The Dark Corners Part 3
Guilt
*** This is the next in a collection of essays that I have felt compelled to write and/or finish for some time. Diving deep into some of the darker aspects of this journey - anger, guilt, self-pity, difficult aspects of Kara and my relationship, abject sadness, and then some.
I’m hoping to illuminate and examine all of those shady areas in the hopes that nothing malignant manifests within them at some point down the road. But also to paint a more complete and potentially relatable picture for others. Relationships and recoveries aren’t always pretty. And I think it’s unhealthy, potentially even dangerous to dwell exclusively on the more pleasing or comfortable aspects of both.
Some of these essays I started, or would revisit from time to time only to find that I wasn’t ready yet. While others I only recently wrote or began writing because I knew I would need to be in a good place to even attempt them. I can safely say that I’m in that happy and healthy place now. Still, these were difficult to write, and I suspect they might not be the easiest things to read either. ***
Part 3: Guilt
January 2024
Around 7 am on the morning of the fire, I received a phone call from the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office. One of the only things I can remember from that almost exclusively one-way dialogue was a thought that came screaming into my mind the moment the call ended.
“I should have been there.”
Hate, regret, and guilt are all equally capable of eating us alive. Thankfully, hate and regret are two things I’m genetically uninclined to knot myself up over. But guilt….
The guilt I felt initially was quite dangerous. Instead of focusing on the reality that I should have been grateful just to be alive, I went the other way with it. I felt like if I had been there, we both would have gotten out alive or perished together. Either one of those two scenarios was infinitely better than the shattered existence that remained. But I soon recognized that I needed to re-route that train of thought before it led me into an unsafe place.
I attempted to adjust the outlook on my absence into something in the ballpark of grateful acceptance. Which was an unmitigated failure. So I abolished the thought entirely - I mean I put it way the hell out there. Until very recently, it was unallowed anywhere near my conscious mind.
What took its stead, however, was the fucked up notion that I was glad it was me and not her that had to deal with the aftermath. Not wanting her to go through the horrific process of trying to find reasons and ways to carry on while amid a full-scale existential freefall. Because despite her fortitude, had the roles been reversed some of Kara’s own dark corners might have swallowed her light entirely before she was able to see clearly again.
As terrible as it sounds, I convinced myself that despite no longer being alive, in some ways she was the lucky one for not being yoked with the burden of what was left of this life. Looking back, perhaps that bend in reality is what eventually enabled me to sleep at night.
Now as I revisit it, I still wish I would have been there. I just do. I’m grateful and happy to be alive, but it doesn’t sit right. Maybe it’s the way my brain is wired or the way I view things in general, but no matter how often I go through the mental gymnastics of likelihoods and probabilities, I sincerely feel like things would have gone differently had I been there. I don’t blame myself and I have since forgiven that version of this man, for unwittingly not being where and when he was needed the most. But I really fucking wish that he was, and I probably always will.