Heather asked if I would host a "potluck" get-together for Lindsey's bday at my house (Greg's idea, apparently). Coincidentally, I was reading today (or yesterday- they all seem to bleed together) about the 4 steps to assuaging anxiety. Step 1 name the feeling. Step 2 write about it. So here I am.
In short, the feeling I have about this idea is a vehement no. No! NO. I won't host a party with Lindsey's "close" friends (but maybe if it were just family, but still no). And why? In short: my sobriety, my family's sobriety, and my desire to honor Lindsey in a sober space are more important than making other people happy and providing a convenient location to get drunk and cry about Lindsey.
I respect that Heather doesn't normally drink that much, but she was a fucking mess at the "service." No thanks. I am not going to make myself privy to that kind of a scene. Gee, Heather, how did she "suddenly" develop an addiction to pain meds?? Stay focused, Laura. The fact is, I loved Lindsey, but not necessarily the scene she ran in. She was my childhood friend, but the older we got, the harder it was to relate and sometimes even love her. She often, regularly, predictably found herself in fucked up situations and I tried to help, I did, even to my own detriment, even to the detriment of my own relationships because I loved her and I missed my best friend. But I don't have to do that anymore because she is gone. I don't have to sacrifice my home and my emotional well-being to spend a little time with her ghost. I just don't.
Of course, the request comes in the form of a text and I find it oh-so-burdensome to respond in a text. It's too much to say in a fucking text. What I want to say is that the image that is the clearest in my mind about Lindsey's death is not the gun, the bullet, the hole in her head. It's that empty bottle of vodka they found in the room. The bottles of pills. It's one of the last things she said to me "I could never do that (quit drinking)." It's the fact that she pretended everything was okay until she couldn't anymore. It was a life of addiction, deceit of others and of self, that I can't stop thinking about. It's all the times we used together. It's how it turned dark and scary really quickly and there was an innocence there that was never recovered between us, but I have recovered it for myself, and I know she could have, too.
I don't have the fucking energy or the inclination to pretend like the illness was anything other than addiction. Mental illness brought on by addiction. I know it's more nuanced than that, but I am not here to facilitate a drunken meeting of her friends. Not doing it. I know I am awesome, and I can be a charming and benevolent hostess, but I'm not doing this to make anyone feel better. I lost her, too, and I am going to take care of me.
