~The Fall

Things really do get rough in September. Yes, it's a lot of old stuff, but it's also current stuff.

2002 was beyond bad. My friend, Terri, passed away after a long, hard battle with breast cancer. I loved Terri very much. She was probably one of the sweetest, most caring people I've ever met in my entire life.

I was a wreck from the loss. I learned something though... I learned the reality of why losing people hurts. It hurts because they cared about you... not because you cared about them, whether or not you actually did care. You lose the present love of another human being. That's where the pain... the loss comes from.

The downward spiral was already in motion. It was September. It was my birthday. Birthdays always hurt. Terri died the next morning.

It just went downhill from there. I did try. I got a therapist, tried to push myself through... but no, it was the roughest "holiday season" on record for me. By New Year's Eve I was on my second OD attempt, and blacking out all over the place... despite the Xanax.

I scared the piss out of my brother on New Year's Eve. I'd talked to him in the past about what I'm like when I get bad, but all the talking in the world doesn't prepare a person for the reality.

When I did come to, I had to spend quite a while listening to him and trying to reassure him. He was scared. He didn't want to lose me... or watch me die.

He did call for help. My friend who lives nearby came over to help him. I don't remember any of it, but from what she and my brother told me, I was going through "personalities" so quickly she couldn't keep up. There were some who didn't even know her, and that scared her really bad. We'd known one another for 11 years. She thought she'd "met" them all. Even scarier was that some of them didn't even speak English.

I didn't know my brother. I asked who he was, and when he told me, I asked if we had a mommy.

My friend, basically, had to go one by one, putting people to bed.

When I woke up the next morning, I didn't remember a thing after putting on a tape for my brother and I to listen to, feeling myself losing it, shaking, apologizing, then POOF! gone.

It felt odd. I had a feeling like there'd been a party the night before. I knew there hadn't been one, but it was just this feeling... maybe, back there was the knowlege of my friend having been over.

Apparently I'd been talking to my friend who lives in Massachusetts as well, and walked away from the phone mid-conversation, not knowing who she was. I found that out, once I made the rounds and gathered up the information I could from the three of them.


The holidays aren't good. I suppose that it's just about feeling alone, compounded by dozens of traumas. I don't really know... but I fear it. I fear September.