Amanda van Scoyoc

Introducing a slightly more meaty and certainly more active Annabel.

I’m not certain about too many things in life, but I’m sure of this and it is wonderful.

Eli and Sparrow at the kitchen table.

Eli spinning.

On Glen Lake in Michigan. The morning before he proposed.

Inside a box in the back of my closet resides a rock. It it black and cold and has marks like petroglyphs scratched into the surface. It was given to me six years ago by a woman named Ulla, on the island of Langeland, in Denmark.

I went to her because she could heal me. It was my third month abroad in Scotland. The nights stretched past day and the wet cold would not subside. She was a piece of home. She was my old babysitter, and she was mystical. She had foreseen her brother’s plane crash in an abstract painting and once was saved by a rock wedged under a brakeless car. She could tell my future by looking at my palm. Although I was skeptical, her certainty brought calm. The last day in Denmark she gave me the rock for protection. She said, “It will be there always” as she promised that the heavens believed in me.

Some objects outlast their people. Ulla is now in a nursing home and she forgets a little everyday. If I never came to her again, she would never remember enough to be sad. But I need to tell her I’m getting married. My fiance has to meet her. I look to the rock to remind me that it will outlast us all and that she believed and I believed. It helps me remember that as everything seems to change, some things stay the same.

Baby X is now Annabel Wren Haynes.

She arrived today right before noon today. She’s 5 weeks early but a healthy 4 pounds 12 oz. And of course, she is lovely.

A celebration for Darius and for all who loved him.

A celebration for baby X who will be arriving early Wednesday morning.

These last few days have been very difficult. I have hardly wanted to leave the apartment and it’s made me nearly hate it here. It wasn’t good timing to move here when we did. If we had stayed in Durham maybe Darius would have stayed on our couch. If Eli hadn’t just started working his new job he would have gone over earlier in the day. I feel like this moment in time, all these changes were more significant than we realized, and the world is out of control. 

As a kid I always used to think about all of the decisions that we make in life and how they define our life path. Just as the brain’s neurons are constantly changing how we experience the world, each small moment changes every moment of our future. And some small decisions can change everything. It’s too much to think about all that could have been, and I had stopped thinking about it as an adult. But since Darius left us, I just can’t stop thinking about all of the tiny decisions that could have changed this outcome. I’m stuck on the question of inevitability. Was this suicide inevitable. If it had been stopped, would he have succeeded in the end.

Darius’s death has made me feel both out of control and in awe of this world. When I wake up in the morning, I stare at Eli knowing exactly how much I could loose. I’m amazed by how much we humans are capable of feeling. Having talked to so many people, it’s comforting to know that there are expectations of grief. This feeling of being really depressed about 40% of the time and callus about 60% of the time… sometimes feeling that everything is OK and thinking that I’m inhuman and have no emotions and then suddenly breaking apart into sadness… this is the path that grief plows. I saw Maya Angelo speak a few years ago and she said in her singing voice that in life you can always take comfort in knowing that everything you experience, every emotion you feel has been felt before. We are built of common threads. Grief is personal, but every thought, every feeling is a part of grief’s repertoire.

Today has been a better day. Today I painted some small paintings of Darius for Eli. I had been planning this for the past couple of days, but didn’t have the momentum. Today I did.

 

Darius Poteat

Darius Poteat

One of Eli’s closest friend’s took his life today. Eli found him. He is there with police and I am at home waiting, not really sure what it will be like when he opens the door. We’ve never been through anything like this before. A part of me wants Eli home now, and another part is dreading not knowing how to react.

I didn’t know Darius that well. I never knew his sadness. I only knew him when we got breakfast or hung out for birthdays on our front porch. He’s never seemed a dark person, not a hard person to get laughing. Eli knew deeper parts of Darius, but I don’t think he ever thought Darius would truly take his life. I am angry that I didn’t figure this out (I study this don’t I?) and I don’t want Eli to have been there. I want him to have stayed home tonight with me, or arrived earlier, much earlier.

I work with these kids who are nearly there, attempted to be there, and the hardest thing is to know that in some way they don’t mean it, and Darius didn’t mean it either. There’s an article in the NY Times about people who survived attempting suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate bridge. The journalist tracked down these survivors and they all had the same story–the feeling of wanting desperately to live on the way down–suddenly understanding that this is against our very genetics, our beliefs. It is anti-evolution and religion. Their soul kicked in at the last minute, and having survived, they didn’t attempt again. That’s the worst part of suicide. It happens at a point of maybe, uncertainty, apprehension, but too often there is no turning back. The indecision, is also suicide’s saving grace, it’s why it is considered a preventable disorder.

Recently, I have been plagued by people like Darius who have low lows, but are normally steady. It blows my mind that he could get that low when a couple of weeks ago we had breakfast together and laughed about wedding cakes. It’s intollerable to think that Eli was on the phone with him making plans, joking around at one this afternoon, and he was gone by the time Eli made it to Durham after work. What do you do when it’s not predictable, when they are there as usual and then gone.

I had a conversation with an adolescent over the phone, who already has suicide attempts on record. I asked how long the she had debated before each attempt, and she responded in a light adolescent tone, “Never more than a minute.” She went from not thinking about attempting to attempting in under a minute? This happy sounding kid on the other end of the phone in less than a minute could be gone.  What do you do when someone is there, and that possibility exists.

After this I will take all who have attempted, no matter how normal they may seem, much more seriously. Darius had attempted before. I don’t think he was on medication, and I don’t think he had a therapist. Darius, we as a society did not support you well enough. I should have known better. Even though I didn’t believe you would, I should have known better, read more, understood, and taken this moment in your life much more seriously. The past is the best predictor of the future, and this time you stepped across the boundary in an uncertain moment. I wish I had told you about the the Golden Gate bridge and how the girl on the phone made me terrified that you can loose someone so quickly. It would have been an awkward conversation from your friend’s girlfriend, but I still wish I had told you.

Eli and Darius at Locopops. Photography by Mark Schueler.

We’ve moved into our new house. It’s a townhouse, but so much more of a house than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. In our new house Eli can be upstairs and I can be downstairs and we are not forced into continuous interactions. I have a feeling that this is the beginning of getting older and I’m having a bit of a hard time letting go. I like our new house. I like that all of our shit fits into the closets and that there is the potential for not having piles of stuff everywhere. This house can stay clean. This house doesn’t have holes in the wall or so many mice that everyday we have to check mousetraps and clean up mouse droppings. It’s functional and that’s just a little weird for me. 

You have to understand that our old house was Eli’s bachelor pad. It was there before I existed to Eli, and when it became my house, we became a couple. I’ve always liked that Eli found a house that I would love before we knew each other. I like that the old house reflects who he was before me, but ended up reflecting us as well. 

But the era of our heat leaking crappy house came to an end. Eli is not sentimental the way I am, and he wanted out a long time ago. I pushed him to stay there for as long as I could, and then at some point the mouse droppings piled up, the stove started to smell like burning mouse droppings every time we turned it on, I made scones and had to drive them to Erin’s house to bake them, and I converted to his belief that the house was pretty crappy and that we had to get out. 

But yesterday was the last day and I went back one last time on the very last day that it was ours. I loved that house. The light. The corner where we first kissed on the crappy couch that I certainly will never let Eli be rid of. The porch where I’ve watched baby birds with delight (they’ve watched me with complete terror.) It was hard to leave.

Eli on our old porch, leaving for his first day of being a full time employed web designer.

 

IA final meditation in the mouse droppings kitchen.

 

Up against the wall where we had our very first kiss.

 

The windows that let in the light that woke us up for the past three years. One final thought and I then I shut the door.

These days I’m the project coordinator of a psychology study and I work with kids from inpatient units in the area. I like this work. I liked the exciting and sometimes nerve wracking adventures in Guatemala and Chelsea, but I like this work too.

A bit ago, sitting in a room with a teenager who recently attempted suicide, I realized why. In my job, I meet people at their car, bring them into the lab, talk pleasantries, and then suddenly I’m allowed to ask them about things that trouble them deeply. I ask the questions that you’re too polite to ask of your friends, and the adolescents readily answer. Sometimes I ask a question and by their response, I know it is a question they wanted maybe even needed to answer. I feel that I’m good at this. Being there asking and listening. Never commenting, but being present.

I tell people around me how much I like working with these kids and that it makes me hopeful. I talk to Erin about it. She sees similar kids and sees mostly the negatives. These kids don’t always bounce right back out of depression and she sees them return to the hospital over and over. Depression, suicidality, non-suicidal self injury, these things aren’t always easy to treat.

But when I’m alone with a kid, and I’m asking them to tell me their deep inner secrets, they almost always just want to explain what makes their lives difficult. In the room, without the parents that elicit conflict, without the coursework that’s killing them, without the friends that maybe aren’t so great, even the most difficult kid is almost always incredibly likable. I like that I get to see that part of people- the part that just wants to tell their story and be understood. Working with pregnant teens in Chelsea, it was the same part. If you can just find the right questions, in general people feel the need to be heard and I like being the one who is listening with a tape recorder or with a diagnostic interview. Every time I run a subject at work, for four hours, adolescents get to be around people that are interested in their lives, ask the right questions, want to help them, and at least in my mind, think they are pretty great.