Hold the fort: when friends die young
Owning the grief, the jealousy, and the determined hope.
In the last week of July, my friend Hope’s life burned out like the last inch of a sparkler — bright even as it sputtered to a close.
I met Hope the same time I met Irene, and R, and T, all of whom I have grieved in the past. Hope had the most severe case of C-PTSD I’d ever seen, and I was getting to know her the same month I finally received that diagnosis myself. My friendship with her helped me understand some of my own experiences for the first time. Something in me would warp in gut-twisting solidarity when I saw her moments of catatonic disassociation.
We had the same treatment team, so we crossed paths fairly often. When C-PTSD released its relentless grip on her bright heart, she was fiercely kind, relentlessly compassionate, and often hilarious.
In the five years since we met, we’ve kept up mostly on social media — sending back and forth the sort of encouraging and soothing missives that are common to people who have shared the same odd creases in a life story. I watched her become more and more defiant, building a life for herself with sheer grit, demanding that the universe deliver the hope she was named for.
This made it so much worse when I woke up in California, the morning I was going to Disneyland, to the news that she had died.
Every single time another one of my friends dies of anorexia or another mental illness (which is happening rather a lot this year), I get a slew of slightly anxious, well-meaning questions: “does this motivate you to change, make you able to recover?”
I understand where that question is coming from. Movies and media feed us the catharsis of the great Turning Point, the plot twist where suddenly the hero has a Reason and all is made well.
Everyone wants me to get better (which is so kind). No one quite believes me when I say that my brain and body have been permanently, in many ways irreparably, changed.
Ultimately, I have to gently refute the question because it is based on multiple false premises. First of all, generating “motivation” in a brain that is actively wired differently from everyone else is not actually possible. But more importantly:
I’m not afraid to die.
I’m afraid to live like this forever.
I am not “scared straight” when my friends pass into what lies beyond this life. Instead I am like a pitiful abandoned child watching a loved one walk away, asking in the smallest voice: can I come too?
To put it bluntly: I’m lonely, and more than a little jealous.
The idea that I wouldn’t want to end up the same way my friends have is predicated on a lack of understanding of what it is to live like this. People with Anorexia Nervosa are 18 times more likely to die by suicide than their peers. That is, quite simply, because this disorder is one of the single most miserable ways a human being can exist. Recent research has even proven that the anorexic brain’s reward centers are wired differently so that they cannot receive joy and satisfaction from the same things normal people enjoy. I have written about this unique anhedonia before, where much of what makes life worth living for other people actually actively hurts or terrifies me.
I am working on it. This year I have been on a journey of undergoing some of the most powerful neuroplasticity-restoring treatments in the world in an effort to help my brain find a baseline it never grew, stunted by decades of trauma.
But as I think about the ones I’ve lost, it’s hard not to want to go with them. It’s hard to be asked to stay behind.
July also held the death of my favorite contemporary poet, Andrea Gibson. Their words have been balm to me for over a decade, and I had the profound honor of being present for their last-ever performance. A song with lyrics they wrote released posthumously, a love letter to those they left behind — especially their wife. I imagine it as words offered back by the ones who are just one step ahead of me.
“Hold down the fort, ‘cause I gotta go.
Light on the water will carry me somehow.
Don’t say goodbye, forever is not too far.
The other side’s just a stone’s throw
from love and you’ve got a great arm.
You’ve got a great arm.”
Someday, it will be me singing those words over my shoulder. Someday, it will be my turn.
But for now, I have to keep rolling up my heart’s sleeves and plunging my hands into the hardest work. The 5-8 appointments I have weekly right now. The quiet ignorance of those who unknowingly punish me for being sick. The daily miseries of being incapable of escaping my primary sources of anxiety: my body and its needs. The endless indignities of having my physicality and mental fortitude fail the demands of my indomitable will.
Most people will never understand how much effort goes into keeping me simply existing in this world. That’s OK; not everyone has to understand. Just as not everyone has to understand how utterly, unequivocally not their fault the deaths of my friends have been.
Their blamelessness and my resolve remain the same.
For now, I have to stay while they had to go. But if I’ve learned anything through losing so many friends so young, it’s that love’s arm really can out-throw the leagues of death. We’re all a little tethered to each other, even when we land on either side of life’s limits.
“You held the pen to my chest each hour you were writing.
You said, ‘Every good poem is hell and heaven fighting.’
But there’s no gates where I’m going—
I think that’s a good thing.
I want nothing kept out
if I’m losing my everything
‘Cause I had it all: I had you.”
P.S. — I am fundraising for TWLOHA starting now through the end of Suicide Prevention Month. It’s my commitment to continuing to help others stay, however I can. I am inviting you to join me, if you would like: https://give.twloha.com/fundraiser/6542697