Guest Post - Mental Health Awareness Month - Death Becomes Her - Erika Reva Memering

“What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” -Helen Keller

Death becomes her. I’ve written quite a bit about loss, life, living and Death. Capital D. If you’ve encountered my ramblings on the subject you’ll know I give her the respect of the capital. It seems owed her, even after all I’ve given; paying the piper, as they say. It’s also been said, as so many things are, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” Whether or not Helen Keller was correct in that I cannot say. I will however express my annoyance with the sentiment. 

By age five I was quite finished with the idea of adventure. For those who may be unfamiliar with the word, it is defined as: an unusual and exciting, typically hazardous, experience or activity. Simple enough. Though I don’t much care for the idea of myself as a five year old, or any preschooler for that matter, being intimately aware of the word and all it can entail, nevertheless, here we are. 

I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy. That little nugget of truth came to me from two very important women in my early life. Madam Marie Curie was far wiser than could have been fully comprehended, even today in some respects. She is someone I have looked up to since I was that inconsequential, five year old child and I stumbled across one of the many biographies written about her. I was lucky in that for the first decade or so of my life, there was a Chicago public library right on the corner of my street. That librarian was far and wide one of my favorite people. Parts of me still miss her even today some twenty-five plus years later. She was warm. Soft. Curvy but rather short. Deep brown eyes that never seemed bothered by my incessant questions and small maundering. Her dark chocolate skin was exquisite with her full face and lips. Hair, always expertly polished and that full beautiful face held the strength, grace, and nurture I had never known before. Understated, elegance; she was my hero. My beautiful book of never ending knowledge. 

I don’t remember the day in full glorious technicolor, but what I know was this:

1. I was alone
2. I had read a book that depicted men on a ship who tied knots.
3. I was always alone, or so I thought and felt more often than not.
4. I had a circus themed toy box. A giant burnt orange tiger painted on the white wood behind green wooden dowels held it back, keeping me safe from it’s bright yellow eyes. I can recall the mantra of “it’s caged,” careening throughout my mind day in and day out. Night after night. 
5. My closet was a bit larger and so my father had kept some of his items in the back.

I scaled (with only minimal difficulty) the toy chest, procured one of my father’s neckties, looped it round into a slip knot, tossed an end over the wooden clothes bar,  and slipped it 'round my little throat. Precariously standing atop the wooden toy chest with the yellow eyed tiger leering up at me, I took a step to await her arrival. Death. It was as though my slight self desired to snub her, perhaps dare her come to me. This obviously didn’t occur and I wouldn’t know just how I survived my first and only suicide attempt until nearly two decades later. Which let me tell you, was a bitch of an experience…rather a couple dozen years of experiences that I was only half conscious for and some I have no idea about to this day, but that’s life with Dissociative Identity Disorder; rather, it was what my life was like. 

At the evening of my writing this piece: I am thirty-two years old, an author, podcaster and an advocate for those living with Dissociative and trauma based disorders. I still live in the Midwest but not alone. My husband of five years, our gardens, and animals keep me pleasantly busy and content. Dare I say even happy. All day every day? No of course not, that’s not the human experience, all emotions are important and valid. This is something I’m still working on today. The trauma’s of my past still haunt me today, but that doesn’t mean I am not equipped now to handle these instances, soothe myself and carry on with my day(s).

I am fourteen days “PD,” post doc; if you will, has been an experience. A positive one yet still bizarre to recognize and sit with. I’ve spent the better part of the last six+ years in intensive outpatient therapy. Multiple days a week with extended sessions each day/night. My six years is the mathematical equivalent to the average work that is done in a fourteen-fifteen year period. Yes, I sat down and did the math. I always call therapy, work. Because that’s the point. To work on oneself, learn, grow, adapt and whatever else ones goals or reasons may be it is most certainly work. I find the notion that people, meaning the broad spectrums and groups of them, need to adapt to me bizarre. Life adapts. Things ebb, flow, and evolve. I am no different, but that was on me to do the work. Now, it most certainly took years and years…and years to find someone able to help me with this. To help us with the chaos and turmoil was in short, an epic battle of ridiculous excessive repetitive exhaustive recurring traumas. Ok, so it was not short, but it was still accomplished because part of me despite fear, horror and all the etceteras life hurled at us, she chose to keep going. We did. I did. The We in Me, are no longer surviving but now I am living. It’s a heady accomplishment.  The labor and exertion have been found worth it with insistent gusto. Persistence, determination and a tenacious take no piss attitude drove myself and every part of me forward. No offense to Helen Keller, but I’ve made so much of my nothing that it would make her head spin. 

“One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.” -Marie Curie 

What was is no longer what is. What has been has come to pass. What will be? Well, I have no definitive idea, but I certainly have hopes, fears, wishes, so much more, but the most invaluable of these that still remains etched upon me is words. I have every word I’ve obsessively studied and still restudy due to the discomfort of my losing it. Given the amnesia aspects of living with DID (especially, when you are unaware of the fact pre-diagnosis) I still do some things in my day to day life in quite the obsessive manner. I am, however, working on this ever-day. Yes, I still have Dissociative Identity Disorder and OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), but I’m working on treating the annoyances that poke their ugly heads outta my brain every now and again. It’s work, as I said; work I will gladly continue for the betterment of my own life as well as others. 

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” 

- Marie Curie