Writing on Wednesdays late at night seems to be my new thing. There’s been so much that I’ve been processing lately what with hitting trauma anniversaries and the news cycle. But today, I got a book called Buffering by Hannah Hart, YouTuber and well known for the youtube channel, My Drunk Kitchen. It’s amazing and everyone should read it.

Anyway, it’s helping me process some stories that I don’t necessarily want to think about and haven’t taken the time to write about. One such story is about a relationship I had with a woman who I sincerely believe to be schizophrenic. It’s really the only explanation that fits what I witnessed and experienced by being close friends and basically partners. At the time of this relationship, I was only beginning to question my sexuality and had not admitted to myself or anyone else that I was gay. I thought I was probably bisexual at the time but more as a way of convincing myself I could pass as straight even if I wasn’t. During this time, I became close friends with this girl I went to college with whose name will not be mentioned to protect her privacy. I tell this story hesitantly because I value her privacy. I have to talk about this, though. I need to talk about this.

She was the first woman I admitted I loved even if I didn’t understand it at the time, and I believe it was mutual. We just…never talked about it like we were dating, but still acted like we were in every sense of that word. She was the first woman I loved to break my heart and shatter me. The real me. Not the one who pretended to be straight and have it altogether. She was beautiful and she was insane. I watched her on the brink of a mental breakdown, and then I watched her spiral, with nothing I could do to stop it. I was there for her in every way she would let me be, but eventually she pushed all her friends away including myself. She blamed me and said I wasn’t doing enough because I couldn’t drop everything and help her 24/7. Maybe I should have. I don’t know. I thought at the time boundaries were good, because my mental health was not stable enough. I almost lost her several times while trying to talk her out of suicide but living 3o minutes away. And I couldn’t send help to someone who doesn’t want help. Later, she would say I was the reason she was suicidal, and that I was the enemy. Eventually, thanks to good friends who saw how toxic the relationship had become and that I couldn’t help her anymore, I slowly broke contact with her after she moved back in with her family to a more stable environment. To my knowledge, she is still alive and well physically. I don’t know about her mind.

I bring this up now because as I am processing my past sexual abuse, I remember that she was the first to help me sort through my traumatic past. She was the first to tell me it wasn’t my fault and tell me I could heal. If only I could have helped her as much as she helped me. If only the love I had for her could have helped through all the mental instability.

That’s all I really have to say about it for now. I’m sure I’ll need to process more later. A poem is all I have left as I try to process:

Your mind.

Beautiful, lost, kind, crazy

I had your heart but I couldn’t understand your mind.

Brilliant, psychotic, bold, strange

You had my heart but you lost your mind.

Trapped, wandering, vulnerable, scared

I wanted to enter your world but I was unprepared.

My mind.

Haunted, wondering, helpless, undone

You were too far gone and I was too late to save your mind.

Devastated, heartbroken, hopeful, tried

You loved your delusions–your world–more than mine.

Broken, healing, brave, remembering

what we had, but I tried to forget your world–never to forget your heart.

I was in love and I didn’t know it.

I was in love and couldn’t show it.

We were in love and we ignored it.

We were in love and then we lost it.

Because of your mind, you could never be mine. But at least I could say I tried.

___________________________________________________________

Now it is Thursday, and maybe I can sleep. Sometimes unloading and sharing some of the pain helps.