I'm So Sorry!

The last two weeks have been a blessing. I found a friend. I called her after I learned that her 30 year old child had taken the opportunity while alone to end her suffering.

Last weekend was both bitter and sweet. Just like life is generally. Like a mountain trail some parts easy and beautiful and others steep, rocky and difficult. My friend, Jane had told me that Victoria's daughter had shot herself. She explained that at the age of 28 and after experiencing domestic violence and adultery in her short marriage; Sara was coming home from a night out when two men posing as undercover police officers pulled her car over. One man broke the side glass of the driver side window with his flash light and began to beat Sara. Both men drove Sara's car to the desert and raped and beat her near death.

Sara later reported to her mother, Victoria that in the darkness of that desert night a "black angel picked her up and carried her to her car". Sara reported seeing figures motioning her to walk towards them, but the black angel instructed that "it wasn't her time to go". The black angel placed her in her car and somehow Sara made it home.

As was their custom when they got home, who ever was arriving knocked softly on the other's bedroom door to let them know they were home safe. Sara softly scratched on her mom's door that evening. It was very late, and Victoria knew that she would probably have to wake up a little earlier to take Julia, Sara's daughter to school.

The next morning, Victoria found Sara enveloped by the bed sheet head to toe. She grabbed one of her feet and pulled her toes playfully. "Time to get up, Sara." Her mother unaware that a hang over was not the cause of Sara's fatigue.

Victoria was surprised when a cousin came over very early and happened to walk right in the house as the door was obviously unlocked. The cousin walked right into Sara's room and began screaming when she saw the bed drenched in Sara's blood.

For two years, Sara attempted, I believe with great courage to rebuild her life. The rapist at times would make his presence known prior to his arrest, filling her life with fear. Sara was recovering from a bout with cancer. She got an apartment at one time and moved from her mother and grandmother's home; only to return again driven by so much torment and fear. Victoria tells me that Sara was always apologizing. When her mom would rock her to sleep during one of her panic attacks.

One event presided by one too many violent events, changed that soul's life forever. I never met Sara. I feel that I know her intimately by my conversations with her mother. I know that Victoria came back to the Church shortly after the rape because the cross handed to her was too much to bear without the help of our Savior and Lord. I know that the church community in obedience to the Lord began to protect and make a home for Victoria years before Sara would find no other recourse than to end her own life.

At Sara's funeral mass, her mother, Victoria read the second reading. But I will write more about that blessing in another entry. Today, I just want to say that although, I could never imagine the suffering of that one little soul, her mother says that I say: "I'm sorry a lot, like Sara."

I say I'm sorry because I remember the person I was before I got sick. I say I'm sorry because I see in the eyes and I hear in the voices of the people I love, and that I acknowledge that they don't understand the darkness and the separation from life itself that mental illness takes you. I'm sorry because I can't help you with your kids right now. I'm sorry that I get so tired and so sad. I'm sorry that I'm not the person that you deserve. I want you to know, that with all my heart
I do try, and I pray because these days, that is all I can do.

I too, pray for death. I know that God will not allow me to interfere with His Plan which is perfect. I tried once, and I promised I would never try again when I awoke in the hospital. Yet it is hard to see the disappointment in the faces of the people I love when they seek the person who no longer exists in this body. I want a great wife for my husband and a terrific mother for my children. But these days I'm broken and worth so little. I know that I disappoint and hurt the ones closest to me. I can try and try and still it would never meet the expectation and I am left defeated and tired. And all I can say is: "I am so sorry!"