It was Jesse’s birthday yesterday, he would have been 39. He has been on my mind a lot over the past few weeks, something I often don’t share.

It is not like I don’t think of him. I of course do, because not a day goes by without thinking of that day. Yeah, that one. So, of course it crosses my mind. To function, it goes through like a steam engine, I try to keep the path clear so it doesn’t stop and mess me up. I am sure I have been thinking more about him because of his birthday and other things that happened in January.

It was a couple of weeks ago when it started, I was just kinda off, messed up, and could not put my finger on it. This went on for a few days. And then the aha moment arose, as it usually does at some point. This was the time five years ago when Jesse was in the behavioral health ward. He had weaned off the painkillers given to him after the car accident the month before, but they had increased his anti-depressant while on them. When you have un-diagnosed bipolar, I have learned since, that is a recipe for disaster. Over a few weeks, he became hypo manic, then manic. I never want to see that again. The brain is an amazing and scary thing in regards to its grip on “reality” as we know it in everyday. Yes, some of the things and concepts were amazing, but when your husband looks at you and talks in tongues, it is scary. What I remember from that time is bringing him to the ER, eventually going home for the night, him checking himself out, me bringing him back and saying, please, he needs help, as he was literally out of his mind. I learned then the concept of voluntary vs involuntary holds. I also learned that the ER is the last place someone who is manic should be. He was there for 2 1/2 days. I also remember having two young kids at home, taking care of them, going to work all day (thank god my mother in law came to watch them), after work, going to visit him, then coming home, saying goodnight to the girls, then collapsing. This went on for almost two weeks. The exhaustion, the worry, the illumination of a lot of behaviors he had made/done over the past year, the learning of the diagnosis of Bipolar 1, you get the picture. I was a constant ball of knots, trying to keep it together.

So my aha moment was my subconscious saying, yeah, sure, you can go on in life, not have something in the forefront of your mind, but here I am! I will make sure you never forget. It was a gentle reminder of the cruelty of the subconscious, the reminder that I will never escape its depth and reach.

There are a lot of mixed feelings as you can imagine when he creeps into my mind like he has recently. I have moved on in so many ways with my life, as life will do that. I found love again, much to my immense surprise. I got re-married to this amazing man, who has so much love, patience, and kindness it is humbling. It is probably the first truly healthy relationship I have been in, much thanks to all the work I did on myself after Jesse and Bella died, that deep soul searching, dredging it all up, shitty, ridiculously hard, but needed kind of work (and that it putting it lightly). At the time, I needed to live, for my kid, very slowly changing into living to live. But there is this past, a past that I am reminded of everyday because of the tragedy. It is not like an old relationship that pops up occasionally and you say, huh. It is a complicated and tangled web in my brain, mostly because of the never-ending grief for Bells. And with that grief, comes Jesse, as he is the reason she is gone. But the thing is, he wasn’t a monster like people want to make him out to be. The brain disease that he had made him behave and make poor choices in our relationship, it was really really hard. But the man everyone knew, the man that I married, that man was so good in so many ways, which complicates things.

I am not sure if we would have made it as a couple. In fact, based on some things that transpired, I am pretty confident we would have tried, and not made it. But I did not get that type of closure. The day he died, I told him how much I loved him, and he said the same back to me. And then twelve hours later, I found him and my darling sweet girl dead in the worst way possible. He took that process away and instead put me on this journey of hell on earth with a grief that grabs hold of my heart and squeezes it until I can’t breathe. People ask all the time, have you forgiven him? As if that is a goal we should all reach for? Hmm. That is another topic for another day. I answer, it’s complicated. It always will be. I balance remembering the good qualities, but also do not get stuck in an utopian clouded memory that hey, it was all good. No, it really wasn’t. The good was good, the not good was not good. So I had to go through the process of ending the relationship on my own instead of the process we would have gone through together, which has allowed a very small degree of peace.

But that does not mean at certain times of year the memories don’t overflow the filters that are in place. And his birthday, it is hard, I won’t lie. I will leave you with what I wrote a couple of years ago on his Facebook wall: Jesse, I am honestly at a loss of what to say today. Mad/sad washes over me. Wishing you a “happy” birthday seems off and not right. Not acknowledging it is not right either. Though I constantly remind myself you were out of your fucking mind that day, the reminders remain etched in my brain forever on a constant reel that I cannot escape. I will settle on what I always say, I hope you are working on your shit and you find peace.