’t allow it. I have a bond with them, no one will be able to break and, I know this like I know I will take the next breath.

Melissa’s middle child told me he lacks pictures of his mother. He needs more. After he and his girl had their daughter, I got the first picture of the new family made into a Fracture Glass Photo. It was then he mentioned he needed more pictures of his mama. Tonight I ordered the kids each one of my favorite pictures of Mel. Christmas 2018. 4 years since her stroke.

Melissa L Clarke

Tonight, the ache increased. I’m uneasy and antsy tonight, because I can feel the seasonal wind start. Tomorrow I’m going to focus on being present. Enjoying the kids. Seeing Jake, Rachel and Jensyn and their little family unit. Meeting Dylan’s girlfriend, Nicole and her kids finally! He’s been seeing her over a year now I think. I’m excited to meet them. Paul the room-mate will probably be there. It will be the usual gang. Plus Jensyn, her first Thanksgiving! I wish Miki was able to be there. (She’s just texting me) ❤

I hope my friend is at peace. I hope she is OK with what we are doing in life with one another after she left here. I have my first appointment for therapy on the 30th. I’m grateful for that and hoping I can get the tools I need to process 4 years ago.

A Little Clarity

Since Mel died, there has been so much fog, and so much haze. I have never had a loss like losing Mel and any loss after her was small change compared to her. It’s not that the people I lost since her weren’t horrible, but Mel was big, personal, traumatizing, and deep.

She was my major gut punch.

Mr. Yummy and PD were huge and painful, but they only piled on an already bad and dangerous pain.

I still love him. I always will, but I will never get over the way he just disappeared and ghosted me after Mel died. Telling me HOW to process and how the way I was doing it, was wrong. Fuck you, for that. Mr. Yummy will always be the one who evoked an emotion in me, like no other. But I already knew he was an asshole when PD said he was an asshole and she didn’t like him.

I didn’t like him much either at that time, but I could not at that time process the loss of him. I had to get to a dead point. By dead point, I mean my feelings for him went dead. I would have rather stayed with my sissy and the asshole she lived with, than be around him because he just hurt me. He was a big loss on a big loss. It just compounded my depression. I sat in his house with all those guns, alone, depressed, angry, sad, overwhelmed and wanting to not fucking feel the pain of losing Mel. I won’t lie. I had a gun in my mouth. I couldn’t leave that as the last memory Mr. Yummy had of me. In his house. with HIS gun. It would have been a delicious Fuck You, though.

PD sucked because she just compounded the loss by kicking my ass to the curb, the very day I decided that if Mr. Yummy wanted to be with me, he would make himself available to spend time with me. He wasn’t busy working like he said he was, He wasn’t off taking care of his grand-kids, and I know this to be true. He was running from me and my sadness and whatever else he didn’t have the balls to say to me. I finally realized that.

I cried prior to losing Mr. Yummy and PD. but once it was done, I just went dead to them. Being dead emotionally was easier than falling farther apart. It’s that simple. And this is a small moment of clarity to me.

It’s Friday night and time to wake and bake.

New Clothes

I changed the theme. I think it’s a push for me to start writing again.

I’m also going to write really honestly.

Here are some truths.

I miss The Girl. I am pretty sure she knows this. I’ve never stopped loving her, though I fear her intensely because at one time, she had the power, and used it to try and hurt me. It worked. I’d love to have a relationship with her, but I also fear it. Trust and all.

I am moving on in life after so many losses, but in all honesty if I die today, I am pretty OK with that. I don’t think I am courting death, but maybe I am. I’m not going to the doctor and I have some pretty serious things going on with my body. Do I ignore it longer and go till I drop, or do I go to the doctor?

I’m not really into more of the same. I have kind of had enough of the loss.

I am probably more closed off than ever, because to let anyone in that close would mean to trust, and I am very, very, very careful about who I hand actual trust to.

On the other side, I know the things I have experienced, seen and felt, to be true. It’s just that life hit me so hard I fell off the path. I’ve not gone back to that same hateful person, but there is this wall of protection around me and when you live like that, you aren’t really living at all. You’re sitting around, waiting for it to be done. My life has felt like the last act, of a bad play, that will not fucking end.

But still I am waiting. I don’t know for what, but I am waiting.

I’m thinking I know what I personally need to do, but I have procrastinated because to jump back into it means work and I know that with so much hidden emotion and denied feeling, it’s going to be heavy. It can’t be any heavier than keeping all this shit inside me, can it?

There are things I am totally happy about also.

I love my little apartment. I love that the things I do in my life, are mine. I do them when I want and no one criticizes me, tells me I am wrong, disapproves, or hits me.

I love my few friends I have kept. These are the people I trust and am comfortable with.

Yesterday, I read something I wrote a few moths before the stroke. How odd. As things were getting better and I was happy because of Mr. Yummy, my move, my job, my soaring spiritual awakening, there was a point I admitted I feared what was coming. In all honesty I seriously thought The Girl was about to make an appearance and I wasn’t sure I could do it. That would have been so much easier than losing Mel, Mr. Yummy and Arie. All within a short time span. Back to back. It felt so cruel. it made me ask if I was a good person? I sort of began to doubt my value. I forgot I am what I am and deserve what I deserve, as do you.

With Love,

IWentCrazy

I lost…

I lost many things when I lost my best friend.

I lost security, my soul-mate, my strongest supporter, my confidant, my partner in crime, my favorite reason to laugh, my trust in many things, mainly letting anyone love me or get close enough that I might get hurt if they go away, the comfort of realizing that someone important has gone away, but thank the Creator they didn’t die and my ability to sit almost everyday and write.

I miss that creative outlet, but I realized that I read Mel EVERYTHING I wrote. My writings were part of our hours long conversations. In hindsight, it’s like in my mind I was always writing with her as my audience. I only read my writing to one other friend (and of course, my mother). I read it to no one now.

I am a different person today.

I have made a new friend. I’m tentative and cautious. I haven’t called her a friend to her face yet, but I love her. She’s my girl I have been the most honest with about who I am. She is my head expediter at work. There are only two of us who do this job as well as driving. She was out all week while her kids were on Spring break. Work, without her on a slow day is doable,  but work without her on busy days or glitchy paperwork and labeling days SUCK. Yesterday was one of those days. I was so frustrated at having a work ethic so different from others around me. 90% of our mistakes could be eliminated if drivers checked their paperwork so they didn’t just take the food on their shelf assuming what was there, was all theirs. Mistakes do get made and when the expediters check and release the food for drivers to pick, the drivers sometimes help shelve the food. Sometimes I make a shelf mistake, sometimes Nette does, and sometimes drivers do. Check your pack slips to the food on your shelf as you load your van.

Nette text today saying she would be in Monday and she knew I must be burned out after a week without her. I updated her on yesterday and how I got so frustrated I went out to smoke and cried. Beneath it all was the old habit and desire to call Mel and vent to her all the anger and get it out, without saying shitty things to people I mostly like and have to work with. She came back with…”Well I’m not Mel, but I’m Nette and I always have an ear to listen and to vent at.”

It touched me and made me smile to feel like I have a friend again. She’s right. She’s not Mel and I wouldn’t want her to be. I like her as Nette.

Life does go on after a death like that, but for me it is different. It is…less, because I learned so much and lost so much.

Do I miss Mr. Yummy? No, I miss the idea of him like we were years ago, but that guy is long gone and the guy in his place is not the guy for me as I was not the woman of twenty years ago. Now I know.

Do I miss the living people I have lost? Some I do, some I don’t. That’s all I will say about that, because anything I say, could be falsely used against me because the WRONG people would think what was said about another, was said about them. Story of my life and without that kinda confusion, my life is simpler.

Two year and three months later, I am still crying. Not every day, but more than I imagined I would. I think the only thing that would impact me as much would and will be when my mother walks to the Creator. But today, she is here and I let her love me.