"Trauma is an event in which a person experiences a strong charge of negative emotions, but can't express them. Though experts define psychological trauma in different ways, basically it's an individual's experience of one event or enduring conditions that make the person feel helpless, with no control over what is happening. Subjected to the full force of the event, he or she is rendered powerless. [...] This definition intentionally does not allow us to determine whether a particular event is traumatic; that is up to each survivor." - Joe Kort, M.A., MSWThe past couple of days, I've been thinking about what happened when Jesse tried to kill himself. In the interest of not putting my heart on my blog, I deprived myself of the ability to really express what happened and what it felt like from my perspective. As I stand my ground about avoiding stress this holiday season, it occurred to me that perhaps no one in my circle of friends and family knows what I went through that fateful week or what the effects were that are still with me to some degree. So here goes:
I won't go into the entire history of Jesse and I, but the most recent history is important to give you context. Prior to him moving to PA, I was really falling for him again. As it turns out, he had met someone who was offering him a job so he left. Several months later, I saw his ad and it said he'd met the man of his dreams. For some reason, I wasn't prepared for that. After four years of trying to be the man of his dreams, it felt like a kick in the stomach. I wrote to him to tell him congratulations and that I was sad about it but happy for him. He wrote back to me, thrilled that I had written him. He said his ad was not accurate. It was referring to the guy that didn't work out in PA and he had moved back to OH. He and I picked up where we left off before he left and made up for lost time very quickly.
Several weeks into it, he said he was going to borrow a ring from his friend Nate to remind him of his renewed commitment to me and to ward off others. I said, well, if you're going to do that, let's just get rings. So I bought two rings. I zipped it inside a stuffed animal and gave it to him with a card when he came to visit me a couple weeks later - weeks that we were both counting down anxiously in daily text messages.
His visit was great, we had a lot of fun and were both sad when I dropped him off at the airport. As the weeks progressed, about the only thing we had a disagreement about was when he was going to move back to CA. One day, after having such an argument via text message, he sent me a message which proved to be ominous: "I love you. Remember that." His status in instant messenger went to "Thanks everyone, I'll be watching you."
I was busy at work and I didn't really put two and two together until a bit later. When I realized what this might have meant, and that he hadn't returned a call or text in hours, I started freaking out. I called everyone I could think of in Ohio, his friend Nate, the Columbus police department. I got a dispatcher on the line who said, "Do you have his address?" I gave it to her. She said, "Well we did have a call there today. Are you family?" I said, "I'm his partner." She replied, "I'm sorry, that's not family and I can't tell you anything further." I broke down and started crying on the phone. She got quiet, paused, then said, "Look, he's still alive, ok? But if you need more information you're going to have to speak to a family member." (Now do you understand why gay people want to be able to get married?)
I called his grandfather who confirmed that he had overdosed on painkillers and that he was in intensive care, but it looked like he was going to be ok. I can't describe the emotions of that 20 minute period. It was as if I was functioning on pure adrenaline, without which I would have collapsed into a heap on the floor. Jesse and I had split up many times. Each of those times, I had always faced the reality of building a life without him, but never before had I had to face the reality of going through my life with him gone completely. The only time I've experienced this before is when Dave was killed in a car accident when I was a senior in high school. I can still remember the phone call I got from our friend Tim like it was yesterday. The ironic thing is, I'm sitting in the very room where I received that phone call as I type this right now. That just gave me a chill.
As emotional as this was, it was to be only the beginning. That same day, I got a very strange flu. I had a persistent temperature that would only be kept at bay with regular doses of Tylenol. I booked a flight to Ohio for the following morning. On the way there, I vomited in the bathroom on the plane - and I never throw up. When I arrived, Jesse's friend Nate took me to the hospital where Jesse was surprised to see me. It looked like he was happy to see me and Nate and I both sighed a breath of relief as neither of us were sure whether it was a mistake for me to come there. When someone tries to kill himself, you don't really know to what extent the people in his life were the impetus. Even though Jesse left a note, and wrote a paragraph for me in it basically saying that he wished he could have spent the rest of his life with me, Nate was still not certain how I would be received or if it was a good idea for me to come. In retrospect, it seems that Nate might have known something I didn't, but we'll get to that in a minute.
It's kind of weird, but when your partner tries to kill himself, it's like the ultimate rejection. I don't think people think about this side of it much, but he was basically saying, "Yeah, I'd rather be dead than be with any of you any longer." It gnawed at me during the week I was there as did the fact that he wasn't wearing his ring when he took the pills. My first red flag happened when Nate said, "Do you want me to bring you anything from home?" and he said, "My phone". I said, "do you want your ring?" "I guess" he replied. You guess?!? I just spent $1,000 fucking dollars to get here and sit at your bedside and you guess you want your ring?
That week, I felt very alone. Nate said I couldn't stay at his place (even though he stayed with me when he visited Jesse and I). I was in a hotel by myself. I walked a mile each way, each day from the hotel to the hospital and back (sometimes at 1am). Each night, I woke up soaked from sweating because the Tylenol would wear off during the night and I'd break out in a fever. This would translate to the chills later in the night. Like it was my job, I went every day, all day. I even took a midterm on my laptop sitting in the hospital next to him. Several times, family members and friends would ask me to leave the room so they could have a moment with Jesse. How did that feel? Shitty. Just so you all know, if I'm ever in the hospital and my partner is sitting by my side? Never, ever ask him to leave. If you do, I will rebuke your request and tell him to stay. If this is the person I've chosen to spend my life with, there is nothing you could tell me that he couldn't hear. That Jesse didn't do this was my second red flag.
If I felt alone before that moment, after that I felt abandoned by life. The breath left me. My heart sank. I stood up, went into the bathroom and showed Jesse who immediately said, "It's not what you think." I said, "Stop. Just stop. Stop playing me for a fool. I may be foolish enough to keep staying with you but that doesn't mean I'm naive." I had to step outside and gather my thoughts. I cried in the hallway. I'm sure the scene isn't all that unusual in a hospital hallway so the passing nurses thought nothing of it.
The first thought was, "I'm changing my flight and getting the hell out of here." but then I promised Nate I wouldn't make a scene because of Jesse's situation. Talk about a rough spot. I was quiet when I got back to the room. Nate was there. There appeared to be room in there for all of us including the giant pink elephant that no one could talk about.
I can't imagine that Nate didn't already know that Jesse had been cheating on me the whole time. In fact it seemed like everyone knew something I didn't and was acting strange around me. Eventually Jesse asked me to talk about it and Nate was there. So we had a calm, emotional discussion about it. Nate was pissed. He was mad because I looked at Jesse's phone. You see, Nate has cheated on his girlfriends in the past and he always gets pissed at them for looking at his phone (I guess it's hard to keep a secret when your partner is checking on you, damn them.) So he bitched about me looking at Jesse's phone to a friend of theirs that night. The next day, when this friend came with Nate to the hospital, he had a snide remark for me. Something like, "I don't think people should look at other people's phones. It's a violation of privacy". I wanted to punch the guy. A violation of privacy? Do you know anything about a violation of trust you asshole? You don't have a clue how this seemingly helpless soul on this hospital bed has FUCKED with me mentally and emotionally the past four years, so go take your lofty thoughts of privacy and ram them up your ass.
Anyway, severely isolated, I stuck it out and got on the plane on Sunday as planned. A week later, Jesse told me he wanted to break up (which we basically were, but he was saying it now). At the same time, I learned that not only had he cheated on me, but he had done so unprotected - numerous times. Research about HIV showed me that initial symptoms are flu-like from 2-4 weeks after exposure (it had been 14 days since Jesse's visit when my flu came on). I freaked out. The normal HIV test looks for anti-bodies. It can take up to two months for those to appear. My doctor ordered a test which looks for the virus instead, but the results took two weeks. Two weeks of stress following one of the most stressful weeks of my life. My results eventually came back negative, but it was that scare that transformed my sadness of our breakup to anger. When he cheated on me, he jeopardized my heart. When he did so unprotected, he jeopardized my life. I won't hold a grudge, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive him for that.
When I got home, I sank into a depression. A real depression. I know this was a depression because I was tailspinning into negativity. The depression was real for me. Normally, I can get negative about one aspect of my life, while staying positive about other aspects. I stopped being able to do this. I was negative about everything. And what made it worse is I was so embarrassed about the grand stand I had taken with my friends and family to give Jesse another chance two months before. I didn't think it was possible to be as deceitful as he was, but he proved that it can be done, fairly effortlessly, when you have no conscience. I seemed literally unable to conjure up even a small amount of motivation to change anything in my life. I went from feeling helpless in my situation with Jesse to feeling helpless about my own life.
Today, the depression seems to have left me. Though I'd be lying if I said that the effects of those weeks have gone. I still think about Jesse a lot. I'm sure he thinks about me also. We shared many experiences together - most of them good. Some days I'm so angry at him for the way he treated me. Some days I miss him. I miss his laugh and laying next to him. I miss the side of him that he showed me that he didn't show others. You might be able to read this back-and-forth of my emotional roller coaster in the song lyrics that I post here sometimes. But the package that is Jesse is not worthy of my time. The next step is to realize that it isn't worthy of my thoughts either. This blog entry is a first step to getting that part going.
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