Good morning, grief. Good grief.
I decided to take advice from my crazy small town guy friend who blames R's death on me -- the friend who believes I am a witch who curses alcoholics' livers, or feels it's my fault because I'm "codependent." I'm glad he pointed out codependency, because I'm tired of providing the emotional labor he expects from me. Now that I realize that him treating me like his mommy has been my fault this whole time, I have cut him off. I'm glad he thought of it! Blocked. Codependency cured!
In 2019 my therapist encouraged me to get closer to R, to give him a chance. I don't think she realized how severe his alcoholism was, or how bad that was for me, at a time when I needed to choose MYSELF. Even I didn't realize how bad it was, until he died. Only then did I learn all the lies he kept about his medical history. He had a sober counselor we never knew about. I assume it was required to clear his DUIs. Yeah, it was bad. His family and friends said he would have been bad for my sobriety. I did the right thing for myself, by not taking advice from well-intentioned therapists or guy friends who have no fucking clue. It was a hard choice with no ideal outcome, since either way I'd lose someone dear, but since I am still alive, I probably made the right call.
If I'd known he was dying from the moment we met, I wouldn't have agreed to see him a second time. I'd have avoided getting close. But I didn't know. He didn't want me to know. He lied to my face.
My intuition knew something was off, an intuition that none of my advice-givers seemed to have. On 12-4-2020, I wrote a dream in this diary:
"I had the weirdest dream... I was in a bed in my hometown looking out an open window into the forest at night. It was dark and silent and nothing was happening but I felt a presence watching me in the trees. Everything was still. I kept staring at the trees in the dark, feeling watched or anticipating something. I felt a skeleton foot in my bed and was feeling it with my hand, observing, trying to stay present in my fear. I asked "Who are you?" And woke up. ...Hopefully no one I've bedded is about to die?!"
My fears were correct.
I gave up texting him on the day he died, before knowing he died. I cried all day, not yet knowing he'd died. From the day he was in the hospital, my heart was pounding uncontrollably, day and night. My heart only pounds like this when I am intuiting a painful truth I haven't yet been told. My heart knew. When I found out, everything made sense, the dreams, the crying, the heart pounding. I felt him the entire time, without a word spoken between us.
R recognized my intuition immediately. He had the gift too, but he couldn't handle it, so he numbed it with alcohol. I know the feeling. We are sensitives. Sensitives flock together. Whether we attempt to numb it with substances is besides the point. Some of us see the ship sinking before it sinks, and it's too painful to watch. That's why he drank. I was in the same boat when we met. But a therapist threw me a raft. I rowed to shore alone, and I watched his ship sink on the horizon.
That dream also predicted that I was being stalked, before the stalker made herself evident in my inbox. How the fuck did I know I was being watched by someone who lives in the forest who I hadn't talked to in 10 years? So, okay, I guess I sort of see why my guy friend thinks I'm a witch.
I wouldn't call it metaphysical, necessarily, but I do seem to have an awfully keen sense of intuition sometimes, and it freaks me out, even though my friends already accept my intuition without question and tell me I am straight-up psychic. I dreamed my friend was raped -- and she was. I dreamed M was robbed, and he was, the same night I dreamed it. I dreamed my crush would return -- then he did. I dreamed we'd sleep together years later and it'd be weird -- we did and it was. I dreamed a lover would die and he did. My pounding heart told me a man was cheating -- within minutes I found a naked woman in his bed. Years later I dreamed he'd come back -- he called the next day. I dreamed there'd be war in Israel before the fighting started. I even dreamed about lockdown isolation, before pandemic. How or why, I do not know! It is not a fun superpower. In ancient times I might have been an oracle. In modern times, I'm just another neurotic woman seeking answers in modern psychology. Maybe it's time to give up "rational" thought and just join that Goddess temple up north, full of other weirdos like me who have so-called prophetic dreams we can't explain. Or maybe I should keep this crazy-talk to myself, lest a small-town male friend accuse me of witchcraft in the year 2022...
I think it's just emotional attunement, a survival mechanism I developed, or an inherited survival mechanism, to predict danger, to stay alive. My senses are keen like a wild animal, because they need to be. It's painful, but it saves my ass every time, so I listen to my gut, because bad things happen when I try to ignore my subconscious awareness.
I sensed he was destined to die. I didn't want to stay on his sinking ship. I hate grief, but it's a part of life. I'll hold grief's hand until I reach acceptance that in this lifetime, I'll never get to hold him again except in memories and dreams. It feels like a punch in the face every time I think : never again, never ever. There is a void where he was, where it is now quiet, silent, stillness, darkness. I did not heed my dream. If it was a warning, I had two entire years to act on it. I did nothing to save a man from himself. But in that time I did everything to save myself. And save myself I did. My only duty now is to let go of the guilt and what-ifs and if-onlys. One day at a time.
10:13 a.m. - 2022-11-10