No Stranger Obsession
Grief is a uniquely personal experience. It affects everyone differently, sometimes inspiring some truly odd — almost inexplicable — behaviors.
For me, this “inexplicable behavior” was (and continues to be) a bizarre, but totally undeniable obsession with a stranger.
Madison isn’t what we often term a “perfect stranger.” I think I’d actually met her once or twice — or anyway, I have some vague, hazy memory of doing so. But I paid very little attention to her, and her presence was entirely forgettable. She left no impact on me personally. If we weren’t connected through Facebook, I doubt very seriously that I would even have a face to associate with her name.
Still, despite all of this, I find myself obsessing about Madison every once in a while. I pay more attention to her social media status updates than those of the people I know well (and actually like). I frequently, somewhat shamefully, followed her blog and checked it for updates. I would still, if she kept up with it. I’ve inspected and pored over most of her photographs.
But none of this obsessive behavior has to do with Madison — whether or not she’s a nice person, an interesting person, a likable person doesn’t mean anything to me, and it never will. I obsess over Madison because in my mind, Madison is the key to a puzzle I can’t solve. She’s the missing link.
I doubt Madison and I have much in common; from what I’ve heard, you couldn’t find two people more disparate. But we did share one important person, in somewhat similar ways.
When I met Lee, in the days preceding our eventual romantic entanglement, his narrative regarding Madison differed very much from what I’ve learned since. He told me that they were no longer involved, that he had dated her previously and that it had ended in some kind of comical disaster. He described her as a harmless but irritating stalker, nagging at him endlessly and without encouragement.
I feel confident that their relationship did “end” at some point, but I also feel confident that our respective relationships overlapped at more than one. And I know, without question, that their relationship picked up again after my relationship with Lee ended for the last time. These things are no longer sources of distress for me — I appreciate the situation for what it was (nothing more than a great deal of chaos, and three unstable people mixed up in it together).
But about a year and a half ago, Lee put a gun to his head in a downtown Dallas apartment and pulled the trigger. This, on the other hand, continues to be a great source of distress — he is, after all, the father of my child (an unplanned result of our “entanglement”). These other details, while no longer seeming very important on their own, matter in a different way; they’ve become clues.
Maddening, infuriating, exasperating clues.
When I was with Lee, I thought that I loved him. We made this grand proclamation to one another all the time, along with all kinds of others. If I could see or hear them now, I would certainly be mortified. But we were living in a cloud of intoxication, and neither of us were exactly “emotionally sound.” I no longer believe that I loved him, but I’ve never doubted that I really, truly liked him. There was a lot to like. He was a bit of a wreck, but he was a good guy, and a lot of fun. It’s awful that his life ended in suicide, and I imagine I’ll always feel awful about it.
The reasons for that, I suspect, are myriad. Is it because I continue to wonder whether I was somehow responsible, even in some small way? Does it have to do with the residual, lingering resentment I feel about the way he treated me after he learned that I’d gotten pregnant — or the fact that he never, at any point, showed any interest in meeting his own daughter? Perhaps, at its core, it’s something less selfish — the heart-wrenching tragedy of a good person in a bad situation, feeling he had no recourse or escape; simply a young life, lost too soon. More likely, though, it’s a combination of all of these things — and others I haven’t yet come to recognize.
Lee and I were not close when he died. We hadn’t spoken in any meaningful way in months, and I understand very little about what his life was like or what inspired him to pull that trigger. I suspect, but I don’t know. Understanding the decision he made to end his life matters to me more than it probably should, but I still yearn for closure here with an earnestness I’ve never experienced.
And there’s nowhere to turn for answers — except, of course, Madison.
Though it’s perhaps a bit delusional, I don’t just see Madison as the key to this puzzle; I see her as the keeper of the keys, the one with all the answers. Surely, Madison knows what happened. Madison alone can explain this tragedy. She was there. Yes, she knows — but she’ll never tell me. I’ve held fervently to this childish belief without respite, though I’ve only ever gathered up the courage to try and discuss it with her once. That attempt, impulsive and badly executed, was — not surprisingly — ignored entirely.
As with all things, this obsession has grown increasingly dormant with the passage of time — dormant, but not dead.
And so every once in a while, all these many months later, I see Madison’s name in my news feed, and still I find myself clicking through to her profile. I wonder what she’s been up to, whether or not she’s offered some kind of meaningful clue anywhere I can find. It’s crazy, sure, and it’s not something I’ve ever bothered trying to explain to another person. I’ve grudgingly come to accept that, though I will likely never get the answers I seek (or precisely because I never will), this instance of grief has left me with an obsession too strange to reason with.
