Can I ever forgive myself?
“I just wish I could go to Disneyland. I know it’s a privileged thing to say, but man, I’m really missing it”. This is one of the last things my brother said to me. I last spoke to him on Friday, May 15th. He admitted he relapsed and this was a bad one. He said he’d been drinking for four months, well before the pandemic had shuttered Disneyland. I was in shock and I wasn’t. We’d been down this road before. He was deep in the darkness, desperate, lonely and hating himself again.
My instinct, which is always my nature, was to jump on a plane and try to help. As I was talking to him, I was searching flight times to Los Angeles. I was researching low cost rehab facilities. I begged him to ask his therapist for an emergency session, to be completely honest with her and ask her for rehab options. He told me he couldn’t breathe at night and he was worried he had COVID-19. He said he was getting a test. I told him that it also sounded like terrible anxiety. He agreed and said he wasn’t sleeping well at all. He wasn’t eating either. I repeated it’s ok, relapse happens. “Show yourself some compassion! You need rehab! What’s the alternative?!?” He said there was no alternative. And mumbled incoherently for a bit.
He told me while it would be great to see me, I shouldn’t get on a plane. It was too dangerous with the pandemic. I can’t stop thinking about how I shouldn’t have listened to him. I should’ve packed a bag and flew straight to Los Angeles the next day. Rented a car and drove straight to his apartment. Banged on his door until he opened up. Dragged him to the hospital or rehab. I should’ve seen all the warning signs that Zac was really suicidal. That he wasn’t going to get help this time. I should’ve listened more carefully when he said that he couldn’t face detox again. That he wouldn’t wish detox on his worst enemy. That he sometimes had seizures, once so bad that he almost bit through his tongue. He was obsessed about the potential cost of rehab or another hospital stay. I said over and over again that his health and sobriety were way more important. That we would figure out the cost together. That there were a lot of low cost/no cost rehab options in Los Angeles. I begged him again to talk to his therapist.
He said the only thing he had to live for was Boston, his cat. I told him of course that wasn’t true. That I needed him, that his community needed him. But platitudes never worked with my brother. The “What-Do-You-Have-To-Live-For” conversation was an old, worn out trope. The self-hatred record was playing in his head again and he was letting it play loudly, without interruption.
We talked about the darkness again. I said it was a dragon that had burst out of its box and stretched its thick, black wings across the room. I reminded Zac that he had been here before, staring at the dragon, and he knew what to do to get it back into the box. I forgot that Zac thought of his self-hatred like a black viscous fluid, filling a clay labyrinth. I wish I had reminded him of that imagery. I wish I had read his own blog to him to help him remember how hard he fought before to melt the fluid away and live for himself.
How can I ever forgive myself for that last conversation? How can I live with the knowledge that all the warning signs were there in how he talked and I did very little to stop this slow-moving disaster?
