Drew's death has taken what little wind I had in my sails lately. It was the start of a new quarter for school the other week and I find that it always takes at least the first week to really get in the swing of things again. The first week is my 'test week' to submit assignments and figure out what the professor is really expecting for the quarter. It was middle of week 2 in the quarter when Clare called with the news. I had been struggling with sleep issues again and was really looking forward to getting that in order again when Drew died. I have taken for granted that my life is easy, my time is my own and I rarely have conflicts that prevent me from maintaining a work/life/school balance. This? This took everything out of me. My soul just feels exhausted. I battle with telling myself you haven't even seen him in a year...  and just bringing back all the memories of seeing him at the bars when I was with B. Drew was family. The Pig and Fiddle was our Cheers and those who were regulars were family. I called Drew my brother and he reciprocated and called me his sister.

I feel ashamed I judge people who post to our university Facebook groups how overwhelmed they are with life. I've always viewed it as - we as students made this choice to go back to school and we accepted that work, family and life would be a barrier at times. And for me, I can handle all of that. I can fit time for school between a full time job and visiting family/friends etc. I can't even say school is helping to distract me from coping with this loss.

I feel utterly confused, heartbroken, overwhelmingly sad. How in the world could he have made this choice? And logically I understand it. I can understand that you never know what someone is going through despite how happy they come across and their outward "story". I think for as long as I've known Drew, he has always shared at times how lost he felt in life and I get the sense that despite his belonging to our Pig Family, he didn't exactly feel that belonging anywhere else. And I think that was challenging, because sure the drinking and socializing was fun, but I think you can take everything at the surface level and see happiness and what appears to be--- successful, rich, have-it-all-together-people who come to the bar for happy hour to let off steam or what have you... but you don't see the underbelly of the beast.

When my breakup happened, many were shocked. At times I was shocked. I knew we weren't really happy, but never did I think we'd breakup. I thought we'd work it out. A friend of ours took our breakup pretty hard. A friend said, Yeah J is taking this news pretty hard, he keeps saying 'but it's B and Amy... they can't break up." I agree, buddy. I think things change when you take away some things that are the glue to a situation. When the Pig closed in June of 2017, a lot of things changed for people. In a lot of ways, I felt that was the turning point in my relationship. Life just really changed. The Pig was the glue of things. The Family now saw each other less- that support system was gone. Mildly replaced by the restaurant down the block, but forever not the same.

I'm angry at people posting "call me if you need anything". Fuck that. How many depressed people do you know ask for help? Rare. They are too busy drowning in their darkness feeling like a piece of shit and worthless to think about reaching out. OR if they reach out, it is in ways people don't recognize as a cry for help.

Drew posted a Facebook post in March about depression. It held onto me for a few days and I reached out. I hadn't seen or talked to him in some time at that point, but that was his cry for help. I asked him to grab coffee or a drink. He agreed yeah we should. We didn't make a date or concrete plans.

Can we save someone? I don't know. I don't blame myself for not making concrete plans with him. I think sometimes people can help though.

In the back of my mind, this all feels like some sick joke and he'll walk into one of the hangouts he frequented and leave everyone in shock and say, "what's up fuckers... you actually thought I'd kill myself? Fake news." or something like that.

The world is not the same and I respect he felt he needed to exit this life at this point. I know he's on the other side and will get the help from his angels that he needs. The traumatic experience he had outweighs the sadness we are experiencing in his loss.

For those curious... I encourage you to read Echo Bodine's What Happens When We Die. She is also hosting an online class based on this topic. Unfortunately, it is a bit out of my price range, but could be helpful for someone really struggling to understand the death or life journey process. I felt I got a lot out of this book when I read it several years ago.