Breathe Me

Be my friend; hold me. Wrap me up; unfold me. I am small; I'm needy. Warm me up.

I was diagnosed with PTSD in January of 2018, a year and a half after Mark’s suicide. The first steps to address it involved getting my mind and body back in sync so that I wasn’t always in panic mode. My therapist helped me choose the best actions to take, the first of which was attending a group meditation class offered at the clinic. I did that on the 16th of January in 2018. When I left, I wrote the following in the car before even leaving the parking lot. It is unedited, and therefore possibly confusing, and this is the first time I’m sharing it with anybody.

Just left my first meditation session at Kaiser. I kinda feel like A. it is where I belong and B. How the fuck did I get here? I feel a little bit like a crazy person and also like an ass for judging other people there as crazy, though they mostly seem like regular people, whatever that means. I thought for sure I wouldn't be able to sit for that long, but I did and that feels good. I'm not where I was before it started. The chakras... 3rd eye just makes me think of Mark, though I didn't twitch that much. And the crown one just made me think that Mark didn't have that, like he cut off his 3rd eye (or, literally, shot it and blew it to nothing or made it implode) and then that probably destroyed his crown chakra. So he messed those up. This made me feel like he was incomplete and cut those chakras off, but then this also made me realize I have them all, so to speak. That made me feel alive, and that felt good. When she started talking about the crown chakra, I had an image of all of Mark's blood pouring over me, warm and flowing. There would need to be enough blood, like the pool of blood that pours out of the elevator in The Shining. Mark's blood, warm and endlessly flowing over me, and it sounds wonderful, actually, once I got over that I'm probably insane. I want to be covered by and hugged and encompassed by and warmed by him. Not physically since he was too small, but I want him all around me. I also really want someone to hold me physically and take care of me. And I also REALLY can't wait for Jessi to send me the quilt with Mark's shirts so I can wrap myself up in him in the most literal way I can think of wrapping myself up in a dead person. I'm really bothered today thinking about his funeral and how awful it was that his face was so messed up it had to be covered. I got that in a whole new way today, and thank goodness I was in so much shock to not fully get at the time how much that sucked. And his uniform was too big and not even his. So all we saw was his hands and a too-big uniform and the yellow and white cloths over his face. I can't remember and would have to look at the photos. I hate those photos, except I'm kinda glad I can look to see if they were yellow or white or both because not being able to remember is bothering me more.

I can't find the pictures. Dammit.

I didn't want to close my eyes when I first got there because I didn't know if I could trust the other people I the room. If they're also there, they must be fucked up like me or Mark and have the potential to pull out a gun and shoot the place up. Like Vegas. But that passed after a few minutes. I could realize it was a thought and not actually happening.