for the archives

I know that 2020 was a bad year for us all (at least, presumably), and I’m not kidding when I say that on December 31st, 2019, something dropped in the pit of my stomach, and I felt deeply afraid of what was to come.

I’d spent New Years by myself in the big, slightly raggedy house I’d been living in all summer. There were talks of venturing to the snow-clad cabin for New Years with some school friends, but I couldn’t get work off.

The nagging sensation carried into the New Year. And I mean this wasn’t just like a “since I had a bad New Year’s Eve it’s going to be a bad year” type of feeling. This was like, a total wave of darkness; like that night I was in the house and all the lights were off, and I was stumbling around blind, hands outstretched, wondering why I felt such doom and complete and total fear. Waiting for the light to be flicked back on but it stayed dark the whole year. The whole year.

Regardless — I’ve been learning to listen to myself. I have been uncharacteristically predictive; my senses are so keen. Since I have taught myself to listen, I know now when there is a situation that is bad for me. I can feel it. I can.

And I felt it, that night, into the day. Nineteen days into the New Year, I was on my first flight home from Seattle to Colorado, to see my oldest sibling in the hospital. Juge’s tumor had grown significantly. It was causing head aches, dizziness, weakness. Radiation wasn’t working. Something wasn’t working anymore.

I am sitting on my bed in a beautiful room with a sliding glass door, palm trees swaying outside. There’s rain coming and I can smell it in my room. I just moved to California. I mean I packed my car in a little over 40 minutes, and drove to southern California, to move in with my mom and her husband Daniel. And as I am in this place of unfamiliar peace & surroundings of love — I mean, Seattle fucking pushed me out — nearly a year later, after Juge’s death, and I’m coming to process what happened to me. Process that it was my second sibling dying.

Here is my process, if you would like to read it. I dunno why you people like to, sometimes. You’ve got me thinking about writing a book about grief, or maybe my experiences. But that seems like freaking dog poop, who would read that — lol.

I’ve been staring at my eyes in my twin mirrors in this foreign, new bedroom — it’s all rushing back — almost like I’m living it all over again because I hadn’t yet had a moment to let it all wash over me.

woosh.

Now that I am not in survival mode (ask me why Seattle was harsh, I’ll tell you.) it feels like I am again — sleeping on that blow up bed in Maddie (my other sister’s) office room. I am again walking the white halls of the hospital. I’m sitting on Juge’s plush bed, making Juge laugh. I liked to do that, because humor is sometimes the only thing I know how to do, when Juge is sitting there, looking so sick. Juge was easy to make laugh, too. And their laugh — oh, so sweet. High-pitched and cute; their eyes crinkle up like mine do: mine and Juge’s “eyes smile” when we smile.

At this time last year, I was flying back and forth to the hospital (during school, in-person school. yeah.) I was flying with my head down on the airplane, nudged in between two people and unable to have the freedom to cry, so all I could do was hide my face. Wait for the nightmare to be over. Numbly listen to mom talk & answer my questions in the car ride “home”. To be honest, it already felt like I was being driven to a funeral and Juge hadn’t died yet. To be honest, I wish that maybe I was. I wished that I was just being driven to the end of it, not have to go through the visible/death part of it all.

This is a little blurb from a journal entry I wrote, close to around that fresh time.

“i was thinking about that night, that night before i left for home to watch/wait until juge died, that i wanted to swim out in that cold ocean at the lighthouse at discovery park, and i just wanted to drown. i wanted to swim until i couldn’t have the strength anymore; i wanted to be missing, when my flight came, and someone had to take me to the airport. i wanted to leave, so i wouldn’t have to face what i was about to. susy told me she remembered how i was running around at caroline’s [other sibling] funeral, trying to make sure everyone was okay. and she told me, “but she was your sister too”, and i don’t think anything has struck so hard. i’m running around acting like i’m just a witness, i’m just the bystander, watching all these people die — when in fact, these are my family members, this is my family, being scathed.”

Post-Death

My best school friend from Seattle wouldn’t talk to me on my birthday. I was told I was having emotional breakdowns “an unreasonably frequent amount of times” (don’t worry this person is blocked on Instagram — now — ) by another. And once housesitting, I stared into an empty sink with a knife near my wrist — for an entire day, just staring.

I lost so many people. So so, so so many. It wasn’t just Juge. It was friends, who made pivotal imprints on my time in Seattle; so much so that being there feels like a stomachache, a place I had to learn to “reclaim” and quickly (and yet for survival) create my own personal associations. “Rewrite history” — the history of betrayals, and deep harms.

How can one person endure so much loss? I ask myself that every. fucking. day.

I don’t know why you left me, if you’re reading this. Maybe my situation scared you. But I hope you do know that leaving someone when they just lost someone, if you were a friend of mine, is not quite fathomable. And I hope that if you were ever given the choice — if you reincarnated, built a time machine and went back, you’d change your mind and do it differently. If you find that one of your own — well, I used to be one of your own — if you find that someone in your life loses someone soon, I hope that you will stand by them. That’s all I’ll say in that regard. But I wish you never left.

It’s flooding back to me. I’m reading journal entries and they’re a past Sarah saying how are you still alive?!. I guess I moved to California and I’m looking to put those old pieces back together.

But the stabs — the stab wounds are still there. And they’re blaring into my eyes like a bright sun (eyelids, red) and though they’re shut tightly I still see visions, imprints, moments of ordering a quesadilla at the hospital but that was the last thing I ate before Juge died; of actually sitting down, politely, at a table at a coffee shop right after the phone call with my mom that “you gotta come home” and did homework; flashbacks of… oh my god, did this happen to me…? Did I really go through this, last year…?

Oh yeah. I did.

You lose so much more than the person you lost. You lose your mind. You lose your energy. You lose your memory & your ability to navigate your life. You lose parts of yourself that you loved. You lose friends. You lose family. You don’t actually just lose the person. There is a lot tangled into grief.

And I’ve learned that you very quickly get good at “losing things”. People don’t realize this.

I guess I process when I move. I’ve been dancing a lot. I’ve been processing with some really beautiful, really wise, really incredibly wicked friends who I am blessed to have (some are quite a few years older than me — I’d say this is helpful for me though, at least where I am mentally, or where grief takes you to mentally, sometimes). Thank you, I love you. I’ve been processing through meditation. I’ve been allowing myself to invest in new parts; let the old rust and slow their gears, and the new… is exciting. she is different, but she is becoming *whole*.

I’m learning that walking away is easier and attachments are meant to be lost sometimes and literally every single person in this universe has something so deep and treasuring to teach you in life — oh, it is lovely. I cannot express my gratitude for the things I have learned from gorgeous, stellar, social-justice fighting, art loving, delightful, supportive, accepting loves who god !!!!!! somebody gave me to meet; to cup chin and say “you’re worth it, you’re worth it, my dear”.

I have found new purpose and meaning for life. And that is literally, that sometimes life doesn’t have meaning.

this is she. she living in california. signing off.

(if you are struggling with grief, in any form, there is an amazing account that’s brought me a lot of comfort. @griefuncovered and @grief.is.a.river are lovely.)

if you or someone you know is wrestling with suicidal thoughts, the national suicide prevention hotline number is 800–273–8255. also, i have lost a sib to suicide. so i would most definitely positively love to talk (& you can say, whatever you need to to me.)