When I started this blog, I said I was going to be open and candid about mental illness; mine especially. That means saying how it makes you feel, even if you think you will be judged, shamed, pitied, or laughed at. As I write this particular entry, the only things that worries me more than people not reading it (after me putting this much courage into writing it) is people reading it, because of how much this one seemingly silly aspect of it affects me.
When my uncle passed away back when I was a teen, I noticed how over the next few weeks and months my aunt began to hoard things that reminded her of him. Not just photos, as you might expect, but things. These things, as I would later learn from my own experience with grief, formed a chain of memories. He was not coming back, but there were things of his that remained. But those things created another link to the chain, and another. Such that had my uncle returned from the dead, he might look at some of these things and say "What on earth does that have to do with me, Harriet?"
My uncle was gone. But my aunt remembered the two of them visiting Louisiana the year before. It was one of the last things they did together where there was no pain and worry, so Louisiana became precious to her. That was the first link in the chain. While in Louisiana, they ate at a French restaurant, and she had fallen in love with the food. So she began cooking French cuisine, because it made her think of Louisiana, and of him. She began learning French, a little bit at a time. She collected French knickknacks. She found the dinnerware the restaurant had used, and ordered it. The plates had roses on them, and she planted roses in her back yard to match the plates. She would sit out on her back patio and look at her roses, listening to French music. The roses that matched the plates from the French restaurant with the music that reminded her of Louisiana, and of their last trip together. Those roses, then, reminded her of him.
I realize over the years I have done the same thing. When I came back from Romania in 2014, knowing it would be a long, long time (if ever) before I might return, my heart was broken over it. That was when the PTSD began. On the flight over to Romania, I had read a book I found at the airport. The book was set in Germany during WWII. I began wanting to learn more about WWII Germany, because it was a connection with Romania. Germany equals that book which equals that flight which equals Romania. (I now own 4 copies of that book, by the way.) In addition to learning Romanian, I also began learning German, because German equals the airport in Munich which equals Romania. One day, I was sitting in a bookstore that sold video games and there was a game playing on DEMO mode on a TV; FIFA 15. The song playing reminded me of music in the airport in Munich, so I bought the game and began learning the mechanics of soccer. I found comfort in that store, so I applied to work there, and got hired. It was so good for me. Unfortunately, the job ended with a management change, but while I was working there, I found this rubber ball behind the counter and I would play with it before the store opened as I stocked shelves. It was a red icosagon called a Moon Ball. The ball is one thing I have left from when I worked at that store and makes me think of the friends I made there, that I miss dearly.
The Moon Ball equals the bookstore which equals the video game which equals soccer which equals Germany which equals the book which equals the flight to Munich which equals Romania. This doesn't even include all the little smaller things along the way like Jacobs coffee and a harmonica in the key of Db minor.
What results is a complex web of things that, like my uncle, if the original person knew I had collected as a result of their loss would probably be very confused. (What does that harmonica, or that Moon Ball have to do with a little city in Northern Romania?) But a chain has been formed, and unhealthy though it may be, it has given me interests that had the original trauma not occurred, might never have become a part of my life, for better or worse.
Most who were a part of my journey to Romania will probably never read this. Most have probably moved on to other areas of their life, as I have in many ways. The point is, this aspect of who I am permanently ties that part of my life to that harmonica, or that rubber ball.
Maybe in reading this, there are others who will identify with this, and know they are not alone.
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