(no subject)
This is my response to : http://liamtheruiner.livejournal.com/625010.html
This is really hard to write. I've been mulling it over in my head all day while watching my son. Snippets of explanation would come into my mind until it got too painful and then I'd just let them go, till they dissipated into the aether. Because of that I feel like this might be very disjointed as I try and grasp all these half-formed thoughts and bring them together.
I've known Kaylie for a decade, as long as I've known my husband Rob and my best friend Billy. I've lived with her on and off for 6 of those years. I've seen her change over time, both the drastic changes of her transition, and the slow, tiny changes as she sank into her ever deepening depressions. I think I knew her fairly well and I think she knew me too. As some of you may know, my stepfather killed himself when I was a teenager. To this day, that is the single most jarring event of my life. It truly changed who I am. It scarred me. She knew this. And she also knew that it transformed my opinion on suicide. Before he died, I had considered killing myself when I was a miserable teenager. After he died, I could never accept that as a viable option for anyone. It just fucks everything up for everyone left behind. She knew that and disagreed. We had the conversation a couple times. She maintained that the right to end one's life was a valid one. A person's 'right to choose'. I will never concede this fact. The last time she brought it up I refused to even talk to her about it because it makes me so upset and angry. I worry that this stopped her talking to me about what she was planning.
Kaylie. I love her. She is family. But extended family. The difference between the two has really started to be hammered home to me since becoming pregnant and having my son. Before we were trying to extend our family it didn't really occur to me that there needs to be a division. But, for our family to function, we really need it. Our son is fine but being a parent is the biggest strain I've ever undertaken. It strains my marriage, my nerves, even my sanity during the most sleepless portions. Don't mistake me, I'm all right and so is my relationship with Rob, but that is not hyperbole. It's rough. And it's really hard to go through that with another person observing, even if she is family of a sort. Kaylie has unintentionally seen me at my worst, as a person, as a wife and as a mother. It's extremely painful for me. While I know she wasn't judging me, I was judging me through her eyes. It's one of the reasons I was looking forward to us being alone again. I would finally be able to edit and contain myself a bit in front of her.
There were other reasons I was looking forward to her leaving. Most of them petty roommate stuff: not having to clean dishes, wait for the bathroom, smell some of the meals she prepared. I was also looking forward to having her just be a friend again. There were times during our living together in Baltimore that Rob and I felt more like her parents or her partners than her friends. And that was uncomfortable for us. Honestly, it made me so angry at times. I wanted some of the intimacy of 'family' to be removed.
The search for clues of Kaylie's disappearance was the first thing in at least a year that I felt truly brought all of our core friends together again. I'm also sad and guilty that I've done relatively little in helping to find her. I was able to watch our son so that Rob could spend long hours, nights, days sleuthing. But it seems rather pathetic compared to what he and the others are doing. I'm truly saddened that it is the last thing we will all do together, since now she's gone.
I haven't been able to bring myself to move forward in any capacity. I haven't packed another box for our pending move, I haven't thrown away the coffee cup sitting on my porch that one of the police officers left, I can't bring myself to scrub the burnt cheese she left in my microwave. I used to get so angry about those damn cheese drips and the fact that she never seemed to notice them. I would take it all back, the bad stuff included, if I could speak to her again and convince her to stay. If we had known how she felt we would have found another solution. But she didn't give us the chance. And that's one of the worst things about this.
But the absolute worst thing: I think that this might break us. My group of friends from college. This might be the nail in the coffin for our drifting apart. We all lived in NOLA, most of us in a house together while we went to Tulane. Over time we've scattered across the country, some of us have gotten married, Rob and I had our son, time and energy has grown thin all over. The one last big thing that was holding Rob and I to some of the others was our gaming. Even that has started to get a bit looser since we can't all play in the same game at the same time anymore. At any rate, as Billy has said, Kaylie was an enormous part of our game. Not just as a player. She has helped Billy form this world that we have spent months of accumulated time in together. I worry that now that she's gone it's going to just crumble away if we can't all play together.
I don't know where to go from here.
This is really hard to write. I've been mulling it over in my head all day while watching my son. Snippets of explanation would come into my mind until it got too painful and then I'd just let them go, till they dissipated into the aether. Because of that I feel like this might be very disjointed as I try and grasp all these half-formed thoughts and bring them together.
I've known Kaylie for a decade, as long as I've known my husband Rob and my best friend Billy. I've lived with her on and off for 6 of those years. I've seen her change over time, both the drastic changes of her transition, and the slow, tiny changes as she sank into her ever deepening depressions. I think I knew her fairly well and I think she knew me too. As some of you may know, my stepfather killed himself when I was a teenager. To this day, that is the single most jarring event of my life. It truly changed who I am. It scarred me. She knew this. And she also knew that it transformed my opinion on suicide. Before he died, I had considered killing myself when I was a miserable teenager. After he died, I could never accept that as a viable option for anyone. It just fucks everything up for everyone left behind. She knew that and disagreed. We had the conversation a couple times. She maintained that the right to end one's life was a valid one. A person's 'right to choose'. I will never concede this fact. The last time she brought it up I refused to even talk to her about it because it makes me so upset and angry. I worry that this stopped her talking to me about what she was planning.
Kaylie. I love her. She is family. But extended family. The difference between the two has really started to be hammered home to me since becoming pregnant and having my son. Before we were trying to extend our family it didn't really occur to me that there needs to be a division. But, for our family to function, we really need it. Our son is fine but being a parent is the biggest strain I've ever undertaken. It strains my marriage, my nerves, even my sanity during the most sleepless portions. Don't mistake me, I'm all right and so is my relationship with Rob, but that is not hyperbole. It's rough. And it's really hard to go through that with another person observing, even if she is family of a sort. Kaylie has unintentionally seen me at my worst, as a person, as a wife and as a mother. It's extremely painful for me. While I know she wasn't judging me, I was judging me through her eyes. It's one of the reasons I was looking forward to us being alone again. I would finally be able to edit and contain myself a bit in front of her.
There were other reasons I was looking forward to her leaving. Most of them petty roommate stuff: not having to clean dishes, wait for the bathroom, smell some of the meals she prepared. I was also looking forward to having her just be a friend again. There were times during our living together in Baltimore that Rob and I felt more like her parents or her partners than her friends. And that was uncomfortable for us. Honestly, it made me so angry at times. I wanted some of the intimacy of 'family' to be removed.
The search for clues of Kaylie's disappearance was the first thing in at least a year that I felt truly brought all of our core friends together again. I'm also sad and guilty that I've done relatively little in helping to find her. I was able to watch our son so that Rob could spend long hours, nights, days sleuthing. But it seems rather pathetic compared to what he and the others are doing. I'm truly saddened that it is the last thing we will all do together, since now she's gone.
I haven't been able to bring myself to move forward in any capacity. I haven't packed another box for our pending move, I haven't thrown away the coffee cup sitting on my porch that one of the police officers left, I can't bring myself to scrub the burnt cheese she left in my microwave. I used to get so angry about those damn cheese drips and the fact that she never seemed to notice them. I would take it all back, the bad stuff included, if I could speak to her again and convince her to stay. If we had known how she felt we would have found another solution. But she didn't give us the chance. And that's one of the worst things about this.
But the absolute worst thing: I think that this might break us. My group of friends from college. This might be the nail in the coffin for our drifting apart. We all lived in NOLA, most of us in a house together while we went to Tulane. Over time we've scattered across the country, some of us have gotten married, Rob and I had our son, time and energy has grown thin all over. The one last big thing that was holding Rob and I to some of the others was our gaming. Even that has started to get a bit looser since we can't all play in the same game at the same time anymore. At any rate, as Billy has said, Kaylie was an enormous part of our game. Not just as a player. She has helped Billy form this world that we have spent months of accumulated time in together. I worry that now that she's gone it's going to just crumble away if we can't all play together.
I don't know where to go from here.