In the past, I have avoided posts about my personal life, but my heart is demanding relief. My partner, my best friend, and the physical embodiment of my love passed away on Februay 7th at the age of 28. His name was Jake and over the past 5 years (nearly a quarter of my life) we spent almost every moment together. Eventually it seemed like we were merely a single soul in a constant state of duality. We came to know ourselves through the ways in which we balanced each other out. Then, at what seemed like the height of our happiness, he began to suffer from digestive issues which only worsened with time. The tragedy was that he had no health insurance and in this country, general healthcare is a privilege that isn't awarded to the less fortunate. Apparently, you have to have a certain income level to be worthy of life? Anyway, we had to wait for his condition to become an "emergency" before seeking treatment via the ER.
See, I created this blog as a form of therapy. If you have ever cared for a loved one who is suffering through illness then you understand the painful erosion of both of your spirits as the days turn to months. This blog allowed me to explore hopeful ideas so that I could then share that hope with Jake. Sometimes when life is drenched in chaos, the only thing that seems real is hope.
I had just completed my degree in August of 2012 when he began to fall into a deep depression. I had to dedicate almost all of my time to being at home and by the time we went to the ER he had lost nearly 30 pounds.
Skipping ahead, antibiotics seemed to dampen his stomach problems, but he developed a cough shortly after he had gotten home. At first, it seemed like a cold, but by the end of January the cough had become an "emergency." His breathing was shallow and he would get short of breath from walking. His health was greatly weakened from the year of suffering he had endured, and he had contracted an antibiotic-resistant pneumonia that is apparently specific to hospital environments. He passed away after 6 days in the hospital.
I stayed by his side the whole time, trying my hardest to keep him smiling and hopeful. Fate, though, is always blind to the efforts of man. He went to sleep believing that he would get better, but he didn't. And with his life, so went my heart. I guess you could say that I had lost my hope, but truthfully, I had lost my everything. I have spent this whole month in a confused state of shock and emotional upheaval. It was obvious to me that the thoughts in my head needed to free themselves.
But Why? Well, when you lose your confidente there is a lot of dialogue that no longer has an outlet. Allowing that dialogue to rot in your mind is dangerous, and the one thing I need more than anything right now is a sense of hope. Since this is the one place where I could find hope for Jake's suffering, here I am searching for my own. So that is where I am now, but I will be posting more about this journey as I go. Maybe someone out there will read this and find their own hope in my story.
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