Monday, February 14, 2011

Complicit

People are kind.

Sometimes I forget this.

There are many kind people who have contacted me one way or another - through mutual acquaintance, through Twitter, Facebook, or the Mouthy Housewives, wanting to know when I'm going to blog again. They miss me, they say. They miss my writing.

All very kind people.

If they only knew.

The writer they miss - I don't know where she is. Or if she'll ever be back. She is so far gone that I've sat here for 20 minutes, trying to find the next words.

It's now been 30 minutes.

There is no elegant way to say this. There is certainly no humorous or irreverent way to write it, which is what I knew. Humor and irreverent writing is what I honed and sharpened. Perhaps too much so. It's quite possible I embraced irreverence just far enough to lose sight of compassion at the exact wrong time.

Three months ago my father shot himself in his backyard.

He put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

I feel I'm complicit in a self murder. People will automatically say I'm not complicit. Of course they will say that.

But they don't know.

They don't know of the slow disintegration of our family; the loss of respect, the unkindness witnessed, the ever-growing resentment - the poison between parents that seeped and spread until it tainted everyone close to it.

They don't know of the last conversations I had with my dad. Jesus, those two conversations haunt me. I can barely tell anyone of the things I said to my father those two nights. Those conversations are nightmares I can't wake up from, words I can't unspeak.

Maybe that's why I can't write anymore - I'm now terrified of words.

9 comments:

  1. sometimes in tragedy you see the real person, away from the layers that so many of us don to do this blogging thing.

    I'm not going to repeat everything I've said in emails to you these past few months, but I'm truly honored to call you a friend.

    And I'm so, so happy that you're back writing. You don't have to be funny or irreverent. You just have to be an excellent writer, which seems effortless.
    xo

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  2. I'm doubled over with grief and shock for you. I'm sorry I didn't know and I wasn't there, even by email. It's so easy to assume that people are living their happy, normal lives when they aren't blogging.

    The best writing is a window into someone's soul - I really believe that - and your soul isn't feeling irreverent or funny. That's fine.

    I'm honored to be here reading whatever you share. (I'll show up as staceyd - my anymommy comments are from a different email account.)

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  3. Heather I'm so sorry. I wish I could think of words that would take the nightmares away. I'm just so glad you are writing again. xo

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  4. I think facing your fear of words may be the only way out. I don't really know, but maybe.

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  5. I've been thinking of you and am so glad to see you back! xoxox

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  6. I'm glad you're writing again.

    Writing always saves me. I've got journals upon journals of the writing I've done for myself, since my father also shot himself.

    It's such a sadness, and such a wonder for me: what were his last thoughts?? I think of that so many times, it sometimes drives me crazy.

    I'm so glad to have found you again. I have always felt at home in your words, and I hope I never lose the place to find them.

    Thank you for writing again.

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  7. I am so, so sorry to hear about your father. I've had two family members attempt suicide, and dealing with the aftermath was so hard. I can't imagine what it must be like to actually lose someone to it. But thank you for sharing.

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  8. Heather, I'm so sorry it took me so long to find you again. And I have no words for your loss.

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  9. As above, I am so sorry that it took me so long to "find" you again.

    I lost someone to suicide - it is so insidious, the what ifs and perhapses and if onlys - but the fact of the matter is that even had you double guessed and triple checked every single thing, there may well have been another tripwire - I know - you can tie yourself into knots trying to work out if someone else's choice to take their life away from everyone else and selfishly destroy it is your fault or responsibility.

    It isn't. I can assure you, it TOTALLY ISN'T.

    There is nothing you can do but grieve - grieve life, grieve chances and grieve that there is no other opportunities to undo and that choice has robbed you of the chance to grieve without anger and guilt and self-sabotage.

    I am so so so so so so so sorry, honey.

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