#traumawithnate

[popcornoncemore]

I am coming to terms with the fact that I'm going to her funeral. I'm going to see her family and our friends and everyone who has ever loved her and we will take time to remember her. This is good, this is healthy, this is devastating.

I feel a jolting sense of awareness that this is unfamiliar to us. At fifteen and sixteen, we should be spending Saturday hanging out, studying, taking a break. We should be talking about what to wear to a dance, but instead we are having discussions about what is appropriate funeral attire. We should be celebrating our friend's birthday today, but we're putting it off to celebrate another friend's life.

It is strange, it is uncomfortable. But we need to do this, it is important. She was one of us and we will be there to show her family that we care. I am heartbroken, I feel lost. But I will go to her funeral today.

I can't believe this is happening, but it is. And I'm just thankful that we are together right now, that I'm not left to battle grief on my own. This is our family, she is our family.

It is with a mix of horror, disbelief, resolve, love, and hope that I am approaching this. I am going to the funeral.

[popcornoncemore]

It's been ten days since she died and everything is starting to return to "normal." And I can move through my day without being paralyzed by grief and shock. But I feel somewhat guilty for not thinking of her every other moment. And my brain is hardly acknowledging what happened.

I feel as if she could come around any corner at any moment and I often mistake other girls for her. I see her best friend and look for her and then remember that she's gone.

[popcornoncemore]

I just can't believe that she's dead.

Her sister posted pictures of her on Instagram and it just hurt. I'm in the stage of grief where I just can't figure out how to fully realize this is really happening. That I'll never pass her in the hall or sit by her at the lunch table. That her family and friends are going through this. That I'm planning to go to her funeral.

[popcornoncemore]

I wrote this part of a song after my friend's funeral:

"I long so deeply for the days that we spent safe in childhood, the time before everything fell apart... May you live where we were happy, may I return, return to them."

[popcornoncemore]

Sometimes I wonder if she's somehow still around, because I just imagine her standing with her friends on the school steps or passing me in the hall or library. I feel confused because I know she's dead and that fact haunts me, but I also expect her to be everywhere. She exists so clearly in my memories, it's like she should just appear and go back to the life she had before.

I don't believe in heaven, I'm not sure if I even believe anything happens to us after death. But I still can't process the fact that she's really gone.

[popcornoncemore]

God, I watched something sad and somehow ended up spiralling about my friend's death again. Just the absolute horror of recognizing her name when the teacher read it aloud, of going to the funeral and standing with everyone I love and watching them hurt, of her best friend venting to me and saying that she was wearing her best friend's shirt when they found her.

Before everything went wrong, we weren't particularly close or anything. But I knew her and she was someone I always considered to just be part of my life. Our relationship wasn't close but I cared about it and appreciated her. And then suddenly she was gone. She took part of me with her, the part of me that thought you could always expect someone to be there

grew so used to sharing the occasional story with her or having her come and support us at theater or waving at her in the halls. But now I'll never turn down another hallway to see her walking with her best friends.

[popcornoncemore]

It's really weird because right now I'm in a relatively good place in my relationship with my two years younger brother. He's doing better and he is growing. I love him very much and I think he will grow up to be a great person.

However, there's still part of me that remembers the times he has bullied and hurt me. While I'm joking around with him, I still won't let him get his hands anywhere near my face because it gives me bad memories of when he put his hands around my neck in a fit of anger last summer. There's always this voice in my head that tells me when to leave a situation or to start walking on egg shells. I don't let him push me around much, but there's still that urge to give in because of times when he threatened me and berated me.

I know he's getting better and I know he's had a hard time and that a lot of this comes from his anger at not knowing what to do about his defiance disorder, but it's still tough.

I wish that this wasn't part of our relationship and I wish that someone else could recognize what happened

[popcornoncemore]

One really hard part of having a very close friend attempt suicide and having another more distant friend succeed in taking her life is that afterwards, you have this ever present paranoia that everyone in your life is considering suicide and that you could lose anyone at any moment to suicide.

It's painful and exhausting

[popcornoncemore]

Just talked to a therapist chat line, I'm doing better

[popcornoncemore]

God, the funeral is Saturday. Everyone is talking about her passing and posting about it and if I see another photo of her I might throw up. How is she dead? It seems impossible, like she'll be standing by her friend's side tomorrow, like she'll be at the opening night of the show. But she won't be. It's just so terrible

[popcornoncemore]

I hate hate hate that I just had to check our calendar to see if I would be in town for my sixteen year old friend's funeral

[popcornoncemore]

Today we found out that a friend of mine died. And I knew things like this happened, that people died young, and that tragedy can come for anyone. But I didn't think it would be one of us.

She and I weren't particularly close, but I've spent time with her. I thought of her as kind and funny. She was shy and quiet, but what she did say made me laugh.

And it hurts to know that someone can be sixteen fucking years old and dead. It doesn't feel real. We knew she struggled, most of us do. And she had people who cared deeply about her. So I feel so bad that she was in such pain.

I don't want to know that that quiet, kind girl who was always in my classes, at my lunch table, or hanging out with her best friend at a party, won't be here anymore. She shouldn't be gone, people shouldn't be saying, "did you hear about the death?" because it wasn't just "someone" who passed, it was her. And we cared about her. Our group has always worked in a special way where even if you aren't very close with someone, you care about them, you defend them, and there's a connection.

I hope she wasn't in pain when it happened and I hope she didn't have regrets. I hope she remembered that we cared and I hope she's happy and at peace wherever we go after life.

But I'll miss her. When my teacher read her name aloud, part of me just broke.

It hurts.

[popcornoncemore]

You know when you get a good teacher who's genuinely a kind person who cares about you and your well-being and even though your sibling who abuses you has been doing well recently, you kind of think, wow, if my sibling ever grabs me by the neck again, I'll go straight to that teacher?

Like, it's a scary feeling, when I'm starting to let my guard down as I see more of the brother I love but I still know how much he hurt me in the past. But it's also good because you found an adult to trust who helps you to feel less alone?

[popcornoncemore]

Sometimes I start to doubt my trauma.

My brother is emotionally abusive, so I have an action plan for if the abuse ever turns physical. There has been one distinct issue where it got worse than shoving and pushing me, when my brother got mad and grabbed me by the neck. But I was on vacation when that happened, so I couldn't use my action plan.

Even worse, this incident happened in front of both of my parents, both of which did nothing. I find myself questioning if that was actually abuse or even if it really happened because no one ever acknowledged it and I had to just go about my day. Was I overreacting about an isolated incident?

Now I'm worried that it will happen again. It was just so sudden and random, I feel like every interaction I have with him, even the positive ones, is tainted by the thought of "what if you just suddenly try to hurt me?"

But then I begin to doubt and hate myself again.

[popcornoncemore]

We were babysitting my cousins today and my brother did his strategy of trying to confuse the kids (bc he thinks it's funny to reference stuff they don't know). I was like, oh, this is familiar behavior, when else does he act like this? Not with friends or family or our parents...

Then it hit me that he was acting how he is when he's laughing at my expense or downplaying my problems. When he's bored, he treats me like he'd treat a child.

[popcornoncemore]

I like hurt/comfort fic, but maybe I need to stop reading stories where the hurt part is characters having trauma involving being grabbed by the neck due to my own trauma involving being grabbed by the neck... I should be reading those content warnings 😅