In the freefall of losing you

2.25

Dear Sienna, 

I’ve been stuck on the couch (bed) for the last month and I’m terrified to leave it. 

Is this normal? 

I feel like a scared little kid again.

But I guess the last time I felt this type of pain before: I was.

I read somewhere that when you experience trauma later in life your brain can revert back to the time you first experienced it, so I guess that makes sense as to why I feel like a small child parading around like an adult. 

Like, am I a fraud now, or do I just have PTSD?  

…

I’m a little less angry at you today as I write you out this letter. 

A fun, yet all too familiar emotion has settled into the pit of my stomach now taking up the space my anger was once placed. This one I call: fear. 

Unlike anger, who feels like a thousand tiny paper cuts getting continuously acid burned into the folds of my belly, fear feels like a refreshing break from that unrelenting torment. Even in all the chaos, this new feeling soothingly encapsulates the last memory I have of you lying yellow and lifeless in your hospital bed, a memory I soon hope to stop dreaming about…It's the same feeling I had the first day we got the call you were being admitted for acute liver failure and the same one that enveloped my entire body when I first saw you at the hospital that next morning. I try not to think about the image of you hooked up to a thousand machines or how I cried out to you to watch over us as you flatlined…

but it's been really hard not to. I don’t want to remember you that way because that's not who YOU were, but your lifeless body now haunts my dreams and also: I’ve never seen a dead person before… 

I think I do have PTSD. 

My stomach feels like it's been in a never ending free fall and I’m scared of not knowing what waits for me when I finally hit the bottom. I fear I’ve been here before. It’s like, will I ever land back on planet Earth or will the butterflies in my stomach start paying their portion of their rent? And how fucking long will this rollercoaster feeling last because I think I might throw up (again). My new therapist said that trauma can metastasize physically in your body: it can look like hair loss, rashes, or in my case, this never ending nausea. It probably explains why my stomach constantly feels like it has rocks in it, and it definitely explains why I did indeed throw up earlier this morning…She also said that writing out my feelings could help, so I guess here goes.

Things I’m scared of: 

I’m scared to think about you.

I’m scared to think about how I lost you. And, 

I’m scared of losing myself again because there’s no one left here but me. 

What’s truly angering is that if I’m not scared, I’m pissed off and I don’t like being this angry all the time because as our little Asian Grandma, Hammy, likes to say in her ever growing wisdom, “Anger cause wrinkle!” and if I can’t feel pretty on the inside, I should at least try to look it on the outside, right? 

Try being a key word here* but between you and me, I don't even know who I’m trying for anymore, it’s not like I ever leave my house these days and when I do I’m a tear streaked mess. What I do know for sure is that I’m terrified to move on. 

I feel like by moving on: emotionally and mentally moving past this exact moment in time from when you left us, I’m somehow leaving you behind. And I’ve come to the sad realization that perhaps this isn’t the first time I’ve done so. 

I’m angry at myself because I fear I’ve left you behind a long time ago, Sienna, but that’s a story for another time… there's that goddamn anger again. 

“Moving on” is a task that I’m not yet ready to do, although I know eventually, it will have to be done because I firmly believe that there is no future life if I am constantly living in the past. But fuck, its just too soon to leave you there. Our past is now the only place I get to visit you. I just wish it would stop taking me back to that 27th day as the image of all of us crying from our spots around you as we said our final goodbyes floods its vivid imagery at the forefront of my thoughts…

I am still in that freefall. 

The freefall of losing you. 

Pray for the safe return back to myself, little one, because shit is about to get real. 

I may not know where this cycle of grief is going to take me, another thing I’m scared to think about, but what I do know is that you left this world behind surrounded by the people who love you the most in this world and I know in every fiber of my being that you were there to feel it. But just because I know this, the concept of leaving you here still makes my body ache with this invisible illness, the contents of my just eaten lunch now threaten a disgusting surprise across my brand new laptop and my eyes are swollen to the size of ping pong balls from my fresh cry last night. I haven’t been sober since this all happened and also, who knew I was capable of such an ugly cry? You were always more the emotional one between the two of us, but I guess losing you has undone me like that. I’m also unhappy to report that I've lost five pounds already when I weighed myself in Isa’s bathroom this morning. So thanks to you, the ass is flat and I’ve never looked more Asian, nor this frail, and it's all your fault. …

Okay, I’m mad at you again. 

I want you to know though, I’m not just angry at you. 

I’m angry at me too.

I was so mean to you those last couple of weeks before you died. I thought tough love about your autoimmune disease was a better strategy than babying you about it, but all it did was push you further and further away from me and I hate me for it even more than I’m mad about it. 

Are hate and anger the same thing? 

They certainly feel like they’re from the same bloodline and what I’m starting to learn is that hate + anger = regret. Chatgbt defines regret as: “both a noun and a verb, and refers to a feeling of sadness, disappointment, or sorrow about something that has happened — especially something one did (or didn’t do) that now seems wrong or unfortunate.” 

People who say they don’t have regrets, must be truly winning at life. 

That, or they’re fucking lying. 

Even though this is what I thought was best: treating you with a stern and icy shoulder so you could learn to take better care of yourself in the name of love, it wasn’t right and it was indeed unfortunate. I’m starting to see now, that it is perhaps, I, who doesn’t know how to take care of myself. Who was I to point my embarrassingly unmanicured finger at you? I think regrets also look like this: if I had a chance to change how I responded to you, if I had been a little bit nicer about it, softer, gentler…would it have changed things? 

Could it have changed things? 

Maybe. 

And look, I’m not going to get too hung up on it, these regrets will not drown me, plus, how can I drown when I’m still free falling, am I right?…But the thought is still there: I regret how I treated you, not just now, but also how I treated you growing up. I should’ve just. been. nicer. to you, maybe we would've been closer. Maybe you could’ve told me just how bad your health was deteriorating. I always could’ve just been a little bit nicer, it was the easiest yet hardest thing for me to do. And now it's too late.  

So be nice to your fucking sisters! 

Before it’s too late. 

“You can’t live in this moment forever, Arianna,” I remember hearing Hammy whisper into my ear in the early morning after you had just left us, “you must live, for her, you must move on.” And she’s right. 

As you know, she always is.

In all her years of beautiful, bluntly, said wisdom, I will eventually have to move on from this pain of losing you. But it still needs to be said, especially for the people in the back: I should’ve just been nicer to you and I’ll always have to live with the regret of not doing so because now you’re no longer here for me to get that chance. “I know, Hammy.” I nod. I know…

But also let it be known, your big sister will always be your first bully, we're simply just trying to prepare you for the harsh realities of life because we’ve already lived through some of it and some people are mean sons of bitches. The only difference between us and a real bully, (the only one that really matters) is that: we would fucking die for you.  

I now seriously wished I could.

…

Your birthday is in a couple of days and I’m scared, Sienna. 

I’m scared to do this life without you. 

I haven’t been this type of alone since I was five years old, since the day you entered my life and now you’re gone. In a blink of an eye. 

So, Happy almost Birthday, I guess. 

Talk soon. 

Love, 

Sissy