Before I knew

On January 26th of this year (2023), I sat for roughly 8 hours to get a tattoo from an artist I’ve been trying to get an appointment with for years and several submission attempts. One of the older submissions wasn’t long after I had a violin tattooed on my forearm in tribute to my cousin who died by suicide in 2016.

This was back when I was serving tables and asked about it constantly. I remember desperately wanting to add something around the violin to distract the eye. Anything to avoid a repeated, difficult conversation. Honestly, I think that was one of the hardest times of my life.

7 years after some of the most traumatizing years of my life, I was getting a tattoo and this time it was not to distract. Instead, this half-arm tattoo had a different theme not-so-subtly baked into the meaning behind it: A woman, with her head in the clouds, daydreaming and holding an hourglass in her hands.

As a narcoleptic, I haven’t been very intentional with my life choices and how I function in the world. I have a tendency to let the exhaustion overtake my life and I forget to appreciate the current moment/every day. This serves as my reminder to stop waiting to do things and as I write this, I’m also realizing another connection (funny the way writing will do that): my cousin wrote in his last card to me, congratulating me on my college graduation, “Life is short and unpredictable. Don’t wait to do what makes you happy”. Either way, it’s about appreciating and accepting the limited time we all have like sands through the hourglass.

The rest of what E wrote to me, because it means too much not to write out the whole bit, was “It’s impossible for me to explain how proud I am of you. You’re going to be the best out of all of us.” I don’t know how I didn’t notice the foreshadowing. Reading it now it feels so obvious, he was setting things up before he left and was quietly saying goodbye.

2016 and the very bad, no good depression era feels like a lifetime ago now, the details hazy in my memory. The grief from what happened felt like it was no longer debilitating, finally. (After feeling like I was drowning, “not debilitating” is a win, okay.) The relief was short-lived and I wish I could go back to bask in the “before”, but I can’t.

Now, I’m living in the new “after”. Before I explain, let me elaborate so you can fully understand. (It wouldn’t be me if I didn’t provide way too much precontext story before getting to the fucking point and I make no apologies for who I am.)

Let me paint a quick picture of my reality back then.

All on my mom’s side, I lost an aunt who was like a mother to my mom, then two of my cousins (E and Y) months apart in 2016, and lastly my uncle in 2017. All of their deaths were sudden and would be considered a tragedy to anyone with a brain. After losing so many as a child and almost losing my dad to multiple gunshot wounds, I was no stranger to death and could somewhat understand the fragility of life. But finding out my younger cousin was killed in a car accident days before graduating from undergrad from a school she was hoping to attend, seeing her enlisted brother (my cousin) for the first time in a while, then a few months later learning about his death on my way out the door for work — well I don’t think anything can prepare you for that kind of grief. To say it was a shock to the system would be an understatement.

I became a regular at funerals, attending and planning, and knew what to expect. I had the routine down. I read a poem, stayed up late scanning photos to make slideshows and videos, making playlists for the excruciatingly long wakes, and dealt with the family drama that inevitably comes with family gatherings of any kind. I’d say I don’t know how I survived this time in my life, but honestly I can think of 3 things: My partner, my anti-depressants, and my new at the time, pet bunny Hemingway. This trio was my support system at home.

Although I wouldn’t say my home was much of a home. I lived with 6 other people: 2 couples, my partner, and someone he went to high school with. One couple often fought (each other) loudly, and was always involving us in their drama and unresolved trauma. Think passive aggressive notes, nickel and dime-ing bills by square footage and then paying late, stealing, and both broken wine glasses and wine stains on the wall from drunken fights.

The icing on the shit cake was the couple shutting off the breaker to the entire house because everyone in the house except them was hanging out, smoking, and playing a little music. Long story short, pepper spray and cops happened. The next morning, I stayed in my room hours after waking up. I couldn’t sleep anyways but the 1/2 of the couple that was there when I got the call about my cousin started banging pots and screaming, “I hope you die like your cousin did”. I stayed at a hotel for a week before finally moving out - something I could only afford because my cousin added me as a beneficiary shortly before he died and changed my life forever.

For years leading up to his death, he deliberately did not have a relationship with his immediate family and I was the closest relative he actually talked to. In my eyes, he was like an older brother and we talked about all sorts of random things, from careers to being mixed and feeling weirded out by being around so many white folks. When my phone was stolen, he mailed me his old phone. He sent me cards on my birthday, often times in batches and once told me that, although he didn’t like poetry, he liked what I wrote when I posted stuff from my creative writing classes.

Despite all of this, well, let’s put it this way - he had 6 other siblings and 2 of them very vocally expressed that they felt anything I received as a beneficiary belonged to them. You know the old saying about how family and money don’t mix? I would not disagree with that statement and the two were very different in their approach. One was extremely cruel and petty, harassing me and trying to convince the world (Facebook) that I am, in other words, not a good person. The other was more on the implicit side and honestly, I’ve blocked both of my interactions with them during that time out of my memory and deleted all of it from my phone and social media. Some memories just aren’t worth saving, at least not in detail haha. They’re not in my life anymore, and although some of it was maybe for the best considering their obscene behavior, it sucked losing two more family members after the passing of E and Y.

Context complete

Back to January 26th and my 3rd tattoo. I texted my best friend progress pictures during the session and we messaged quite a bit back and forth. But then I didn’t hear from her for two weeks. This wasn’t entirely unusual, she lived in the PNW and was extremely busy. My work schedule was so opposite of hers and with the time difference, well, life just happens. Things get away from you, but we usually kept a decent convo going when either of us reached out and always picked back up like no time has passed.

So when too many days went by, I decided to reach out again. Cheesily enough it was because Valentine’s Day reminded me to tell the people I love how much I love them. The day after Valentine’s Day, February 15th is the day that would mark the beginning of the “after I found out”.

I shot her a text. Not too many words, just a quick “I hope you had a good Valentine’s Day” text. I’m not too proud to double text and I am glad I did.

I never in a million years x infinity would’ve expected her to reply saying she had some “news that’s not so good” (her words not mine) or what would come after. The news in question? She was in the hospital and had been for several days, with a strong chance of multi-system breast cancer. This would be confirmed as stage 4 just two days later. An aggressive, more rare type of breast cancer that does not have as many options for treatment.

Communication was limited. I didn’t know what was going on, but I tried to be patient and supportive from across the country - an extremely helpless feeling. Four long days after that, her next update was telling me she was in the ICU and at an “extreme risk of death” due to a rare, serious condition related to her cancer.

The literal next day, my plane landed in her state and my week and a half long hotel stay begun. Since then, I have been in various stages of mental breakdown and its fine. Everything is fine, its fine, its fine, its fine. Yes this is my mantra and maybe the more I say it, the more likely it is to come true.

At one point in time, I thought I would always think of life in terms of pre and post covid, since it changed our way of life and impacted our lives so heavily. Now, as I stare at my whiteboard calendar that hasn’t been updated since February, I recognize my life in “before I knew my best friend had stage 4 cancer” and “after”.

Time is sort of funny these days. It moves so quickly when you’re kinda (definitely) traumatized but still trying to actively be alive and keep the train running, so to speak. Everything is happening and it keeps happening. Life doesn’t stop and I am still stuck in February like a time capsule. None of this feels real anymore and a big part of me keeps hoping that it isn’t.