This was originally an Instagram post that I choose to refine and share here. I’m learning I don’t need to suppress or hide my feelings because someone I care about may have different feelings or pain around the same event or series of events. In the end, I hurt, I feel abandoned and rejected by a group of people I care about very deeply. One day we were family, the next I was abhorred and reviled. It hurts, a lot. It hurts to not have their love and support, it hurts to not be part of that community. It hurts to be rejected in my time of greatest need by the people I thought would be there for me, no matter what. I own my piece of what occurred every day. It breaks my heart and I am taking steps to change, but I had to be honest about this hurt, because it’s deep and I am struggling with it.
“It’s easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die.”
Chuck Palahniuk
I never knew you, I wish I had. I know your story. I lived in the hole you left behind, I saw your brand all over, In truck windows, on bar walls, hell it’s been on my fridge for a year. For the best two years of my life, your farriers chaps hung on the wall above my feet in the bed where I slept. I never knew you, but your ghost was everywhere.
I think I know something about what was going through your mind in those final moments, but I won’t try and speak for you. I will speak to you.
Some days I think you got off easier than me. People remember you fondly, they started organizations and hold rodeos in your name. They pledge to be there for others, to prevent another senseless tragedy. They drink beer and remember the good times, they wish you were still here.
But for me, the reality of surviving was too ugly for them. It’s too hard to reconcile the near miss in the damage I caused. They can’t see the wounded human, their friend, inside the monster I was and all they could do is walk away. Abandon me, turn their backs.
Living with the rejection of your friends is the loneliest, most isolated place on earth. I did awful things, I’m not condoning any of it. But sometimes it feels like surviving makes you less human, less lovable than a bullet in your head would have. I understand why you left, I don’t condone it, but I get it. It’s just easier to leave than to deal with the consequences of your pain. You hold a special place in their hearts, a deep hurt a pain they can’t resolve any way but celebrating the good parts of who you were. I am an outcast. Stuck alone, in isolation wondering how things went so bad, why I can’t get the same support and help, they promised to give the next person on your shoes. You are a cherished, but deceased friend. I am forgotten trash, discarded and thrown away.
Owning this pain, naming this pain is hard. To admit that you have been hurt in the face and aftermath of pain you have inflicted on others is hard. A pain that just exploded all over, with no intent or purpose, I just couldn’t be strong anymore, I couldn’t hold on, and it took over and I didn’t have anyone left to hold me up. Honoring my pain and hurt, doesn’t invalidate or minimize anyone else’s, it just gives it a name and the room to breathe and hopefully start to heal. I won’t lie. I long for an honest, safe, and open conversation. I long to know the experience others had and appreciate their pain. I want to tell people I’m sorry, to hug and be hugged, to repair and cry and heal. I want to be given a chance to prove I’m not that monster, to regain the trust, love, friendship and support I broke.
I’m human, and I love these people, and I long to reconnect, and I know it may never happen.
I made a commitment to myself that I wanted to live. I made it to my family and my remaining friends. And I intend to honor it. I will not die by my own hand so long as I’m in control. I have removed my addictions, they don’t have and say in my life anymore. I am reprogramming my trauma responses, and I am learning to move my memories from triggers and threats to things that happened. It’s a process with up days and down days but I will keep going.
So I’m gonna stay. I’m gonna hurt. I’m gonna learn and cry and grow. But I’m gonna accept what I’ve done, change who I am and honor your memory, and the memory of too many others I knew, by sticking around as long as this world allows.
