Unraveling

Watching someone you care about unravel is a deeply disturbing event, and the realization that no matter how hard you try, you can't stop it is even worse. All you can do is helplessly watch as the person starts to come apart in front of you. It is not for the tenderhearted, and I, for all the tough exterior I present to the world, have a very tender heart. Don't tell anyone because I don't want my carefully crafted reputation of being a bitch/bastard to be called into question, but even if you did tell the world, most of them wouldn't believe you anyway.  This is an attempt to describe the unraveling of a close friend of mine, it is also an attempt to arrest the progress of that unraveling, and it might (just might) be an attempt to serve as a way of getting other people involved in the attempt to prevent his unraveling. Finally, it will try to serve as  "for the education of others" post, a post that says if you know someone in your life that is coming apart. Try to help if you can, and if you can't, get an adult who can, don't just watch the unraveling happen with a mixture of fascination, pity, and horror.

Of course that is all easy to say, but it is a real Herculean task to do. The person who is unraveling, even if they admit it, and few of them will admit it because admission equals weakness and no one likes to show weakness we are all John Wayne or Clint Eastwood and they weren't weak. They will probably tell you to "go fuck yourself." They may tell you that multiple times, or they may just shrug and tell you they "are fine." Fine is a very dangerous word in our language, it rarely means fine. It generally means (especially in this context) "not really okay, but too stubborn to give in and admit to either myself or other people that I’ve a problem I can’t fix.”You can hope that they have a wider support group than just you that allows them multiple chances to get whatever is unraveling them sorted. If you know the others in that group, it is best you band together and bum rush the bastard, sit him down, and work it out as a "team". If you are like me, and don't know if there exists a real group of people he trusts to do that, then you might just have to try to tackle the job solo. If you are really stuck, like me, and you know that he doesn't tell any one person the whole truth, or the full story of what is going on in that awful mind of his, well then you are stuck doing the best you can. It will be similar to plugging a leak in the hull of a desperately sinking ship. You know they are multiple leaks, and you know you are bailing out the ocean with a very small, slotted spoon, but all you can do is fight the demon in front of you.

He has demons, awful ones that I don't want to think about too much because if he's spent this much time creating them I know they have to be demons that would make H.P. Lovecraft proud. I know this because he lets slip about the demons under the bed, the demons at the door, you don't know if they are the same, if they are different, and I don't know how many of them there are. I do find it funny that for a man who professes no belief in a higher power uses the term "demons" but I suspect that is a language issue and not a belief issue. The small glimpses he has (mostly by mistake I believe) given me of these demons has lead me to believe that they are very, very real to him, and whatever name he wants to give them doesn't matter to their existence. I've known him long enough to know the identity of some of his demons, and those are the ones that I think he will carry around forever. I do not think (and I hope I am right) that these demons are killer demons. If they haven't done him in yet, I am hopeful that he has enough control over them to prevent them from ever managing to do him in. However, my fear is the new demons, the freshly minted demons that have caused the recent downward spiral will be the tipping point. They will team up with his long serving demons, and make the game no longer worth the candle to him, and he will do something truly untoward.

I don't see him as the type of person to resolve what is a temporary problem with a permanent solution, but one can never be completely sure, and that "permanent solution" can be a siren's song that even the strongest of people have been unable to resist (and there is a history of it in his family). He has, and has had for years a self-destructive streak that is quite impressive to see. Self-sabotage, and the ability to cut his own nose off to spite his own face is something that he has taken to an art form. It is not pleasant to watch, and myself and the others who I know care about him have 'cut him off at the pass" of self-destruction several times. Our fear is that one day we will arrive too late, that he will bottle up the demons long enough to fool us into thinking he is fine, and get out of the range of our help (or ignore it entirely), and self-destruct in some spectacular  fashion. We think it appeals to the "poet" in him, the ultimate denial of himself by blowing himself up like a bridge the enemy needs in order to invade some neighboring country.

He hides them well for the most part, he didn't get as far as he has on the stages of life's way without being able to fool people into believing things he wants them to believe. Maybe he believed some of those things himself, or maybe he didn't it is usually difficult to tell, and asking him is an exercise in futility that I learned long ago not to attempt again. But he can't hide it all. I can see the two major emotions at war within him in his eyes. The anger flashes out pretty easily, and he doesn't try as hard to control it as he does the other emotion in the war. That emotion is hurt/pain, I can see it in his eyes in the moments he doesn't think anyone is looking, and it is a painful sight. It is not something he shows much of at all, and rarely if ever on purpose, which makes it all the more heartbreaking to see. I know he's fighting to keep it at bay, and when I see it I realize he is losing. His is a suspicious mind, and those suspicious thoughts are tearing him apart. I don't know whether to believe him or not when he gives voice to them, they seem to be flights of fancy of someone not sleeping enough, but then he starts with his "theory" and even I begin to waver. If I am wavering (because I do deep down think he's wrong) then what chance does he have at 3 a.m. when the demons come out to play? During the daylight hours, the hours I see him (thankfully, his nights sound a horror) he laughs these suspicions off like they are nothing, but I can (just barely) tell that he is trying to convince himself of that more than he is trying to assuage my concerns.

 Losing the ability to keep the hurt at bay, is what the serious unraveling looks like. It is becoming more and more frequent to see the hurt winning out over of his self control, and rearing its ugly head in his eyes. The shake in his voice when he talks about the latest demon is difficult, but not impossible to hear. He tries to talk it out with me, not because he thinks I can help (I really can't), but because he thinks that saying it aloud will provide him a way to answer the demons' questions. I don't think it will, but I don't have the heart to tell him that. He is probably clever enough to realize it won't help either, but I think the trying is more important that the succeeding. The anger has mostly faded, but when (in the beginning) he let it out, it was not a pleasant experience to behold. He is, and he knows it, a bit of a hothead, but most of the time it is the "letting off steam type of anger" nothing that will leave any permanent scars, and will pass off after about ten minutes. This anger is not that type it is colder, more severe, and the look in his eyes when he shows it is not something I care to see very often, if ever again. He makes the joke that when he is truly mad you will notice because the temperature in the room will drop by a couple of degrees. He's not wrong.

I will sit here, and watch him unravel because I don't know what else to do. Pulling at any thread seems a bad idea, and much like all the king's horses and all the king's men were unable to put Humptey Dumptey back together again, I don't think me, or anyone else (other than maybe himself, if he's willing to try) can re-knit him. He hasn't (yet) fallen into the simplest trap that people in his situation fall into, he hasn't climbed into a bottle full of rage and stayed there with no plans of ever coming out. Maybe he thinks he's too old for that shit, or maybe he's gained a little wisdom, or maybe there's something going on in his head more awful that anything contained in a bottle. I don't know, and can't know until it is too late, which is (I think) exactly how he wants it, so he gets it. I will grant him that wish because I know his defiance disorder would make any obvious attempt to help him result in even more self-destructive behaviour, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.  I suppose all I can do, all any of us can do (other than him) is wait and hope.