A Recovery Blog

This blog is about my continuing recovery from severe mental illness and addiction. I celebrate this recovery by continuing to write, by sharing my music and artwork and by exploring Buddhist and 12 Step ideas and concepts. I claim that the yin/yang symbol is representative of all of us because I have found that even in the midst of acute psychosis there is still sense, method and even a kind of balance. We are more resilient than we think. We can cross beyond the edge of the sane world and return to tell the tale. A deeper kind of balance takes hold when we get honest, when we reach out for help, when we tell our stories.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

A Reaction To Brendan's Birthday


Brendan would have been 37 on the 20th. He was only 19 years old when I fell in love with him. I thought of him on Thursday afternoon while watching a high school soccer match. He had been the star of his high school team. I had seen him play and he had been beautiful, a smart, graceful player but sometimes hot tempered. The soccer team that year at the college had been unusually strong. Most of the players were good if not very good. Many of them had also been star players of their own home towns. They recognized each other having played against each other over the years. Now they were all on the same team. Unfortunately a large chunk of them would fail out of school pretty quickly including Brendan who I found out later had not been going to classes. So for some of them their first time living away from home meant an extended party. I was 27 years old and it was my first time living on my own and I fell right into that extended party. I was an irresponsible fool and I was sick though I only partially realized it. I had been hearing voices for about two or three years. I had been withdrawn, unemployed, living at home, going to art schools. Then I moved far into the country to be near my brother who that year was an assistant coach to his friend the coach. And so I met Brendan through my brother.

On the surface Brendan was very polite and respectful and rather quiet. He came across as a hippie, was into marijuana, playing the guitar and the Grateful Dead. He wore tie dyes and macrame necklaces and wrist bands. I mistook him for a peaceful person. It never entered my head that I could ever be afraid of him. Little did I know that Brendan had a reputation for being both a hard drinker and “a lean, mean fighting machine” as one of his closer friends put it a couple of years later. Most of the players on the team were respectful towards him. I was clueless. I can understand in part why I got involved with Brendan. I was lonely and insecure and he was vital and attentive and attractive but we were both sick and that’s ultimately what cemented the bond. But now I look back and I think, “Kate, how could you have done that?!”
I was not a shining example of virtue and yet I kind of thought I was a good person at the time. But almost from the beginning Brendan looked at me with a prejudiced eye, ignoring his own imperfections while using mine against me. He was someone who was consciously manipulative of people and situations. He had been manipulative long before I met him despite his youth. I, on the other hand, despite living in New York City, had almost unintentionally lived a sheltered life. I didn’t socialize. I didn’t use drugs. I kept to myself. I saw myself as an honest, creative person but I was also deeply ashamed of myself for not working, for remaining dependent on my family.

Why was Brendan manipulative? He grew up very differently than me in a wealthy suburb with Republican parents. He was the youngest and the only son. He had two older sisters. One thing I found out quickly was he disdained his parents, his mother openly and his father privately. He said that his father had been abusive towards him repeatedly, eventually he included, said in various ways at various times, that his father had raped him. I remember contemplating confronting his father about this but I never did. Brendan’s abusiveness towards me had a controlling effect on me and as the years went on I wasn’t sure what was really true or not. He had told me that he had a child by a former girlfriend, he told me he murdered a man to settle a cocaine debt and lastly he told me he had been raped. All of this would have happened by the time he was 18 before he met me. But at the time I believed him and it paralyzed me and I became afraid of him and self-protective. I became the scape goat for whatever happened to Brendan. He saw his father, mother and sisters in me and he would swing from a sentimental love to a merciless hatred. And he was that way, he would both defend his family and despise them almost at the same time.

All I knew was that Brendan had been abused and had become abusive and was a hardcore alcoholic because of it. But I had little experience with abuse and addiction and my inexperience left me wide open to attack. Brendan thought mistakenly that because I grew up in New York City that I was tough but I wasn’t. If anything I was soft and receptive and ignorant. I had even been warned by a couple of people in the City not to be so open. But open I was. I shared everything I had with Brendan before he proved his trustworthiness. My mistake and my choice. He was young and sick and I followed him because I was young (still) and sick too. What a mess both of us were.

But there were times when we just got along and liked each other despite it all and standing on that soccer field on Thursday made me think of Brendan then. It’s amazing that I’m still conflicted about him. I can’t accept that he’s dead. He didn’t deserve the last few years of his life and I feel guilty. I left him the last day of July 1995 and he died May 1999 almost a year after I became paranoid and delusional. I could have done more but he had hurt me in ways that made me just detach from him and his life. At some point I chose myself over him.

I realized yesterday that with this blog I’m actually doing a public 4th Step, trying to take a moral inventory of myself. And what have I found? That I am not as good as I thought I was, nor as bad as I’m afraid I am. I’m somewhere in the middle, neither a heroine nor a villain. What hurts is that I wish I could make amends to Brendan but I can’t. I have to sit with this and work it through. I believe that there is some kind of life after death and I pray that wherever he is, he has a healing reincarnation.




3 comments:

Anonymous said...

it's funny Kate because I have got in touch with a couple of friends who have lost people in their lives and more than two. these people were young too and didn't deserve the premature deaths.

All the wrongs in life that are thrown at us. If we really look we are to blame. However you are not to blame for Brendans death. you did not shoot him with a gun or run over him with a car. you didn't stab him so you must forgive yourself for what you did do to Brendan. Not staying with him.

The thing is if you don't take control of the guilt it will control you. to control the guilt you got to forgive yourself. It's your choice. Once you have forgiven yourself you got to move on and embrace what life has to offer and there is a lot you just got to be a little careful.

Just as Brendan had the choice to forgive his parents. He didn't. he never moved on and his emotions were unhealthy and lead to his death.

you have taught me to forgive and it works. Sometimes we hurt ourselves by not forgiving and it's only ourselves to blame.

So i think that you must forgive yourself.

Forgiveness is not just big things in life but also the small things and people call that acceptance but that's also forgiveness. if somebody wants to keep going down the road of death after numerous times of you gently showing them the light then you do have the right to leave that situation and choose life for yourself. You must also accept this as your resposibilty. And forgive yourself for being able to be in control. Control is not such a bad thing but it need to be gentle. with yourself and with others.

So practice as you preach and i will try to do the same thing. Wisdom is no use on peace of paper or a mear thought in the mind but it's a practice.

You sure have the ability to do that I have seen you works of art. that has taken dedication and practice. Please find the time to forgive yourself. you have the skill and now you need to practice on yourself. you are capable.

J.p

Wanderer said...

Thanks J

Yes, you're right. I have to forgive myself but before I can do that I need to really acknowledge what it is that I've done wrong. I feel like I hide from it. There's so much I've forgotten and I need those memories to be able to judge myself fairly. But do I block those memories or has my illness taken some of them from me or both? I think I can remember more than I do but I have to try.

But you and Al-Anon have given me a good idea and that is to also acknowledge what I've done right as well.

I preach but have to keep relearning it, an unfortunate part of the human condition though some exceptional people must be able to do it fresh each time.

Thanks so much for encouraging me to keep trying to practice forgiveness of myself. I can't heal without that...or you or anyone. But it is tricky sometimes to do the practice when you've forgotten key points and been hurt by the voices. There's no alternative though. I want to be a good person and so I'll work on the practice.

Kate

Anonymous said...

Hi Kate,
We are forgetful creatures and I need to be reminded daily of my short coming but also a trick from yourself and not to be too hard on myself. Gently does it and if it's too gentle and you are not hearing then a little more firmness. Until you have got it just right for yourself.

Yes i am sorry that I have not even acknowledged that Brendon passed away. This was selfish of me. I acknowledge that you acknowledge that i didn't acknowledge this.

I surpose that I have treated you like the health workers who have treated me and others but you know what. You are on the right path. You are wanting to remember instead of blocking it. it does resurface and if you haven't dealt with it in you own special way you will be bringing up the same emotions of when it first occurred or because emotions change with thoughts, a variation of those emotions.

It's trying to remember clearly and it will come to you if you seek it out. It may seam unclear at the moment of what happened. Once you can see, you can question and then understand and am sure you will be able to forgive yourself. Try not to put blame anywhere. that makes vision blurred and you focus on who ever you are blaming. Instead of seeing what is in fact what happened. When i say that i mean with your memories, if you did something in the past figure out why you did it but don't blame anybody or yourself for doing it. You will then make a fair judgement and then be able to correct yourself if that is you intention.

Unfortunately meds do block memories and voices do bring one down and i wish i could take this away from you but you can't and I won't.

what i could suggest is seek seek seek your memories and don't feel to badly about not remembering what you want to but also accept this.

i think the meds themselves do not make you stop remembering but they make you feel as if you can't go there. they make it easy to do that so you may have to do some hard work at remembering.

i think that post about brendan's birthday was remarkable. the detail of events so clear to me as a reader. you do not seam to me as a bad rememberer at all. the good thing about you is that you want to remember whether good or bad.

i have forgotton alot through the lack of being asked about past events. Peter didn't want to know me at all. people in the past have gotton back to me and reminded me of me and it felt good. So sorry for being self fish and not hearing you out. I just didn't want to make you feel bad from bad experiences but I am wrong because you and Brendan did have good times too.

i liked listening to how you two met up. the vibe you felt from getting with him. i liked how you discribed the bad times as well. And i will no doubt enjoy listen to more and your views on how you percieve past events now.

sometimes we are so stupid that it's funny and sometimes you laugh but don't like being laughed at.

I love you.

J>P