Social media continues to be a sharp and swift form of torture. So many new babies, engagement announcements, and wedding photos. So many people living perfect, unscathed little lives. As ambivalent as I was about your death being a trending topic, I remember how empty I felt when everyone seemed to forget about you a week or so later and went back to bitching about traffic, sharing YouTube videos, and posting photos of their dinners. Nothing makes the pain worse than seeing that everyone else is able to move on. I think: People are the worst. And then I think how you would tell me they mean well. And they do. They really do.
They bring food.
They call to check in.
They keep calling when I don’t respond.
They send beautiful, thoughtful cards and messages.
They donate money to your scholarship fund.
They offer to help with Iris and groceries and life in general.
They let me take my time returning to the fold.
They shower me with love.
It helps.
07 Before
June 2013
After our wedding, my new husband and I barreled headfirst into real life. Engaged in December, married in March, and pregnant in May. I took the pregnancy test after drinking six shots of sake at a work happy hour. Aside from the guilt I felt about drinking while pregnant and the sheer shock that it happened so fast, the news was glorious.
The last week in June, I chaperoned an annual school trip with my high school students. I was taking them to a thespian festival at the University of Nebraska. It was right at the end of my first trimester, which meant I couldn’t tell anyone yet why I was exhausted, cranky, starving, and in a tizzy about the X-ray machine at the airport. I also had a notably bad summer cold and spent my downtime lying on a stone mattress in a tiny dorm room, Googling articles about the side effects of Sudafed on fetuses.
In the midst of my internet-forum binge, Harris called to tell me he broke up with his girlfriend. I was deeply confused. We all thought she was the One. He thought she was the One. They seemed to be a perfect fit, especially in juxtaposition to the last two serious relationships. Not because he chose terrible partners. Quite the opposite. The women he dated were stellar. It’s just that Harris had a pattern of falling head over heels in love then eventually losing interest and calling it off; then once she moved on, he’d regain interest and beg her to come back only to lose interest again or be cheated on because she was over it; and then, fueled by jealousy and rage, he would want her back more than ever before. The cycle was maddening.
But it wasn’t like that with Sarah. With her, it all seemed effortless and meant to be. She quickly became part of the family. When we’d spent Thanksgiving at Harris’s house in LA six months earlier, she’d made homemade chopped liver and helped my mom in the kitchen. She was easygoing and funny and weird in a good way and notably pleasant to be around. She looked at him with such adoration. I remember when he first told me about her in Vegas while we were on a family vacation the previous summer. She was the first thing that came out of his mouth when he saw me at the hotel check-in counter. I don’t even think he said hello before diving into details about this amazing girl he’d met at a party the night before. Yet here he was a year later telling me the “spark was gone.” He was too young to be tethered to one person. He wanted to explore his options and see what else was out there.
I assumed this meant she was getting in the way of his drug use. Even though he was a twenty-eight-year-old boy-man living in a saturated land of beautiful people, it was such a sudden and unexpected change of heart that no other explanation made sense.
I asked about the pills. He said he had been going to some outpatient detox place and was taking Suboxone. Their breakup had nothing to do with the pills; he just viewed her as a friend now; the passion was gone, fucking blah, blah, blah, bullshit, bullshit, blah, blah, blah. I didn’t believe a word he said. Ever since he told me he was an addict and forced me to stay quiet about it, I felt like someone had hijacked my brother and replaced him with a secret evil-twin version. He’d been lying about his drug habit for who knows how long before he told me. What else was he lying about? And who the fuck tells his sister he’s a drug addict three days before her wedding? An asshole. My real brother wasn’t an asshole. This guy was an asshole.
A week or so later, I got a desperate email from the girlfriend/ex-girlfriend. Not quite sure where they stood at this point:
If someone doesn’t step in now, he’s going to die. This is very very serious now and can’t wait any longer. Please help him and maybe tell your mom and dad. He doesn’t tell people the real truth and severity of it. It is deadly serious now. I’m so sorry but he is doing himself in and I had to share this with you.
Not exactly subtle. At this point, I was three months pregnant, and the stress was a room with no air. Between Harris’s secret and the baby I was carrying, there wasn’t any room left inside of my body. Something had to come out. She literally said he was “going to die.” How could I live with myself if she was right? I had to tell my parents. This
