Ariana

The following are entries I made over the course of several years in the aftermath of the suicide of my talented, tortured, and deeply loved daughter, Ariana.

These mostly unaltered and unedited entries fairly stunned me when I read them again recently; was that really me? It felt like reading the journal entries of several different people.

I believe that emotional disconnect is due to the fact that mourning, grieving, and the most difficult, living on, are all part of an almost obscenely personal journey, one nearly impossible to clearly convey to another. Yet I felt compelled to try incessantly in the beginning.

Feeling most vulnerable, I endeavor to go out on the emotional limb that I find scary and unstable to share my attempts to heal from, live with, and forgive my daughter’s suicide.

ARIANA 26 Feb 20 2017 noon

I am out in the world, acting, trying to act, normal. I live, I do, I live and even enjoy it at times... but I am haunted still. My beautiful daughter put a .38 caliber pistol into her mouth and pulled the trigger on April 3, 2015. She was 29 years old, barely. Apparently, we were lucky to have her as long as we did; in her suicide note, she wrote in the portion to me that it was our love for each other and her reluctance to hurt me that had "stayed her hand," as long as she had.

I'm haunted, as I said, though, by her image, memories of moments both good and painful. I remember when she spoke her first word - a phrase, rather - "French fries". She was very little, not even a year, and we would drive down the highway, and every time we passed 'the Golden Arches", she would get excited and say "fruh fry"!! Adorable.

At the same time, though, I've only now begun to reach the point where I can turn the light off at night. Because in that space of time between the engulfing darkness, and the time I actually fall asleep, I cannot shake the movie-like stream of thoughts and images that assail me and scare me and leave me sweating and gasping - those last seconds... what was she thinking and feeling? Was she frightened?

I feel regret and shame and a twisting pain in my stomach and behind my eyes at the thought of my dear, beloved baby girl in such despair that this seems like the most desirable way in which to solve it, suicide is appealing, in fact, it seems the only effective method with which relief appears possible. Haunting. And that is only the beginning of the deluge of darkness.

ARIANA 27

Mar. 9 '17 I have felt so resistant to post in this series, this, my first and only blog. Lately, especially. Well, duh. In the beginning, it felt like nobody else was reading any of these words I was writing, like everything I wrote was just going out into Internet Infinity, raw, unfiltered, no holding back sort of writing. To the bone vulnerability, really. Anyway, once I found out that even one person I knew had read something from the intermittent Blog I was writing, I no longer had the (perceived) anonymity I had believed I had.

I have decided that it doesn't matter whether I do know or don't know. That's not the deal at all. Either I am going to write what I have to write or not. If I do, I have to continue to write the truth about everything I can think of and be vulnerable because I owe it to myself and to Ariana to do that. To have something to say and get busy saying it; it's the fucking point of the Blog, really.

So, that all said, the important thing that needs to be written about, honestly, is that I am doing as poorly as I ever have done, with the exception of that first period of time, the part where I was just completely in shock and denial after my little brother told me Ariana had committed suicide. Had shot herself in the head, had put a gun in her mouth, and pulled the trigger. Was dead.

We are coming upon the 2-year mark of the death of my sweet child, the one who left us. I miss her so much that it is sometimes very difficult to find words, finite words, to describe the ways in which things have changed, the ways in which I have changed. The effects are so shattering that I am having a difficult time getting through each day, each night. I feel that I am going crazy. Lacy

ARIANA 28  Mar 11, 2017

I think that I have only really cried once today...  oh, wait, no, twice.  Morning is such a transitional time and space for me that it often ends up feeling like a different day. I just took note of that now.

One reason, duh, that I am so emotional (aside from the obvious), is that I am not sleeping again.  I got to where I could - passably so, maybe 3 or 4 nights of the week.  Hardly sleeping at all right now.  A three-hour stretch is a miracle of rest for me.  Many nights I don’t sleep at all.  I used to hear people say things like that, and I would be like, “right... probably you are sleeping, you just are not remembering it.  Because you fell asleep,”  What a bitch.  Now, I know.  I have plenty of nights where I. Never. Fall. Asleep. For. One. Pissing. Second.

A few challenges:  I don’t turn the lights off.  Can’t.  Not all of them, at least.  So, I’m saying I’m scared of the dark?  Not really.  I’ve always liked to at least have a little nite-lite or something.  Never been a gotta-have-total-darkness-to-sleep person.  What happens now, though, is that, alone, in the dark, with my eyes shut to try to go along with the sleeping thing, I am haunted.

My precious daughter, my super high energy vibrating daughter does not haunt me, oh jumping jesus no!  What haunts me are images.  In that darkness my mind sees more than I ever wanted even to think about... oh, well.  But, what I see, and think about the most is those last moments.

Her writings from that night, her suicide notes, were very clear and well-spoken.  Emotional, yes, but not hysterical.  

Of all the thousands of hours I have spent with Ariana in life, I only see now how hard she tried to protect me from the sharpest of her pain, how often she put on that brave face and did all she could to act “normal” (her version... we all kind of have an ideal there, don’t we?) so that I wouldn’t worry too much, so she wouldn’t be a hassle (Ha!) to me, or cause me any pain if she thought she could help it.

Yes, she tried to shield me from the psychic shards that provoked her pain; her own mind’s poisonous powers turned inward, the real battle being fought in her own mind, but I knew.  Of course, I did.  But if she said she was ok, I just so wanted to let it be true, to believe her.  

So, those dark images consist of imagining, without wanting to - unable not to - how she felt... frightened? Peaceful? Relieved? Did she want me, her Momma, did she need me and I wasn’t there?  Where was the gun? Just laying on the bed? In her purse? Her lap?  What about her wife?  I know fuck-all about that.  But still, I wonder... did she put that gun in her mouth only once, or did she test the feel of it a time or two first?  Most of all, I am haunted by those very last few moments; maybe the last three or four minutes before she pulled that trigger?  Did she hesitate, or think about backing out?  And of course, once the die was cast, and the deed was done.... then what?  My beautiful gifted child... how can I sleep when I know what happened next?  I can only keep the visions at bay for so long, and then my mind shows me the images that I really, really, don’t want to see. Sleep?

Ariana 29 3/20/2017

I went looking through a big box of photos from the 80s, 90s, and up until cell phone photography - film prints of Ariana as a baby and into late childhood years, pics of Jack as a baby... Young, everyone looks so young. I've written already about my obsession with the fact that Ariana will never grow old, never turn 30, always be young and strong and beautiful. So, lots and lots of them, those photos. I didn't lose my shit and go all to pieces, crying, etc ., But I did look at my baby, and travel down memory lane a little bit... There are, indeed, many photos of that magical child enjoying herself and all the things about her, but, as I expected, I found plenty of those faces she made at people, and plenty of expressions of disdain that her adult friends would recognize in an instant. The face she adopted to inform a restaurant server that (despite being held in her stepdad's arms, and them both having fabulous blue eyes) "He's not my Daddy,"! The poor guy only said nicely to her, "well, you got your Daddy's eyes, didn't you,?" I told that backwards. Oh, well. Go fish.

divinebedlam

ARIANA 35

Here we are, nearly, hell, almost exactly 4 1/2 years since Ariana left us, since she committed suicide on April 3, 2015, in Boynton Beach, FL. A good long while since I have written here one of my entries meant to be honestly reflective about the aftermath of my daughter’s suicide, and my parallel attempts to “heal” and find “peace” as her mother.

First I must make clear that, from my experience, I will never ever “get over” the loss of my beloved little girl. It has always been much more a process of changing, with or without attendant struggle and travail, to become someone who has adapted in certain ways to a whole new perspective on the world itself. I have changed inside, left some beliefs by the wayside, and picked up a new understanding of life and love and the nature of God - for better or worse.

Some new way must be found, a way of moving through the world each day, a world that no longer includes my daughter, my identity as “Ariana’s Mom” and such, but one that seemingly must be moved through just the same. Because here is both the good news and the bad - I will never be the same, and still, life goes on.

I have endeavored to modify my place in day to day life to a point where I might sometimes both feel and look like a normal human navigating a normal human life. I’m not sure how that’s working most days, actually, but I know I don’t have too much choice, mostly. I must carry on, I must show up - for my son, and myself, and the many who love me. And of course, for my granddaughter.

As I carry my place for that little girl, who had just turned 8 several weeks before her Mother’s death, I am acutely aware of the (honor) responsibility of being who I am to her... the one main connection to her Mom, the Mimi who is there to help her solidify shadowy memories, and reassure her of Ariana’s love of and care for this angelic girl, our girl.

I fill in blanks in her memories of Ariana, wherever possible, and tell her details about who and how her mom is and was. I’m so often able to tell Evie of the many ways she resembles her mom, and how they do so many things just the same way.

Ultimately, of course, any healing takes just the amount of time it takes. There are no shortcuts. I must be in the process of healing if I intend to be involved in the process of living. Important to recall is that we don’t heal in isolation, we only heal in community.