Walking on Broken Glass

I'm living in an empty room with all the windows smashed. And I've got so little left to lose that it feels just like I'm walking on broken glass. 

Mark killed himself in our guest room. I did not find him. I think he set it up so that I wouldn't have to by contacting the cops himself. That way they'd be involved to handle all the preliminary messy stuff for me. Or maybe that wasn't on his mind at all. It is much more likely that ending his pain was all he was thinking about. But Mark took enough actions in his last forty-eight hours, like calling people to tell them he loved them, that suggest that he was in fact present to at least a little bit more than his own suffering. Furthermore, I know now that I'm lucky I didn't witness his suicide, nor did I have to go through the trauma of finding his body. It pleases me to give him credit for this silver lining, especially considering all the other things I had no problem blaming him for in the midst of the rage I felt for many months after his suicide. So, let's just pretend that Mark was thinking of me and didn't want me to have to face the agony of finding his mutilated body.

I sort of like the dramatic version better... *Don't judge me. You didn't live through what felt like should've been a movie instead of my life.*

On the other hand, Mark put me through a forty-eight hour nightmare before he died. This, I've learned, is not typical of most completed suicides. The key word here is 'most'. There are MANY suicides that follow long struggles and battles with mental and/or physical illness, and often there are at least some warning signs, most of which haunt you by seeming obvious in hindsight. Each and every suicide is unique. I speak in general terms when I say that a lot of what happened with Mark leading up to his suicide was not statistically common. Bodies are often found unsuspectingly, notes are almost never left, and the authorities aren't typically around when the person officially ends their life. In Mark's case, hours were spent confirming whether or not it was safe to enter our apartment, and he was found dead on camera before anybody physically went inside. He did leave a note, but it didn't provide any revelations. And there were so many law enforcement officers present on our street that it looked like a scene from a movie, complete with SWAT, roadblocks and a crowd of spectators, thankfully around the corner and out of sight from where I was.

But this isn't really about that day. It's about the glass. In order to ensure that it was safe for anybody to enter our apartment, what with Mark being a Marine who knew a lot about guns, the police broke one of our windows and sent in a tactical robot, which is basically a GoPro on wheels. It was kind of neat, actually, except that all it discovered was that Mark was in fact dead. That, and breaking the window meant there was glass everywhere. I was later given a note with an incident number so that I could report it to the city to reimburse me for when I had the window replaced. With a dumbfounded expression on my face, I told them I didn't care about the window; they simply apologized and handed me the paper. Then they blocked the window up with cardboard, I think. Somebody did at some point. It's all a blur. What I remember was Thursday night, five days after Mark's suicide, when I first went back inside our apartment.

Two friends of mine went back before I did. I needed clothes and my favorite shakes, as well as the trash taken out. This might seem odd, but it was summer; I didn't need a bug-infested apartment on top of everything else. The only other person to go in was a man named Nate, who works in biohazard cleanup. His job was to clean up the room Mark was in, but he was kind enough to pick up some of the very large, and frankly, dangerous pieces of glass, as well as bring me a few other things I really wanted from inside. Once the room was cleaned, I had no idea when I'd be going back. People told me not to. Some looked quite terrified at the thought of me going to the place where Mark had killed himself. But, even as much as I hated that apartment before, it was my home. 

Correction: It had been OUR home, but I discovered in simply talking about OUR apartment that there sort of was no more OUR. There was just ME and MY apartment. I don't always see it that way now, but it was very odd in the beginning to notice how normal it was for me to speak in the plural.

Mark died on Saturday. By Thursday night, I couldn't stay away any longer. I needed my bed. I needed to be alone. I needed to go home. And after driving around for a few hours pretending I wasn't going to, I finally did. With a bottle of wine. I don't remember if I stopped at the store, or if I somehow had it magically ready for a night of such need, but there was wine. Fortunately, it was also dark. I didn't have to hide from any neighbors. I don't remember moving very fast, but I have a feeling I tried to get inside as quickly and unnoticed as possible. On the other hand, I have a feeling I took my time walking to the door because I can't imagine myself rushing into the place where Mark killed himself. And there was no way of getting there without having to pass that broken window. Needless to say, it was...  

Was it odd? Awful? It wasn't terrible, though it certainly wasn't what I'd call a good night. Weird. It was so fucking weird. Surreal. I probably talked to myself while walking to the door. The neighbors were probably watching, for all I know. I'm sure I looked stellar. Who the hell knows what I was wearing, and I was carrying only a bottle of wine. Marvelous, Maggie. 

Somehow, I made it inside. I don't remember any dramatic pause or fidgeting with my keys at the door, though that may have happened. It took however long it took, and I went inside. Our front door was rather heavy and made a lot of noise if you weren't careful, so I probably tried to shut it quietly. And I probably failed. But once I got inside, I could shut the world out. It felt like I was in my own bubble. If the neighbors could hear me, I didn't care. From that moment until I moved out almost four months later, that apartment was mine, the only place where I could just be. Just me and the glass on the floor, some of which stayed there as long as I did.

Everything was a mess. The small sofa was at an odd angle behind the door. I think Mark might have tried to barricade himself in with it. The curtain at the broken window was no longer hanging properly. I think it was still attached to the rod on the wall, but the impact from the force to break the window weighed it down partially. Or maybe it was all the way down. Scattered about the room were six or seven small black pieces of plastic, maybe two inches in diameter, each with a soft, blue, rubbery sort of foam tip; I later found out these were the rounds used to shoot and break the window. The coffee table wasn't centered. It probably never was because I'm just not that into detail or design, but it was definitely askew. There was a large, black trash bag filled with blankets on the couch, put there by a friend of mine who made an attempt at cleaning things up a bit for me when she went to get some of my clothes. I left the blankets in the bag because using them would undoubtedly have resulted in cutting myself on the many shards of glass that got caught up in their fabric. My mom might have later done something with the blankets, but I think I might have just tossed them. 

Given how unreliable my memory of any of this is, it is quite possible that most of this didn't actually happen. This is just what I can remember. I think...

I do know I was hesitant to walk around barefoot. There was so much glass. It was on the coffee table, the carpet, the couch, the small sofa across the room, the kitchen counter, the kitchen floor, the stove, the sink, on top of the fridge, the floor just outside of our bedroom. It was everywhere. To be clear, we did not live in a big apartment, so it's not all that shocking that so many tiny pieces of glass shattered across such short distances. But it so permeated almost every room. Some shards might have even made their way down the hall to the bathroom, if they could've made it past the complete disarray of items Mark mysteriously tore out of the closet in that hallway. Our bedroom was safe from glass, though it was its own disaster. When the guest room was cleaned, most of its closet's contents made their way to the bedroom, landing either on the bed or the desk. And the guest room, having been sanitized from top to bottom, wall to wall, and corner to corner, was free of glass. 

I did go into the guest room. I might've poured a glass of wine first; that might have been the very first thing I did. I don't remember. I wish I had a more dramatic story to share, but walking into the space where Mark killed himself was rather underwhelming. The room was empty and sterile. There were no longer any curtains in the window, so there was no privacy. This didn't matter since the window faced the canyon we lived next to, but on the chance somebody wanted to look in, I had nothing to hide behind. There were no lights in the room, so I don't think I saw much or stayed in there long. I don't remember talking. I just remember how empty it was. I feel cold when I think about it, but that's about as exciting as it gets. It wasn't until months later that I developed aversions to being in specific places, as is normal with PTSD. It took about three months before that room bothered me to the point of needing to shut the door, which was when it dawned on me that it was time to move out. There are still many other places I do not care to visit, and some that I straight up avoid. But I was just so relieved to be in my own home that it would've been weird to be there and not go in the guest room, even if it was where Mark killed himself. 

Once that was over with, I made an attempt to clean the bedroom, so as to make space on my bed. Remember, I brought a bottle of wine, and I had no intentions of going anywhere else that night; I was sleeping in my own bed for sure. I remember my friend's wedding dress took up what felt like half the room. She had been storing it in the closet in our guest room, and I think I hung it back in the closet, along with some other items. Again, I had no particular aversion to the guest room, and I needed to free up some space in my own bedroom. I didn't clear the entire bed, just "my side". It remained "my side" for a few weeks before I finally gave into the bittersweet truth that I had an entire California King bed to myself. But that first night, I simply pushed things off of "my side" and slept next to whatever landed on his. I think having the whole bed to myself would've been too overwhelming. 

Sleep was not yet an option, though. Nor was watching TV or a movie, as if I could even have chosen something to capture my attention. I did consider it, but the couch was too filled with glass to even attempt to sit on it. So was the small sofa, and I wasn't ready to put things back in order yet. I had a desire to keep things as Mark had left them, even though it was probably the cops who had touched most things last. Them, and Nate. I was also way too exhausted and scattered to do much of anything. So, instead of moving things around too much, I simply integrated myself into the mess. There was only one safe spot: on the floor between the coffee table and the TV. Sort of. There was at least minimal glass there, so that's where I sat. I was close enough to a plug in the wall to charge my phone, which had basically been a nonstop necessity since two days before he died. 

What does one do when sitting on the floor, their surroundings a glass-infested shambles mere feet from the room where their husband killed himself just five days prior? 

It just occurred to me that maybe nobody else has ever found themself in quite the same predicament, and if they have, I'm sorry that they had to go through that. 

For whatever reason, making dinner sounded like a good idea. I knew I had some gluten free pasta, turkey meatballs and marinara sauce. I'd probably bought it all the week before thinking I'd make dinner for both me and Mark. I remember feeling relieved that I didn't have to go to the store. Everything I needed was there for me. I'd been "living out of a suitcase", so to speak, for a week at that point. Nothing was readily available, and if it was, it was somebody else's that I borrowed, or just used, since nobody expected to receive back anything that they gave me that week, as well as for the months that followed. And basically still now. In fact, if you've given me something of yours in the last seventeen months, I probably won't remember that it was yours, nor will you ever see it again. But back to the meatballs.

I clearly had time on my hands since I went through the effort of baking the meatballs in the oven AND boiling water to make pasta. I barely do that for myself now, so it is interesting that I had the patience to do it then. But I really had nothing else to do. Mark was dead. I wasn't sad. I wasn't angry. I don't really remember being anything else. I just sort of was. Until I was drunk. I don't think I really ate. Most of the food stayed in its bowl and went into the fridge, where it lived for a few days until my mom cleaned it out. I didn't do the dishes because who cares about dishes when your husband's dead? I didn't even move the glass out of the kitchen before cooking. I sort of just worked around it. I left some on the coffee table when I ate. I definitely sat on glass, but I was too numb to care. I probably wouldn't have even felt it if I'd cut myself. 

In hindsight, I probably worried my mom that night. I think she knew I needed to go back there, but I sort of just left, drove around and texted her hours later that I was at the apartment. I probably told Shaela, too; I tell her everything. I know I texted with three of Mark's Marines that night. One had been a bit of a rock for me in those first few weeks. The second is one I haven't stayed in touch with very often, but he's always been there if I need something. The third was "Andrew". I remember bits and pieces of our messages, and that night was the start of what turned into more than a year of us leaning on each other. I had no idea in that moment he'd be so pivotal in my life, but I am forever grateful that he messaged me. In addition to my mom, I probably worried "Andrew" and the other guys when I said that I was sitting on the floor surrounded by glass drinking wine. Recalling all this now is quite bizarre. I knew I was a bit off, but my goodness. Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset with myself. I did the best I could, and I don't have a single regret.

I barely have any memories of those days. How could I have any regrets? 

This is not at all the first time I've thought about those days or the glass. Only a handful of people knew any of this before now, but it wasn't exactly something I'd blocked from my memory. On the contrary, I replayed much of this time over and over in my head in an attempt to never forget a single detail. I didn't even want to write about it because I was afraid I'd get it wrong. I don't trust my memory anymore. You probably shouldn't trust yours either, since humans are more reliable for inventing stories based on their interpretations than retelling anything remotely resembling the truth. But my memory is definitely not what it used to be. This is normal with grief, and I could probably blog just about the hilarious situations that have ensued from relying on my memory. Still, it's frustrating not being able to remember more from those days.

That's probably why I let some of the glass stay on the floor for so long. Everything was moving forward. Time was passing. It felt like anything and everything that was connected to the living, breathing Mark was all slipping away. I didn't even want to think about him most days, so the least I could do was keep as much in place as possible. My mom, the angel that she is, turned our apartment back into a livable space, making it MINE. She got as much glass as she could. Then we found and cleaned more, but it was everywhere. After she went home, I stopped picking it up.

There are two shards in particular that I remember. One was right under the window the police had broken, which wasn't replaced for about four weeks, mostly because I didn't take any actions to tell my landlord to replace it for about three weeks. The other piece that I intentionally kept in place was across the living room next to the wall. There wasn't anything significant about those pieces. I simply found them later than other pieces. I even vacuumed around them. I know I found others, but if they weren't in a spot where I could potentially step on them, they stayed put. It was about three months before I told anybody about those pieces of glass. One conversation with a dear friend shifted things enough that I finally threw away Mark's toothbrush and at least CONSIDERED moving the glass. But the glass remained until I moved out, just about four months after Mark's suicide.

I had to clean the apartment before moving out, as if cleaning that space was going to make it anything other than the place where a previous tenant had killed himself. Throwing away that glass felt a bit like a betrayal of Mark, though I was a bit comforted to look outside the window and notice that there were still some shards of glass speckled among the rocks and plants. I have no idea if my landlord had it properly cleaned after I left. I kind of hope not, which is weird since I hated that apartment and I don't like the idea of any of Mark being stuck there. I don't even drive over there. I stopped driving part-time with Lyft after my last passenger needed to be dropped off in our old neighborhood. That was about ten months ago. But I also don't like the idea of somebody picking up the remaining shards of glass from outside that window. 

To this day, I can notice a tiny piece of glass on the floor or the ground from several feet away. I've crossed streets to go look at tiny pieces of glass I saw glinting in the sun. I've walked from one side of a room to another to investigate shiny specks on the floor. It's not usually glass, but when it is, I leave it where it is, unless somebody might get hurt. Then I sometimes just brush it aside to a spot where it can't be stepped on. Broken glass on the ground reminds me of Mark. When I'm reminded of him, I either want to forget him immediately, or I get blissfully lost walking down memory lane. It makes sense to me that I'd either completely ignore the glass or leave it there so I can remember Mark again later.