Only the Good Die Young

How to let old ideas and people fly out of your head

I started NCSU Design School in the summer of my 19th year.

Bobby, my sister’s blue canary, was the first to fly away when I was four. Then my sister, the year before I hitched a ride with my brother to university. He was the next to go. I started counting my losses early.

A few days ago, I learned that my first significant boyfriend died suddenly. We had met on a summer internship during Design School. It struck me how long some of us hang onto the idea that a person might ever become the person we envisioned.

As I am no longer young, I realise that I could have chosen death earlier, but something in me was stronger than death, disease, or debacle. Oh, I’ve had my share of opportunities, and I’ve survived them all despite my naivete stumbling out into the world from my southern patriarchal bubble.

The best people in my life left early. First my sister Sharon, then my brother Mark, my boyfriend Ian, my husband David, and my mentor, Timothy. They were all very, very good people whom I mourned for decades. When you lose important people at impressionable times that you see as ‘too soon’ the sting of loss and what might have been lingers. Their presence never really leaves – there are moments when they arrive silently to pull me back from some brink or other. My last walk through the valley of the shadow of death with David was transformative. I negotiated with Death but I was changed by each loss. Survivor’s guilt plagued me with a sense of inadequacy and unworthiness for being the one who made it. Asking ‘Why?’ brought no answers or comfort.

I still wonder sometimes what it would have been like to have my wise and funny sister Sharon around throughout my life. To lift me up and call my bullshit and teach me things my mother could not about the world. For my protective older brother Mark and I to share drives in our eccentric cars. To go riding on the back of Ian’s motorcycle along mountain roads. I get a whiff sometimes of David putting an album on the turntable as if he’s in the room, lighting a joint to manage his nausea. What would singing duets with Timothy have been like over the years?

So when I heard recently that a now ‘good’ man I knew years ago had died, I stopped to ponder the experience of people around me dying in their elder years. We recall ripe lives filled with stories, families and legacies. Their Facebook pages are filled with condolences and of times shared, children’s names, holidays and causes they lived for.

My time with this man people were now calling ‘good’ was cut short. When I lived with Jim during our early careers, he papered over his fears with bravado. His tortured soul sought respite through smoking, alcohol abuse, drug addiction and sexual abuse. Witnessing his father berating his mother at a family Thanksgiving dinner offered insight. As he progressed into addiction - I lost him over time as surely as if he had chosen death. Of course, he blamed me for his drinking. He raged at me for wearing makeup, getting a raise, or anything I achieved that challenged his ego. In his spiral of self-destruction, he strangled any shred of kindness left. I survived by sheer will…asking myself what greater purpose my life might hold. I felt bad about leaving. My last image of his face was him crying out, delirious, bleary-eyed and alcohol poisoned. Preserving my sanity was hardly a choice. But it was a choice I made out of necessity. There was no going back.

Oh, I carried on for years before that moment arrived. I checked out the Big Book from the Atlanta Library written in 1939. I dragged him to counseling and made so many promises - that if only I loved him enough he would regain his sanity. That he would see the path to peace was clear and choose us. But he did not choose sanity and peace. Not then. He had not apparently ‘reached bottom’ as the Big Book explained. A few years later I saw him stumbling and glassy-eyed and looked away. It was too hard to watch his descent into oblivion. Clearly, love could not conquer all.

So after I got news that he died suddenly and I read the glowing tributes, I had an odd sensation. What was this feeling? Relief? I had been told a few years ago by a mutual friend that he had found Jesus. That a good Christian woman had borne his children. That he had given up his addictions and become a missionary of all things. Why was I so devastated that after all these years that he had never once apologized for torturing and abusing me? For spitting in my face and refusing love? Was I just not good enough?

Losing a very good man a few years later, I went into therapy to unravel my sense of loss. I needed to believe that there were other good souls in the world. Men who did not want to control, possess and destroy me. The addicts who crossed my path had made me feel that I deserved less. That I was worth less. That I deserved their abuse for being so unlovable and imperfect. I had been taught to believe that.

My lesson in this lifetime was hard won…a lesson I am still learning. It nearly killed me more than once. After leaving these men and their sorry circumstances, I finally learned to breathe. I began to believe that I deserve happiness as much as anyone. Even after I began to believe in myself the losses continued to mount. Travel helped me grasp and appreciate the moment of just being. I met people who did not know my history. Before I left, I had dreamed of a man who looked so much like Timothy that when we met 9 months later, his words resonated. He said “I know you!” The day after I told him about my dream, he had a cerebral hemorrhage and I never saw him again.

What does loss teach us? You cannot lose something you never had. I never really had the love I thought I had known….and what love I experienced – was for a brief, tantalizing time. I had not known the kind of love that endures and sustains. I had never really observed this in the people around me. What made me think it even existed? Long marriages did not guarantee peace or deep love. I knew that much.

Along the way, I had also learned that confession and forgiveness are concepts that 12-step sobriety programs consider essential to living a life of recovery. I recalled vividly: Step 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. Followed by Step 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

I don’t know if I made Jim’s List. He certainly never made amends.

I do not begrudge Jim’s wife and family and friends their joys of him as a good man who gave them much to honor and celebrate. I saw the goodness in his heart which he withheld from me. They will not know my story. I doubt he mentioned my existence.

I eventually began to understand if you settle for less you get less. I had walked through life feeling pursued by all the wrong people A lesser man wrote songs to me promising that “love will come for you” after I kicked his lying ass out. Every time love beckoned, I felt as if it were being snatched away.

I wondered about all this romantic love nonsense and my need for self-preservation for years before it hit me:

Love thyself and you will know love as pure, ungraspable, fleeting, and all around.

My journey to New Zealand and away from my culture has taught me that my peace is now unshakable. I now walk among the loving who appreciate me as much as I appreciate them.

And most of all, I thank my teachers in all their forms. Even you, Jim Wise.

If you or anyone you know is struggling in a abusive relationship, with harassment or mental health issues please reach out to these New Zealand agencies who can help:

URGENT Police Dial 111

HELPLINE: 0800 611 116

Need to Talk? Call or text 1737

Alcohol & Drug Helpline: 0800 787 797

Anxiety Helpline: 0800 ANXIETY (2694 389)

Lifeline: 0800 543 354 or text 4357

Women’s Refuge: https://womensrefuge.org.nz

Women’s Refuge Free Crisisline: 0800 743 833