not so grounded

The Stuff We Should Talk About

A writer recently interviewed my niece, Lindsey, for a magazine feature about an inspiring young woman who transformed after a harrowing experience. (Quick recap for the uninitiated, October 2009 Lindsey – barely 20 -- and her boyfriend were robbed, and he was shot and killed as they left their house to go out to eat.  I blogged periodic updates.)

The interview was painfully magnificent; Lindsey offered details I’d never heard, and, as always, her wisdom astounded me. But afterwards she and I talked about her one glaring omission.  When asked what helped her recover she readily described support from friends and family, wonderful sessions with a therapist, stability with school and work … she even described her own fortitude.

But she didn’t mention several valuable sessions with spiritual intuitives and ongoing help from a man we can only inadequately describe as an energy healer.  Laughing she said, “I didn’t know how to bring that up.  How do you describe those things without sounding crazy?”

Yet those things probably helped her the most, even if they seemed too weird to talk about in public.  In fact, I’m finding this increasingly true for so many I know, myself included.  Incessantly worried? Perpetually sick? Cycling through the same relationship woes, the same circumstance over and over again?  I’ve seen decades of intractable, repetitive bad choices, ill health or patterns of catastrophe shift almost immediately after a session with someone skilled at shifting those energies we don’t believe exist.  While I’ve never witnessed spontaneous cures from cancer or clinical depression (although it is not mine to question if they happen), I have seen crippling illnesses – mono, severe allergies, chronic fatigue, dangerous blood pressure, paralyzing anxiety, and life-stopping grief – disappear so subtly and so completely, it’s as if they never appeared in the first place. 

Lindsey has come to believe that this wacky chiropractor – this “crazy” man who taps her head, waves his hands, and talks a language that is about as comprehensible to her as ancient Greek -- is the health care provider she counts on the most.  She doesn’t know what he does, but she knows that he has been one catalyst behind her healing and her resulting transformation.  It’s like he cleared away all the debris blocking her path so that she can get on with her true life. 

I sure don’t blame her for not mentioning this in a magazine interview, given how people tear at things outside the mainstream.  But I wish she could. (And she did say yup to this blog.)

Conviction

Antonio Tarrosa, age 19, was convicted of five charges, including first degree murder for killing Dom.  The other five in the car plea-bargained.  Today I am grateful Lindsey doesn't have to tell her story another time, doesn't have to sit in another courtroom, on another witness stand.  The rest just feels so tragic and unnecessary. 

Ironic that "conviction" means both finding guilt and a commitment to one's belief ... seems it's more like not really believing in anything, lost in an aimless night, awash in guns & stupidity and tacit acceptance of realities that don't serve us are the convictions we allow.

Dom's Trial Begins

The trial began yesterday in Las Vegas for Dom's murder 14 months ago, 6 defendants, varying culpability.  Lindsey's testimony -- the only eyewitness -- begins this morning.  She said it's been intense listening to the defendants' details about the night they robbed her and her boyfriend and then shot him on his front lawn.  Partying ... going to McDonalds ... turning left into a quiet neighborhood instead of going straight ...

I bet it's intense.

She didn't want me to fly out, so I'm working in Wilmington.  I googled for news, but found nothing.  It's odd to be so close to a ridiculous, senseless, life-changing homicide while the world goes on without a glance over its shoulder.  On one hand I'm guilty, too:  Linds and I occasionally admit it's weird that we don't much care about this criminal case, indifferent to "justice," not thirsty for vengeance.  Doesn't seem like a good place to invest our time and energy, preferring a forward view that widens the distance between now and that past moment.

But it is also a dangerous thing when a person -- any person -- is violently killed for any reason and the world does not pause consciously enough to ensure such a thing never happens again.

Lindsey Update

When two friends recently asked about my niece, I realized I’d left readers hanging in my terror at becoming known only as the Blogger of Tragedy.  Short answer? My niece remains inspiring, wonderful and wise beyond my years, let alone her own.   Meaning she continues to live her life as if it matters greatly – even when she sometimes wonders why.   

She returned to school about 6 weeks after her boyfriend was murdered, but quickly realized she hated it.  She had enrolled in a medical office assistant program specifically so she and Dom could get decent jobs and their own place.  But with Dom gone, her short-term financial fix felt painfully absurd.    The school also offered massage therapy, so despite her dad’s loud bitching (and after sitting alone in her car in the school parking lot for almost an hour, gathering courage to ask her adviser for something that she wanted for no good reason except that she really wanted it …) she requested and received permission to switch. 

So come next October she’ll be a licensed massage therapist, when she’ll quit her part-time job at Hallmark and move to California or join crew on a cruise line, travel and do something she loves.  She’s writing, too, and at some point she’ll study art and design (another passion).  So despite it all, she's miraculously investing in a rich and beautiful future.  

Sure, she has moments, like last week when she desperately wanted to throw herself in front of a bus.  But she put on a great playlist, drove out into the Nevada star-filled desert, and sobbed and screamed instead.  Demanding an answer from the mute universe, until she felt the depth of its apology and compassion again.  Then she drove back to the love-filled home she still shares with Dom’s mom and extended family.  And finished her homework.   

Knowing her remains one of the reasons I am on this earth.

First Round Apps Done

Completed, submitted, paid for .... Colorado College, Muhlenberg College, Appalacian State, UNC-Asheville, and Americorps CCC in case come June Maddy prefers to jump into a gap year.  She'll probably add a few more in the next few weeks (Western WA, U of Oregon & Utah, Bard are up there right now).  But I'm impressed - she ploughed through.  And we learned Common App uploads have to be in Times New Roman ...

Now it's on to financial aid forms.

And I'm feeling way better.  Combo of EFT, Reiki, Friday night sob, Saturday yoga class & long nap cleared out the vibes that had caused me to drown in open air.  Wild animals will shake, shudder, and roughhouse after a pointed confrontation or stress.  Releases the energies.  My unusual deep sleep in the afternoon sun felt just the same. 

I'll see Lindsey again in 12 days -- that helps, too.

Re-Entry

This must be what clinical depression feels like, and it sucks.  My day job's in mental health so I know the diagnostic symptoms -- flat affect, lost enthusiasm for things once enjoyed, either excessive exhaustion or insomnia wracked with circular obsessive thoughts, and unending hopelessness.  I feel like someone shut off my inside lights.

When I decided to blog about my daughter's transition to college I anticipated the unexpected.  But I never imagined I'd be editing my daughter's college essay via email in between reading in the Las Vegas Review Journal that a 17-year-old lostsoul considered shooting my niece in the back but murdered her boyfriend instead.

I posted the day of the shooting, but deleted it within hours, realizing I should not contribute to any public Outing of my niece, eyewitness to an unsolved homicide.  But I'm reposting it now (see below), to explain my writing absence and because suspects are jailed, confessions and other witnesses secured, prosecutions underway, and her name's already seared online.  The detective is growing tired of reassuring us that Lindsey's safe, but I'm finally beginning to believe it.

I spent 9 days in Vegas helping Lindsey design a program for the memorial service, purchase funeral attire, take leaves from school and work, reread Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking, drink margaritas, and wrap our heads around the unfathomable.  While back home Maddy submitted her application for Appalachian State, drafted other essays, and finished a huge project for English class.  I edited Maddy's essays and papers while languishing 8 hours in Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport.  I texted Lindsey at least fifty times.  

I'm home now and my frustrated daughter is sitting across the room trying to re-compose essay sentences that I suggested need some work.  We've hurled obscenities at each other once (a pretty amicable work session for us).  But she's determined to finish all her applications today, and I've promised to help.  I feel better, benefitting from another unexpected sobbing fit last night, my husband walking in the house to find me crying uncontrollably while cutting broccoli.  He patiently and kindly reminded me -- again -- that Lindsey's still alive.  I both laughed and felt humbled by waves of illogical emotions.  And then finished making dinner.

Here's what I didn't anticipate learning when I started this blog:  that overwhelming emotions and symptoms of clinical depression don't follow the beat of logic (although logic does help when reaching for relief).  And that gratitude -- the glorious fact that I can still explore college plans with my daughter and my niece -- can feel this good. 

I Just Saw My Boyfriend Get Shot

I just saw my boyfriend get shot.  

My wake-up text from my niece this morning.  The subsequent flurry ... drive-by, random ... she wasn't hurt ... he's unstable, in surgery ... I'm at his house, his Mom's at the hospital.  Twenty minutes later:  He died.  She laid in his bed sobbing, waiting desperately, she said, to awake from her horrible nightmare.  She got off the phone when his mother returned, who -- bless her beyond words -- has wrapped my niece up into her own family's grief and love.

I thought the text was from Maddy who'd spent the night with friends after Homecoming.  She'd had a fabulous week.  Toga day, her friends among the Homecoming court.  Last night her Dad made a magnificent feast for a dozen of her friends.  Then to the dance.  Pictures, music, dancing, laughter, a good party afterwards.  I knew she'd be heading out to breakfast before volunteering at the Wooly Worm Festival, we planned to finish some college apps this afternoon, make lentil soup, hang out just the two of us since John and Alden are out of town ... 

I wasn't prepared for my niece's text instead, although who would be?  On what day of the fucking week or month, year or lifetime would someone be prepared to receive a text from your 20-year old niece that as she and her boyfriend walked across his front lawn to go out to eat some guys randomly drove by, jumped from the car waving a gun, demanded money, and shot him while she ran screaming terrified back into the house.  The police said they'd robbed someone else down the street, too.  They kept emphasizing that it was "impersonal."  

To them, understandably, their effort to reassure that no drugs, gangs, or vendettas were suspected.  But of course, it's awfully damn personal to her, to the young man's mother, to the families, to me.

I'm flying to Vegas tomorrow.  I plan to hold her for a really long time.