no other way.

Today is Sarah's 26th birthday.
She isn't here to see it. 

Sarah died on September 9th 2010. She suffered a massive heart attack brought on by a seizure (which was caused by cancer). She had just been cleared (NED - no evidence of disease) the month before. 

In the front cover of a journal she made for me (in December 2006) she writes:

My dear Elikai - 

A gift I have been given over the past months is an ability to write, both to myself and to you. Your presence, though many miles away, has been a constant, never wavering comfort through both my darkest and lightest days. I love you, at your worst and at your best, never forget that. No matter what the next tide may bring, I will be here for you. 

I have a quote for you - something that is part of who I am and how I think of you.
"You remind me why I stay here. You remind me of all the good, the great, the wonderful - you remind me of the boats, of seas, of races to be won, of fun to be had, of adventures I've not yet dreamed of."
During those moments when I am not sure what I have to live for? I have so many things, so many people, to remember. So many reminders that it is not yet my time, that I owe it to myself and everyone who has cared for me and given so much of themselves in the last two years, to give this my very best shot. That realization helped me keep my head above water, so to speak, and keep it on a bit longer.
I want you to know that you have had an incredible impact on my life, Elikai. However long my stay here turns out to be, you will be in my thoughts and heart the whole way. I will never forget all you have done for me. I will always admire your strength, courage, and resolve through staggeringly difficult times.
To me, Elikai, you are a hero. I know I am not the only one who views you as so, and I hope you forever stand tall, proud of who you are, where you came from, and what you have accomplished.
All my love, 

Sarah xx

&
(previously written on November 21, 2010)
I knew it was coming. 
I had known Sarah had written me one last letter. 
Her final goodbye. 
But no one told me that it had been sent out. 
I wasn't waiting for it. 
It just came. 
It sat in Matt's hands, urging me to grab it. Begging me to want it. 

All I could do was stare at it. 

It was someone's very last words to me. 
And unlike all the times before. The years and years of letters she had sent - one last time the envelope was addressed to Miss E Kudek. 
The address though, wasn't her writing. It was Ali's. 

"Take it back," I murmmered under my breath.
Inside my head I was screaming "No, I don't want it! The address, it isn't her writing. She didn't sent it. I DON'T WANT IT."

Elikai,
I'm hopeful I'll never send this. But you get it... the chance to say thank you and goodbye must never be passed by.

It sat there. Next to my bed. Only mere inches from a box full of letters she had sent. One's that I had ripped open in the joy of receiving them before I ever even got back into the house. If I don't read it, she won't be gone. 

I mindlessly rub the fly symbol on my wrist. 
"When you can no longer run, nor walk, nor crawl - fly." she had told me as she gave me a ceramic dove.
Fly. 

Your life has been so tough on you. Your strength & faith, your determination that you will survive & get stronger - You amaze and awe me. Each and every time I contemplate the mountains that seem to face me? I think of you, your quiet bravery and know that anything is possible. Your open, giving heart taught me how to heal when I feared I would never be able to breathe again. 

Years of words sit in that box. Words that carried me when I was too weak. Hope. 
"Remember? We were going to go to the ocean together. Just you and me and the water. We were going to sit in the sand and all be one. Because we were one." 
If we hadn't done that yet - then she can't be gone. She wasn't allowed to kill a dream before it had become reality. 

You are, without any dramatics intended, the strongest woman I know. An inspiration to me during both my darkest and lightest hours.
Know this - I may be gone, but I still love you and want the very best for you. Look after yourself, my darling Elikai. 

And then, she had signed it as she always had.
I love you, be well & take care
Bumble

to judge a life you can not change.

[previously written February 25, 2008]

We watched Walk the Line at Michelle and Matt's house... and during that once more, Ryan popped into my head. He had begged me so many times to help him with his drug addiction, that I was the only one that could help him stay on the straight and narrow. I always refused... I never wanted to become the person who he hated because I kept him from his addiction... and I never wanted him to not be able to do it without me around. After watching Walk the Line, I felt regret for that... maybe all an addict needs is that one person to believe in them.
I felt like texting him to say I'm sorry. To ask him to coffee so I could tell him I was sorry myself. But I didn't.

On our way home we had to stop at the local hospital to visit a friend, a guy who had helped work on the race car. This man... was an alcoholic. We all knew it... and as hard as I tried to stay kind to him, I sometimes snapped, annoyed at the fact that I knew he was drunk. He sit by me and repeat himself because he couldn't remember what he had said. Other people had done that to me one too many times, and me being sober, I never felt like humoring him or laughing it off. It made me bitter, it made me snap at him.

He was admitted to the hospital 4 days ago into the ICU... his blood alcohol level was .58. Point five eight.
He was near death. Now in a regular room, we went to visit him... I wanted to show him support since I know this man has hardly any friends at all.
"I'll stay out in the hall" was riding on my lips as we proceeded to try and pull the room door instead of push it, but I kept my mouth closed, walked into the room and headed straight for the couch to stare at the TV.

Rodney kept asking me questions and I continued to answer with blunt short answers, kindly doing things as he asked but never saying more than I thought he needed to hear in order to understand something I was telling him.

I stared at this man... this man who had pretty much lost everything, including his dignity and self respect because of alcohol. This man had an addiction.
I hated him.
It was 100% wrong of me, but I absolutely hated him. I understand addiction, but I still couldn't stand the sight of him.

I had no pity. I had no feelings except those of anger and hatred. I was disgusted.

I shared this with Joey as we walked out to our car.
I knew he'd look at me exactly the way he did... the "how could you be so insensitive especially after all you've been through" look. And my answer was exactly that.
All I'd been through. 
I've been phsyically hurt because of alcohol, I've lived in the shadows because of it, been neglected because of it, had to live the lies of life because of it... it had been half the reason I was where I am today.

I had no pity on the people who caused other people pain because of the lies and deceit that comes with alcoholism. It's horrible of me, I'm well aware. I also fully understand that people don't turn to alcohol to purposely hurt other people... that there is some underlying reason, some life altering event that made them need to numb out the world.
But I can't help it. I still hate them. All of them. 

So there, is the honest truth.
-------------------------------------------------------

[previously written February 27, 2008]

(after everyone else had attempted to contact him and he didn't answer)

I don't know why... but I offered to try.
So I called... and look at that... Rodney answered.
He had checked himself into rehab and told me all about the last few days. I listened like I was his friend. I offered support as if he were important to me, I talked to him like I didn't hate him.
I didn't even mean to. But I think when he answered I treated him like an addict and not an alcoholic... and addiction is something I understood, something I could have empathy for. I could have easily chose alcohol or drugs instead of self injury... all in the same it numbed me from the world and was a temporary fix for the pain I was in. Addiction is addiction... I just can't go around saying I've been clean for xx amount of years.
Well, I guess I could.
Rodney closes the conversation with a desperate sounding "Will... will you keep calling me every once and a while? I need the support, I don't really have anybody." I answered "of course I will".
I went from hating to helping. And I was proud of myself for taking that step over to the other side.
After that I saw myself differently. Like I took off the body armor and was standing there vulnerable. I realized that I'm more broken than I lead everyone to be.
There's this line dividing the world. On one side stands the broken... on the other side the blind.
Standing on the line are the healing.
Open your damn eyes people of the world, this world isn't perfect. People have been through horrible things and suffer because of it.
I'll leave it at that.

-----------------------------------------------------
After that conversation I took Rodney in under my wing. He checked in with me 3 times a day and sometimes our conversation would last a good hour. I could tell when he was drinking, when he wasn't, when he was being truthful and when he was only telling me what he knew I needed to hear. 
I spent hours standing in his kitchen watching him sit on his rocker, waiting for him to be ready to take him back to detox or rehab. I spent hours explaining to him how addiction worked and how it was a disease. A disease that I understood. I watched him light cigarette after cigarette coming up with every excuse in the book as to why he couldn't go that moment. 
Somedays I failed. Somedays I spent hours outside his apartment building making sure he didn't get in the car to go and get alcohol. And then one day, he made it to 30 days sober. 
Sobriety, is the most beautiful thing I'll ever witness - without the alcohol he was the most well spoken person I had met. I watched him become sober and his hair was cut to the right length and clean, and his glasses weren't smeared and foggy, and alcohol wasn't seeping out of his pores, and his clothes were clean and straight. He saw that side of things where life is worth living again. 


But that disease, it takes over your life. 


For months we went back and forth between detox and inpatient and AA meetings and halfway houses and trying so very hard to piece his life back together. It's the most exhausting thing I've ever been part of. To watch someone struggle so very hard, to watch them want something that they can only barely graze with their fingertips. He wanted it so bad that even I could taste it. And one night, as we talked things over after a scare that had landed him in the hospital he said the words I will never forget "Everyone thinks I'm out to end my life by choosing to live this way. I don't want to be this way, I don't want to die. I don't want to die."
By February of 2009 I was mentally and physically exhausted from the battle he fought.
I wanted to fight it for him. He wanted sobriety so damn bad. 
I stood outside of work and listened to a voicemail he left me on my phone. "Hey Erica, it's me, Rodney. I was in the ICU, I'm out now... in a normal bed. I messed up, but I'm sorry, I can do this, I know I can. I can do this because you believe I can. Can you call me back? I don't have anyone to talk to."
I was upset that he relapsed yet again. I hit end on my phone and didn't return his call. 
In March of 2009 he had been sober for a few weeks since the ICU stunt. 
He had one bad day. He walked 3 miles in the freezing temperatures to the local grocery store where he bought one bottle of booze. 
He drank all of it and died that next morning on March 12, 2009. 
His death hit me hard. I'd sit staring at his Nikon SLR that was still in my possession - he wanted me to keep it safe from him, so he wouldn't sell it for booze and he knew my love for cameras, so I was the perfect person to babysit it. I wondered if there were any photos left on the last roll of film he had in it before handing it over to me.
I didn't want to go to his funeral, but I had to go to his funeral seeing as I was one of his only friends.
I didn't think I could handle seeing his body laying in a casket. I had seen too many in my small amount of time on Earth. 
And to my surprise, I suddenly didn't think I could ever handle doing this for a living it just hurt way too bad. But then I realized that not every battle could be won, and that not every battle lost would hit me this hard because the way I was intertwined with Rodney's life was much different than the way I would be involved in my client's lives. 
It hurt, but the one I save? Their life will be worth so much more than the pain I'll have to endure getting there.