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| Mandy Hale Quote Pinterest: AgapĪ© |
REALLY hard!
It makes so much sense, and, at the same time, makes no sense at all.
Does THAT make any sense.....at all?
In the immediate aftermath of the massacre at Columbine High School, shit got real for a whole lot of people.
By just about everyone's standards, shit got even more real in the days, weeks, and months that followed. At least it did for my family.
Looking back on those days, weeks, and months today is like looking into a very deep black hole....an abyss that poses a risk of falling into and not being able to get back out of if I allow that to happen. It scares me every single time I venture to look down into that abyss....that rabbit hole of reality combined with Carla's (my first wife) paranoid delusions and psychosis.
That black hole is fraught with dangers:
Dangers that swirl around what was said to whom and by whom.
Dangers that swirl around lack of understanding and comprehension.
Dangers that swirl around secrets kept.
Dangers that swirl around secrets that need to be revealed.
Making sense out of those days, even TRYING to make sense out of those days, is tough. It's more than tough. Words fail me as to how tough it is because I simply can't remember with total clarity a lot of what went on. Does that make any sense?
For those who lived those days, weeks, and months with my family, there's a modicum of understanding of what we were going through. But no one, not anyone, 'knew' the realities of our lives in the aftermath of what has come to be known as 'Columbine', much less what went on before this tragedy. They had an inkling, but they really didn't know.
To be clear, I'm not looking for sympathy here. Nor am I looking for compassion or empathy. I'm simply stating a fact - no one really 'knew'. No one knew the depth of Carla's mental illness. No one knew how that mental illness affected my nuclear family.
No one knew what it was like for Carla and me to try and deal with, on a medical level and on a familial level, the delusional paranoia with psychotic episodes that manifested in ways no one who did not know could not imagine, even if they were to try.
And that's how we chose to keep it. We chose to try and portray ourselves in the public arena as something we were not....a public arena that was thrust upon us by circumstances far beyond our control and beyond anything we could have possibly imagined might happen.
We chose to try and keep secret the reality surrounding a pervasive and insidious illness that ultimately took one life, Carla's, and could very well have destroyed others in its wake.
It was a conscious choice, a conscious decision.
To be real about what had happened, and what was happening to us wouldn't fit into what the public so badly needed to see following this evil taking of innocent lives and malevolent injuring of so many others. Our reality simply did not fit in the public's view of how they wanted things to be. At least that's how we saw it.
I honored Carla's wishes in keeping her delusions, her hallucinations, and her paranoia secret.
If I were given a do-over, I'd do the same thing again.....in a heartbeat.....even knowing that doing so may have played a role in some way in her taking her own life.
Marriage means you honor, you love, you cherish your spouse no matter what. Even if it means going against your best judgment to keep things under wraps, so to speak. You do so out of love.
There are a few exceptions. But they are few, and, ultimately, they are very personal. They have to be by their very nature.
What does all of this have to do with the subject of this post? Well, the love I had for Carla may have caused me to overlook some things I wouldn't have glossed over otherwise. Her mental illness may have clouded my own judgment in not calling her out a little more forcefully in how she interacted with people following the trauma she experienced at almost losing both her children on that terrible day. Perfectly understandable.....right?
I guess it might be likened to listening but not actually hearing. Sort of a 'can't see the forest for the trees' is one way to look at it.
I knew there was something even more wrong with Carla after April 20, 1999. Something way, way beyond the physical injuries to Anne Marie, the psychological injuries to Nathan, and the other inherent trauma that go along with being a parent in these types of situations.
Something much, much deeper even than that. Much, MUCH deeper. An insidious nagging at the back of my mind told me so then, and will keep on telling me so into the future if I don't at least try to address it somehow.
That's where the second part of the original meme in this post comes in.....
Let it Go!That's what the quote at the outset of this blog post says.
Let.....it.....go!To put it bluntly, there's simply no way I can let it go.
And that's the part of this meme that makes no sense to me whatsoever!
I can't.....let...it...go!Why? Because as time has passed since Columbine, I've been made aware bit by bit, incident by incident that others outside my nuclear family were hurt by things Carla said and did.
I've also become aware that others outside my nuclear family, those on the receiving end of things Carla said and did, were also hurt by things I did not say or do to protect them. That...that right there...is what causes me to not be able to let it go!
I know these things are true.
I struggle with this.
I hate that they happened.
I cannot, and will not, deny that they happened.
They happened.....yes, indeed.....they happened.
Things were said. Things were done.
Things were said and done, and I did nothing in response.
That's as much of a problem, perhaps more so, than anything and everything else....that things were left unsaid and undone by me in response to hurtful things that WERE said and done to others outside my nuclear family.
Remembering some of those things is hard to do - not necessarily because they aren't clear in my memory. Rather, because I am ashamed. I am ashamed they were even said. Ashamed at how I handled those situations...or not.
I'm still ashamed. And therein lies my dilemma of not being able to let go.
It really isn't even a matter of driving myself up a wall backwards trying to find peace (although some might disagree with that assessment). Rather, it's about coming to grips with something that should have been addressed a very long time ago, but wasn't.
Sometimes, the remarks were made directly to me about others. Paranoid, fearful remarks. Unwarranted remarks. My efforts to soothe and calm Carla were a mixed bag. I tried. That's what her doctors said I should do. In spite of everything I tried, though, I knew my efforts were a mixed bag. I just knew....
Other times, remarks were made directly to individuals other than me. THOSE are the ones I struggle with the most mainly because I'm still finding out about them even today little by little, bit by bit.
Stunning, distressing, almost unbelievable things, really. That is, unless one understands the illness involved: the fear, the paranoia, the delusions, and the psychosis suffered by the person making them.
I don't blame Carla. I blame myself for not trying to do more to help prevent those remarks from being made in the first place.
How do I make amends?
How should I approach those who've suffered as a result of those hurtful remarks?
Should I even try?
I cannot let go without at least trying on some level to make amends in order to find peace, not only for myself, but also for those who were hurt.
How would I ever be able to resolve this dilemma if I simply let it go? And therein lies the biggest conundrum of them all.
Truth be known, the entire country experienced trauma that day on some level.
Those of us who experienced trauma first hand, from the very personal and physical perspective that we did, were overwhelmed by it.
That's simply a statement of fact.
We'd like to think we were functioning on a coherent level.
We'd like to believe we were thoughtful.
We'd like to believe we were rational.
We'd like to believe we were psychologically up to the task of maintaining our composure under intense and persistent pressure from outside our own nuclear families.
We'd like to believe we were.....but, and it's a very big BUT, were we.....really?
Does that even make sense? Especially looking back at how things went down during the chaotic aftermath? Does it? Really?
In training seminars on emergency management I've conducted, I often used this meme to illustrate a point about how different people react to different situations:
We did the best we could given the hand we were dealt, but, in reality, we were all paddling like HELL! We simply weren't cognizant of that fact!
Everyone experiences trauma.
Everyone...experiences...trauma.
For many of us on the 'inside' of the Columbine tragedy, our trauma seemed to us to be of a LOT higher degree of magnitude than anyone else.
That it really wasn't is the tragic conundrum we're now seeing emerge more and more in other survivor's stories.
Don't believe me? Then, please read the book, If I Don't Make It, I Love You: Survivors in the Aftermath of School Shootings available on Amazon and in Barnes and Noble Bookstores.
Some of us closed our eyes to other folks' trauma.
Some of us ignored it.
Could it be said some of us actually feared it?
That, folks.....that right there, is what I personally struggle with every time I think about this, or when I see a meme that jolts my senses the way the original meme in this post did.
Conversations with others also have an impact....even today.
Loss of contact with very, very special people has even more of an impact. People who set aside their own trauma and stayed in our lives to try and help.
Were we really that wrapped up in our own struggles that we blinded ourselves to the needs of those who were only trying their very best to help while denying their own very personal traumatic experiences from that day?
Was it willful?
Was it intentional?
Were we even aware of what was going on?
In the end, it's still a blur. That's real. That's VERY real. That's palpable for me.
A complete and total blur.
The only thing I know for a fact that is very, very clear is there are people out there who deserved better......better from my family.
But most telling of all, they deserved better then, and they deserve better now, from me, personally.
Somehow, I must make that right.
Let it go?
Here's what it boils down to for me.....that people I've considered as a part of my own family, although not a part of my nuclear family related by blood or by marriage but a part of my own extended family by friendship and so very much more, have been hurt by things I said and did or by things I didn't say or do to protect them. I'm struggling with what some of those things might even be. That's the most difficult part for me.
I ask their forgiveness and hope we can come together once again as the extended family I came to cherish so very, very much in the days, weeks, and months following both the tragedy at Columbine High School and the suicide of my first wife.
I hope they see this, and I hope they realize who they are because, after all is said and done.......
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