Five Years

I lost my voice five years ago.

Oh, I can speak aloud no problem, my vocal cords remain intact and in good working order. But my true voice, the one I use to say (or write) anything that really matters, became muted. For a little while, I thought my creative juices had simply entered a fallow period, a brief barren season that would pass soon enough. But then months rolled over into years, and still, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t use my voice. In my personal life, there was so much that I couldn’t talk about, I felt afraid to write anything at all.

Grief stole my tongue (the cat left it alone/didn’t even bother to try).

A few months before my fortieth birthday, in March 2017, I decided to get sober, which meant no alcohol, but more importantly for me, no cannabis. No weed, man. I knew that losing booze would be relatively easy; I’m rarely a big drinker. But the green queen, Mary Jane, she had been a super close friend for twenty years—we did basically everything together—and here I was, saying goodbye. But I had to lose both, or I’d vacillate between the two, and I was already using more than usual. I realised deep in my bones that, if I didn’t stop, there was a solid chance I would spin out of control in the coming weeks. Someone I loved beyond measure was dying, and I was self-aware enough to know that, when he left, it would break me. And knowing me as well as I do, because I’ve lived with myself for a lifetime now, I couldn’t afford it: falling apart, spiraling down, and spinning out of control was not an option. So, I got sober. Thirteen days later, one year to the day after his leukaemia diagnosis, Cameron was gone.

I stayed sober for two years and eight months, and during that time, I wrote and published two pieces, maybe three: a poem for an anthology, an essay for a recovery newsletter, and that other thing (if it exists at all). To be frank, I’m sure they were all crap. What could I write when every day was a fight? In my years as a nonfiction writer, I’ve repeatedly heard, “write from the scar, not the wound.” Patiently, I waited and waited (and waited some more) for those damned wounds to scar, but they never did; in fact, new wounds continued to appear and, bleeding to death from loss and grief, writing seemed like a useless waste of time. It is almost impossible to write in the dark, and for me then, there was no light. Light was like the memory of a dream: it existed, but not in this world.

In the spring of 2019, literally overnight, I developed a strange, idiopathic medical condition with some harsh symptoms, which included severe swelling and inflammation, sudden significant weight gain, and a regularly near-crippling abdominal/pelvic pain that had me at the local emergency room on at least four occasions. Aside from finding nine kidney stones (apparently not the cause of my issues), after a cystoscopy, colonoscopy, ultrasound, two CT scans, and countless blood tests, neither the nephrologist, the urologist, the gynecologist, the gastroenterologist, nor my physician could determine what the fuck was wrong. Something was going on, my white blood cell count was high, indicating an infection, but none could be found or resolved despite the four runs of strong antibiotics I’d been given. At a loss, I was prescribed ever increasing doses of morphine, but I hated it. The side effects were bad, the benefits short-lived. I couldn’t write then, of course, because my head was foggy, and when you’re in serious physical pain, most of your thoughts are consumed with some variation of the theme, “Ow, ow, OW! Ouch.”

When my husband, from whom I was separated but still very much involved, started dating an old girlfriend of his that summer, what was left of my heart went up in flames and turned to dust. For a decade, we had raised our kids together in this beautiful, messy, blended family, and in the span of three months, the whole thing had disintegrated and morphed into something I could barely recognise. Divorce papers were filed. My entire being felt utterly ravaged by grief and pain. As a last resort, given the state of my physical and mental health, I began to micro-dose THC with larger amounts of CBD. Within two weeks, I had lost almost all the weight I’d gained, twenty-five pounds (or two stone for you British folks), and no longer needed morphine for pain. I’m not going to call it a miracle cure, but that’s exactly what it felt like.

Unfortunately, despite my improved physical health, the situation with my former partner continued to deteriorate. One night, I decided that if we had a couple drinks together, inhibitions and walls down, we’d be able to work it out and get back together. I swear, this was my thought process at the time. Four months shy of my third year of sobriety, and I sincerely thought that we would save our marriage, if only we could find a way to get past ourselves (via alcohol). Yes, I hear it now. Crazy. At the time, however, in my despair, it all made perfect sense. In the end, he did come over, but I drank the six-pack alone, and suffice it to say, none of what transpired that night saved our marriage.

To try and heal my broken heart, sea and sun as medicine, I took a trip to Kite Beach in the Dominican Republic at the end of February 2020. A week after my return, we began the first of four COVID-19 lockdowns. Meanwhile, litigation dragged on and on. I joked about writing a book, Divorce in the Time of Covid, but didn’t have the energy. Mostly, I watched episodes of How I Met Your Mother on endless repeat, or if I was with my daughter, we binged Pretty Little Liars. Eventually, it became painfully clear that there would be no winners in the divorce, only losers, so big concessions were made (likely on both sides) to finally end it. Final papers were filed last spring, and the divorce became official this year.

For ages, I have avoided putting words on paper, because I had no distance from anything, no scars, only gaping wounds, and I was scared to write, terrified to break down the walls and show my heart, worried that I would say something I’d later regret. Anything you say can and will be used against you. But half a decade is a long time for a writer to not write, for a voice to be silenced, especially when that voice screams on the inside to be heard. Today, it has been two months since my divorce was made official, and I am at peace with it now. Today, it has been five years since I lost a soulmate, and in a way, I write this for him, for the man who believed in me long before I did. Cameron faced both life and death with courage and grace; I want to live like that. Today, after five of the hardest damned years of my life, I finally found the courage to use my true voice again. And I’ve got lots left to say.

Amazing grace.

(Image courtesy of: Opportunity Marketing – online)