Sunrise Part II: Anguish
I wasn’t able to go home for the funeral, as I didn’t want to miss any school before I left for Singapore the next week. This was the second worst decision I have ever made, because I am still unable to fully come to terms with what happened. The worst decision I have ever made, was keeping all this to myself. I sought no help, told no one, and suffered the consequences. I told myself that this was my issue and I should burden no one else with the matter. I withdrew into myself, and projected a respectable facade of myself to the rest of the world. Behind this demonstration, I felt like I was falling deeper and deeper into darkness. I used the visual of the scene in the movie 300 where the Persian messenger is kicked into the hole by King Leonidas, except in my head it was actually me getting kicked and a being representing life, itself, replaced King Leonidas. I slowly faded away from everything, including myself. I went to the shadows, and kept about my business. No one could tell anything was wrong, and this pleased me.
I don’t like people pitying me. I slipped up once when someone asked me how I was in the Dining Hall line, and I told them that I was feeling like shit because my best friend killed himself. They pitied me, and nothing else happened after. A few weeks later, I told another friend. He didn’t know how to respond, and nothing else happened. I hated myself for even attempting to bother someone else.
My engine was turned back on again after I met with Mr. Frankenbach to discuss rewrites. One of my papers highlighted some struggles I have had at home with my parents, and we began to discuss that instead of the English aspect. It quickly transitioned to a therapy session in a sense. I cracked, and like a crack in a dam everything began to come out, slowly at first, then more and more until there was no longer any resistance against the flow. I told him everything, and he helped me. He didn’t pity me. His sympathy and words of advice inspired me to push forward, to break through the darkness. Things were improving after that experience, I began to break free, to socialize more, to laugh, to take things lightly, and to wake up in a metaphorical sense. That lasted until Thanksgiving.
When I went home for Thanksgiving, I fell back into the darkness. I visited his grave and met with others who were deeply affected by his loss. This should have brought closure, but inexplicably it made things much, much worse. I thought of death often, especially the inevitability of my own death. The darkness that I had briefly began to escape, finally consumed me whole. I moved throughout the days in a haze, purely numb to all that around me. Periodically throughout each day, the feeling of deep loss invaded my conscious. It would hit like a tidal wave, removing me from whatever I was occupied with, taking me under the surface, tossing me around, and spitting me backup clueless and with my emotions unglued. When I was under the surface I would have brief visions, initially they were graphic and violent like a bullet piercing the skull and slicing through the brain, and then transitioned to an overwhelming vision of black swallowing the world around me. Every night was full of nightmares. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t focus in school, and I couldn’t perform at a high level on the ice. My life was a living hell.
Everyday was like this until January 3, 2016. My flight back to school was the next day and despite my attempts to get closure by visiting his family and seeing friends, nothing worked. I was desperate, lonely, and afraid. I acted rashly and on impulse. Before I knew it, I was driving to the cemetery around midnight. I got out, went over to his grave, and wept profoundly. I couldn’t stop crying. I begged for forgiveness. I apologized for leaving him, and cursed myself. After I got the majority of my feelings of despair out, I made another impulsive decision. I took the emergency blanket out of my trunk, and bundled up in my winter hat and mittens, and I stayed there until dawn. As I sat there, joyful memories of my time with him began to rise like bubbles from deep inside my conscience; each one different, and each one slowly breaking the chains of darkness imprisoning me. As the sun came up slowly over the headstones, I had my realization. I became fully aware that I was capable of being happy again, that I have the potential to live a full life. David’s death didn’t define me, and I couldn’t let it restrict me to the shadows anymore. Would he have wanted me to live like this? This is the question I kept asking myself, as I got back in my car to head home. As I drove along the country roads with the morning sun shining upon me, I decided that I must do, as David would’ve wanted, I had to break free, and become the best I could be in every way possible. In the car ride home that morning, I became a new me.
