Shake it Out

And given half the chance would I take any of it back?
It's a fine romance, but it's left me so undone.

Mark typically doesn’t speak in my dreams about him. He’s a peaceful mute, and I rather enjoy it. He often smiles. He usually seems older and wiser than he was in his final days, which I think is a nice touch of the old soul he seemed to possess - so young at heart, so physically vital, but also sage and grounded in some lessons most of us take years to learn. Or I do, at least. I always felt a bit like he understood some things that I am only now beginning to grasp, and he shows up that way in my dreams. I’m drawn to his wisdom and peace, like an old friend and mentor guiding me through life and reminding me to slow down and enjoy the little things, for they’re all that matter in the end.

I’m grateful for these dreams, especially in contrast to the nightmares that used to haunt me. While I prided myself in the early months after Mark’s suicide for not having any nightmares, I know now that it was an extended period of shock that kept them at bay. Once they came, they hung around for quite a while, and they were awful. Mark, however, never made an actual appearance in any of those. Not directly, anyways. I never saw his face in them, as I never saw his face post-suicide.

Given the manner of his death, we had to sign a waiver at the funeral home before being allowed to spend time with his body, as it had the potential of being quite traumatizing. His face was covered in cloth, both a white and a yellow one, and the rest of his body in dark gray blankets. His folded hands were the only part showing, and I left it at that. I saw no need to add insult to injury; dead was dead, and it was weird enough just being there. Formaldehyde-filled bodies are hard and cold. I do remember his legs seeming very strong under the blankets, a testament to his athleticism and muscular build. His family took some pictures, which I kept for a while and have since deleted because what does one do with pictures of themself looking down at their dead husband’s hands sticking out from under a blanket?

I believe this explains the lack of his physical presence in my earlier nightmares. Without the reality of his face being able to inform any vision of him in my dreams, my mind did its best to put the pieces together. This is not unusual for people surviving the loss of someone to suicide without having witness the event. It’s common as well for people who have lost someone without ever recovering the body. That’s why grieving rituals, such as wakes and funerals, are so important. It is very challenging for the mind to process a death without physical proof, so the brain, wanting only to make sense of things, does its best to make sense of the death. Unfortunately, what our brain comes up with is often worse than the reality, and studies have shown that not witnessing a tragic event can be as difficult to process as it is for those who do witness it.

Traumatized people so often want to compare their loss to others and assert their own was the worst, which I believe is mostly out of hurt and a desire to be comforted and have our tremendous pain acknowledged and validated. You see this everywhere, not just in the more dramatic tragedies of life, and I think most of us just need a big hug and a good cry now and then.

It gets worse, though, because humans are a ridiculously imperfect species, and our psychology is fascinating. While we want everyone to know how awful our pain is, many of us simultaneously don’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves, a big no-no in many cultures. So, when faced with a death without the body or the face as part of the grieving ritual, the brain both imagines the worst and tries to diminish our need for support. The result? A hot mess.

Or, as I like to call it, a shitstorm.

The world is full of these hot messes and shitstorm-trapped people just zombie-ing around the world without the ability to discuss and process their pain. That’s part of why I write about mine and look forward to the messages people send me in response. Sometimes others find words for that which we can’t express, and it helps.

My early nightmares were grotesque, and I can recall them vividly. I’ll spare details here so as to not retraumatize others, though talking about them in therapy and with a few close people I trust has helped tremendously. I now disclose details only to those with whom I feel safe. I’ve also found a balance between discussing suicide for what it is and doing so without getting too graphic. I believe we can’t shy from the realities of suicide and still expect to prevent them, but we can also discuss it without too many details that potentially reactivate others struggling to process their own past traumas.

Despite how awful those nightmares were, I never saw Mark’s face in them. I rather dislike the images I did have. The mind’s desire to understand can lead it down some dark roads, but none of what I dreamed about was his actual face. So, I’m grateful I kept his face covered when with him at the funeral home.

As for his speechlessness, I have another theory. Mark lied so regularly that it really is hard to decipher which parts of our relationship were based in truth and which he completely invented. I know the love was real, but so much of what he told me was not factual. Since his death, I have learned some truths that he seemed to bend, perhaps to process his own pain. Others were outright lies. Several will remain unknown to me, as I just don’t have it in me to raise the subjects to people who might know the truth. I don’t want to hurt his family by bringing up some uncomfortable questions, but a bigger part of me is plain old embarrassed to admit some of the lies I fell for. So I’ve just added a lot of those unanswered items go into the giant pot of things I’m just not meant to know. If he felt the need to lie about things, I can respect his privacy.

Beyond that, I think part of why he’s always silent in my dreams is a representation of my desire to get him to just talk to me and tell me what was going on. He may have had a lot to say, but he was mostly feeding me lies and barely spoke any truth about his actions - the gambling, the lack of funds in my account, the mysteriously disappearing items, the random wads of cash, the ties cut from friends, the phone calls and messages from his Marines asking questions I couldn’t answer. In life, it was like talking to a wall. No matter how much I begged for information, he just couldn’t give it. And so it is in my nightmares - me desperate for answers, and Mark silent as ever.

In my more pleasant dreams, at least he smiles. Sometimes I think those dreams are his gift to me, in an I-put-up-with-your-crap-so-you-owe-me kind of way. It’s quite lovely. I like to think it’s an apology from him, or a way he is trying to make it all up to me. Logically, I see that it’s probably my brain just doing its thing - pulling at some nice memories of Mark in his prime, happy and fit, smiling and peaceful. Brains are weird, so who knows?

None of this, however, explains why last night’s dreams were so stressful. Mark was gambling again, and the potential result that I feared was a suicide attempt. It was as if he had survived what happened over six years ago and then paused while time had passed for me. I had lived through the shitstorm, but Mark was back, and it was as if a day hadn’t passed for him. Our age gap had increased as I had aged, and he was more like a dependent, or a heavy load I had to carry, than anything. He was a burden. In the nightmare, I knew something was off about him. He was speaking, and not saying anything helpful, so it was hard not to. This time, though, I was able to see that the pattern of lies, confusion and stress was going to end in suicide.

And I knew I had to walk away.

I knew it a lot sooner than I did in reality over six years ago, and I knew that suicide was real. It was no longer something I could hardly imagine. It was inevitable because it had already happened.

Fortunately, I woke up before that movie was able to play out. Also, it all passed as if in fast forward, and I didn’t have to slowly relive the back and forth debate I had with myself about whether or not to allow Mark’s gambling and mess to control my life. It was like high-speed suffering, reliving those awful months in just a few seconds. I knew in the nightmare that making a choice for myself was going to be the final straw for Mark.

I wouldn’t ever choose to go back to that life. It was horrible, and I’m grateful this nightmare passed through it so quickly. Gambling addiction is real, and it wreaks havoc. I still can barely talk about it. Heck, I can barely dream about it. I pass over it at warp speed, thank goodness. I lived through it with a Mark who barely spoke to me, and now I’ve suffered a nightmare about it with a Mark that nagged and complained to me like a petulant child.

An absolute pain my ass.

A painfully sharp thorn in my side.

Both the actual stoic and nightmarish fussy versions of my life with Mark were awful, and I don’t want to relive either. I’d much rather the mute, strong, smiling Mark of my more pleasant dreams. He’s sweet. Tolerable. Comforting, even.

Dead.

He’s dead in those dreams.

And I will probably always feel some amount of guilt about my preference for the dead Mark of those pleasant dreams over the living Mark of my past.