Rediscovery

This week, I put on the Apple Watch I purchased from my sister in September. I’ve probably worn it a total of ten times since I brought it home with me from Austin. I was optimistic early in the trip, thinking the week together would set me on a better path of healing and growth. I thought the reason I was having such a hard time was because my sister and I were grieving this separately, one time zone and hundreds of miles between us. Maybe once I returned home, I could get back into my exercise routine! I could start running again! Things could get better, and the Apple Watch would be the perfect tool to help make that happen.

I was wrong – turns out I was having a hard time because my brother died, and I was beginning to sink into the deepest depression of my life thus far. Shockingly, the Apple Watch sat untouched in a drawer for almost nine months. Until this week, when I pulled it out of the drawer, charged it up, and put it on my wrist.

I’ll be honest, I am not as in tune with technology as many other people, especially those in my generation. I’m well-versed, sure, but I am not the type of person who explores every feature of a gadget as soon as they receive it. It’s actually pretty delightful to discover “new” features of something you’ve owned for years – if a little embarrassing, also. Anyways, I started tinkering with the face of the watch, curious to see the different ways the date and time could be displayed. I discovered a setting that plays a slideshow of all the photos saved to your iCloud account (presumably, that means all my photos but I’m going to be very honest – I do not understand iCloud). Every time I check the time, or go to check a message or an app notification, a different photo appears on the screen.

Hilarious photos pop up, like the screenshot of a Facebook post I have saved on my phone specifically for the times when my best friends and I get together and we want to tell a certain story about our hometown. A photo of my COVID-19 vaccine card, the password to my wifi from the first day I set up internet in Pittsburgh, one thousand photos of the cats – any and all available the second I turn my wrist!

Other photos pop up, too: pictures of me with my family, with my boyfriend, with my friends. Screenshots of the last texts we have from Connall. Every photo I could find of him in the months following his death.

Those photos are hard to see in a random moment, sure. But what surprised me the most this week was not how difficult it was to see my brother’s face smiling up at me – I can see his face whenever I close my eyes. That pain is starting to lessen, day by day. What surprised me the most was how painful it is to see photos from a beach trip I took in September 2021, about five months after I moved to Pittsburgh.

It was a very busy week. My best friends, Kayla and Darlene, and Kayla’s family headed to a quiet area in the Outer Banks. I joined them a day or so later, flying to Virginia Beach and then renting a car to drive the rest of the way down. I was to be in a wedding in Northern Virginia at the end of the week, and would drive myself up to the venue and then fly back to Pittsburgh. A whirlwind, definitely.

Kayla and her family had stayed in the same place for their beach vacation for years. They hadn’t returned since her grandmother’s death, a period away that was made even longer with the global pandemic. Kayla’s husband had never been on a beach trip with her family, so it was a first for the best friends and the husband. It was a special trip, the first of what we hope will be yearly trips together – the three of us, I think perhaps an unlikely group on paper but a trio with a steadfast friendship that continues to carry me through the hardest moments of my life.

While we were there, the three of us organized a photo shoot. We have so few photos together from our early twenties, a consequence of rarely seeing each other in person. It was a blast, all of us in matching denim and black t-shirts, gallivanting around the beach while we forced Kayla’s husband to be our photographer, A truly good sport in every sense of the word, he captured us in our element. Pure joy on our faces, happiness in our eyes as we ran around together. I remember sitting on the beach as dusk turned to night, just the four of us. Kayla’s parents had long ago gone to bed leaving us to catch up about my new life in Pittsburgh. Kayla and Darlene have been listening to me talk about Pittsburgh since I was 11, so they were heavily invested in how my newest adventure was going.

I remember saying to them, “This is the happiest I’ve ever been.”

Seeing those photos pop up on my wrist (we took SO many) breaks my heart. I am the unhappiest I’ve ever been. I feel trapped in my mind, as if I have no control over my emotions, my body, my spirit. I am sinking, slowly, slowly, and each time I feel I’m close to reaching the surface, darkness pulls me back again. People tell me it’s good, to know I have the ability to be that happy, to know it’s possible.

It’s torturous. I have no idea who I am, and everyone says I’ll never be the same as before. I don’t like the version of me that exists now, so broken and bent I have to deconstruct every feeling, every emotion, every conversation, just so I can maintain the tenuous balance inside me. The girl in those photos doesn’t exist anymore. I can’t relate to the feelings she expressed, the hope she felt, the pride she had in her decisions and her strength. I am a fragile thing, desperate to feel strong, drowning in weakness, anxiety, and pain.

On the anniversary of Connall’s death, I wrote an open letter to him expressing my worry that he wouldn’t be proud of how I’ve handled losing him. Many people said kind words, many people who have not seen me in years or who have never met the version of me that exists now. My oldest cousin’s wife sent me a message that felt most true to my experience. She said, “You’re still here, and I’m proud of you for that.”

I’m still here. That’s going to have to be enough for today.