Not Knowing.

It has almost been a year. Close to 11 months.

In some ways, things have returned to something a little bit more like normal. I go to my job. I walk my dog. I mostly only wear yoga pants at home.

But in other ways, I know I will never be quite the same as I was before.

And I'm still trying to figure out what that means to me.

There are the more obvious changes. For example, I have a conference on the one-year anniversary of my brother's death. I will have to get on an airplane. And while I have adjusted to flying the last couple of times I have had to, my original trip home was so unbelievably traumatic that the idea of flying around then is intimidating. I have no idea how I'll react. And then there's my conference topic! Which unfortunately includes data on suicide and suicidal ideation, because, I continue to do mental health research. I only have a poster, but I have already asked myself if I can imagine standing beside it for an hour, answering questions.

Oh the questions...

Perhaps it will be healing. Scientific distance.

Maybe not. 

I will be certain to identify the nearest bathroom stall before the hour begins.

I have decided to go anyway. I have told myself it will be a vacation. I have told myself I will see friends. I have told myself it's worth it to try. If only because sitting at home alone that weekend almost certainly wouldn't be better.

There are plenty of these moments coming up.

This thanksgiving can't help but remind me of the last one. Welcome to my family. This is our new normal. This unbelievably foreign normal. I will be the only child at the dinner table. Brave new world. Please pass the turkey which tastes remarkably similar to how turkey used to taste, but surely, that is impossible. How can so much be the same when so much is so different and yet this is our one reality? How?

I suspect some of these harsh truths will fade in potency given more time.

It is the longer, more permanent changes that I wonder about.

If I ever bring a child into this world, I think about how my heart will break, knowing it is not a safe place for her. But praying that it is all going to be worth it anyway. I never would have thought about that before. I would have believed my child could be destined for a pain-free existence of beauty and peace and fulfillment. My child would have been special. Yes. But now I know the size of the world is bigger than I had imagined. Bigger and not any safer for it. I would be bringing a life into that uncertainty. You can do everything right, but you can't guarantee anything. Just look at Bandit.

That is a lot of responsibility.

Sheer love cannot stop a truck. Or any number of other things.

It is not that I even want to go back to who I was before. In some ways, it feels like an enormous veil has been lifted. That this shift in my worldview was somehow inevitable at some point, and perhaps only would have become more painful the older I got. But I still don't know what it means to live in a world where really horrible things happen.

Do you live braced for the next bomb? Do you run hedonistic through the streets? Do you sit home and knit socks? Do you give up? Do you love more and hope it lasts, or love less so not as much can slip through your fingers? How do you live in a world where truly horrible things happen?

I have been asking myself this question in some form or another since my first friend committed suicide seven years ago. I have yet to find any kind of reassuring answer.

Regardless, I know I don't get to choose to go back to who I was before.

I think about that girl. There was a kind of confidence I exuded then that I am not sure I will ever regain.

Then again, perhaps such confidence was unwise to begin with.

This is what I'm left with. On the one hand. And on the other. Everything seems like that now. I lack certainty. I have more questions. Without answers, I listen more. I watch more. I wait to see.

Because I just don't know.

It is nearly a year later, and that is the only thing I know for certain: I just don't know.

And perhaps, I never will again.

It's unsettling.

Maybe I can find some kind of strength in that. I would like to believe that all of this was good for something. Somehow.

Then again, and I hate to be redundant, but, I just don't know...
And I'm still learning what it means to live with that.

...at least I'm not running around thinking I have it all figured out. At least that's a relief, right?

Namaste.