Grief and the loss of lives we never lived

(sometime prior to September 26, 2020)

As I stood outside smoking a cigarette, standing under the eve of the apartment as it rained, I thought of my friend Gina, and the battle she lost with her addiction. 

I thought of one time when she came out to the Gibsons', and flirted with joe, not realizing until I mentioned about his wife that he was married, and that Betsy was just asleep for the night. how she came home with me one time, but how having sex felt like her playing out a kind of obligation she had played out so many times before, and it made me sad. it was some time later when she communicated to me that it wasn't fair to me to remain friends. that she knew she would continuously hurt me, because she had resigned to the addiction, and had no intention of changing. I mourned the loss of her in my life long before her body finally gave out. she seemed to rely on a man taking care of her, often one who sold drugs himself, obviously guaranteeing that she would never have to go without. the full Gina was trapped somewhere inside a body that had learned from a young age how to behave so that you got your needs met. Gina did try to take care of her body in other ways. she seemed to work out diligently. I remember wondering if she thought that was a way to try to balance out the chemicals she put into her body, or if it just related to another disordered way of controlling her own body. Gina was a beautiful soul. the conversations we were able to have before opiates had taken over most of her life demonstrated the depth and love in her being. she was in pain, no doubt. and there was a sadness to her that I think anybody with any empathy could detect. and she was right that it would have been painful to be closer to seeing her deteriorate. I guess in some ways being around me was a reminder of things that she did not want to confront. while she was open in many ways with so many people, so much of herself she was not able to share with others. and perhaps eventually the performance that was her life became symbiotic to the addiction--all an elaborate method of surviving in a world that was just as difficult and challenging to navigate as it is for any of us.


If there were any aspect of grief I could say that I enjoy, it would be the moments when pleasant memories of my time spent with another human being pop into my head. Sometimes it's part of a string of random associations, brought on by the normal machinations of my brain. Other times it's because I was thinking about an issue that is related to people I have known. 

It's hard for me to relate to people who don't care about certain issues, because so many of them have touched my own life, and are therefore things that I have already taken time to think about. to process. Addiction is a perfect example. I've known a range of addicts, and I've had my own addictions to battle. As with many things, the supports a person has access to determine how well they're able to overcome a problem. It's never their fault--the pain someone caused them that they didn't know how to carry--but it's their job to figure out how to better carry it, and how to keep from spilling it all over everyone around them and causing more harm.

Processing my emotions and experiences has become second-nature to me, and it's only when I'm not disciplined about checking in with myself that I suffer worse (there seems to always be some level of suffering--though moments of pure joy exist as well! thank goodness). But I think for a lot of people, there are seldom opportunities that call upon their ability for introspection. I'll say it until the day I die: everyone should have access to a good therapist.

I like to think about the times I shared with Gina, and it's getting harder to recall all of them. There was the time at the Gibsons. The time at the trailer, when we all took mushrooms after I'd come home for a shift at the gas station. There was the time we sat on a blanket out behind my house by the creek, when I was dating the Dane. Her appearance in my life was sporadic, but intentional. She enjoyed time with me and had expressed that, and there wasn't any pressure for something sexual, which was a relief for both of us, but we were both delighted by our curiosity about each other. Her long black-brown hair, her deep chestnut eyes. The way they crinkled when she smiled. Her freckled round cheeks. She was petite, but her heart was big enough to fill a room. It competed in depth with her pain, her desire to love. She worked at an old folks' home. She believed in being kind to people. She was the type who didn't want to perpetuate what had been done to her. We liked talking about spirituality. Dreams. Symbolism. What was beyond life. 

There is so much beauty in the grief I carry with me, because it's the souvenir of the love I shared with that person, that can remain intact as long as I can remember them.