Too Much Life Packed into One Year

Visions of me saging the entirity 2023, and let's be honest part of 2022, run through my head constantly validating not only the terribleness of this year but the fact that I am also a hippie and saging is the best thing I could come up with. In January I confidently walked up to the Company Director, Miss Alex, at Riley's dance studio and said, after having a rough final half of 2022, "I think we are all good for the year, we have had every illness and all the bad luck, 2023 has to be a better year for us." Little did I know I just set that bar remarkably high for what 2023 bring.

The year started out great with a visit from my mom in January where we got to celebrate mine and Cooper's Birthday and mom got to see Riley dance in person at a dress rehersal. The visit was incredible as I had not seen my mom since before covid lockdown, not only beacuse of the pandemic but also because during that time my mom's breast cancer came back and she was also diagnosed with Advanced Pulminary Fibrosis. Having younger kids naturally meant that we were sick quite often and we simply couldn't bring that to her. We spent several days in downtown McKinney and so many nights watching movies just hanging on the sofa and sharing laughs and lots of snacks. It was what my soul needed to prep for the rest of 2023.

Shortly after my mom left from her January trip down here, my sister passed away.

My sister, Danielle, had a complicated life and that lead to what was an incredibly complicated death. We tend to think of death as something along the lines of they had a heart attack and passed away quickly or maybe in a worst case scenrio that it was a several month/ year battle with cancer to which the death is remarkably sad but is often followed with stories of how heroic that person was in their battle and how the troops had rallied around them. I realize that this is not always the case in death but I think it's the go to thought when we hear that someone passed away.

Danielle's death was none of that, her death was a long drawn out struggle, the kind of literal gasping for air struggle that lasted not just years but decades. I literally watched my sister die over the course of decades, sometimes from a distance that kept my family safe but still I watched. We only lived a mile and a hlaf away from eachother so I was bound to see her from time to time.

Everyone in the family and so many friends tried to help her, I had always thought that if enough people tried to help her: her kids, her husband, my parents; that she would find a way to realize she needed that help. I kept saying after she passed that it was all so complicated because I felt like if I spoke the truth it would be dishonorable to her memory but after listening to Matthew Perry's book "Friends, lovers and the Big Terrible Thing" I realize that every untimely death, every addiction story has a background story. She was not her addiction, her addiction was her.

Danielle became addicted to opiods starting in high school, it was a very small dose that turned into more and more and more as she got immune to the small dose effect on her body. She had several surgeries that ended in pain meds and lost more than one job due to the opiod problem. She was an avid smoker who had advanced pulminary fibrosis, like my mom, and was on oxygen 24/7. She and I also did not have a relationship for several years after an interaction where she needed a ride, would not tell me where we were going and ended up at a pain clinic where I had to beg the doctors and nurses in the hallway not to give her anything. At the time it was just too much, I had a baby and toddler and a husband that traveled and it felt like I was just keeping my head above water to keep my family alive that I could not handle the imminant risk of me being the cause of her death because I had one, taken here unknowingly to a pain clinic and two, because maybe I didnt get to the right nurse or doctor or even worse, maybe me saying she was an addict just lit their eyes up like they hit the jackpot with a patient like her. I simply could not handle all of it, a thought that I still struggle with to this day.

In May of 2022 we started speaking again, which I believe we both secretely wanted, after we attended the high school graduation of her twins. It started very distant as it was not safe for either of us to jump in but it was starting to open up and that was important. Maybe it's the year's of having my own kids or the years of recognizing and handling the trauma that I had growing up but there was something about her this time that made me love her and hate her so much. I recognize that she also had trauma, more trauma than anyone else knew and that to put it simply, she just couldn't find ways to cope. This was her coping as she was afraid to talk to anyone about the whole truth of her life. We were brought up to fit an image, the Netschi kids, all good looking, going to great schools and great athletes who drove really nice cars and had Rolexes by the age of 14 and ended up going to great universities. Though the ficade of this was what people recognized most, they never knew what lied beneath.

Danielle had struggled with self worth after my great aunt made her feel more than less than on more than one occassion at a very young age. Her selfworth completely diminished by the age of 9. She spent most of her life trying to find any sort of self worth, even after going to SMU on a full golf scholarship and marrying in her 20s and having two very cute kids. There was simply nothing she could turn to but pills, smoking and not taking care of herself. I tried to love her at a distance because she was so hurt but I also hated her because the addiction became far too big for anyone to try to fix. This was bigger than anyone and anything.

On the morning of February 19th we were in Fort Worth as Riley had a competition at Will Rogers Auditorium the day before, my father called me and I let it ring because i was exhausted. I for some reason felt the urge to get up and called him back and he had told me Danielle had died and in my shock I said "are you sure?". We all knew that Danielle would never make it to 80 but I think we were all pulling for her to make it to atleast 50... she was just 43 when she passed. She had spent the past several years in and out of the hospital with several time where she was supposed to die and pulled through. We joked that she would outlive all of us because she kept skipping death. She was the living version of the energizer bunny... until she wasn't. Her death broke me. She died alone and we were told that she wasnt in any pain but we still hate that she died alone.

Her last act in life was carried out by going out to the garage to smoke a cigarette, she took off her oxygen because she was trying to be safe about her smoking (if that's even a thing) and her oxygen dropped and she simply couldn't recover. I remember most that at the funeral home the day after she died, when I got to see her before she was creamated that her freshly manicured hands still smelled like cigarette smoke, to be honest i was livid! In pure moments of hate I asked her in my mind if that cigarette was worth it.... but we all knew the reality, that even if her death certificate listed the primary cause of death as accidental asphyxiation that she really did die in the midst of an overdose. She simply did not have the where with all to put her oxygen back on... I HATED her for that. Why couldn't she choose life? Why couldn't she stop? How did she not know that this was hurting her? That is something we will never know and in the words of my dad that make the most sense about her life, "death was the only thing that could have cured her"

I struggled then and I struggle now.

I have always been the person that tries to fix situations, hates seeing people hurt, tries to wear all of the rose colored glasses and wants life to be perfect for everyone. My therapist will tell you that this is a trait that everyone knows about me, but this took that all away. I was and am simply not ok. There wasn't the one thing there that would make this all better. I couldn't bring her back, I couldnt stop her from drinking, smoking, using opiods, not taking care of herself. This was a finished deal and nothing would change that. I wanted to change that.

Come March, I was still in massive episodes of struggle that no one outside of our family saw and in my moments of days I was literally barely hanging on, a mom started a rumor about me that wasn't true. I always felt like people who kick people when they are down were the worst type of people but i didn't think those people actually existed but they sadly do. I was not even healed from Danielle's death and all of a sudden I had people mad at me for something that i didn't do. The people pleaser in me added to my struggle. I began crying, like Kim Kardashian ugly cry crying, every single day, multiple times of day. Things got remarkably low for me to where I called 988 several times in the months of March and April and beyond. Not necessarily because I was going to end my life but because there were so many times where I was frozen in grief and sadness and I needed someone to just help me on what to do to make it to the next second, next minute, next hour, next day. I needed someone to say breathe, start your car (as many of these calls happened in parking lots), take sip of water, drive to a calm place and write it all out, scream it all out, let yourself finish that cry but keep moving forward. I never let rumors get to me but this one got me hard as it was false, vicious and poorly timed. This person, this rumor on top of my grief was nearly the thing that took me down on more than on occassion. I saw the things start to develope in myself that looked alot like my sister's struggles of not knowing how to cope. I got really scared and paranoid at everything I did in my life. If I drank was I becoming an alchoholic, if I took my migraine medication was I an addict? There simply was no enjoying life at all for me at this point and i was scared.

I struggled with the summer, I broke my foot in a very bad time, I had car problems that were either going to cost us very little or more than we could afford. My stress and grief piled up to where I, yet again, could not function. The hippie that i am had tried to control it with vitamins and teas but in the end, I needed help, the kind of help that didnt come from an organic farm. I called my doctor and asked him to put me on whatever he thought would work for me and I shortly later started Lexapro which has been life changing but still didn't change the stresses that 2023 brought with them. I am still physically and emotionally exhausted from just the first half of the year but I was proud of myself for asking for help and for taking it. I have to say that me getting help right at that time was probably the thing that saved me this year. The second half of 2023 was still an absolute beating but it felt like I could handle life just a little bit more.

In October I got into a pretty gnarly car accident and was left with alot of pain. I have a high pain tolerance and I very rarely will take something for pain, cue me taking tylenol after my mastectomy, but this was major pain and is STILL pain. I really thought that when people were hurt after being rear ended that they were just milking it and I very quickly came to find out that that was not the case. I still have pain, i try my hardest not to let other people see it but the pain is still there and in a fear of becoming what ultimately took Danielle, I refused to take anything stronger than an Aleve for my pain. I had two ER trips after the accident because of the pain and I remember the ER doctor understanding why I wont take the pain medication but also begging me to take atleast three aleve at a time just so i could give my body a chance to heal. I am still in physical therapy several days a week and have made some pretty great friends and relationships up at my PT including with a stray cat my kids have named Cameron that shows up for snuggles at the right time every single time I am there. We all joke that he is the therapy cat that the PT clinic never knew they needed.

Though things were tough it felt like things were maybe turning around and life would make amends for what the rest of this year brought. While mentally, that is mostly the case we have rounded out the year with a disease in Riley's heel that may make dance a little bit trickier for the next few years and several cases of flu, RSV, pnemonia, ear infections and now possible strep. I am not going to lie, all of that is incredibly exhausting but they are all managable or atleast I try to tell myself that several times a day just by repaeting, "this too shall pass". I have an amzing husband who has walked me through every single obsticale of 2023 and made sure the house and family were functioning when i simply could not make that happen.

A few months ago I was having my weekly appointment with my therapist, Paul, who is more like a mix of best friend, brother, dad and counselor to me, especially this year. We were talking about how I felt like after everything that 2023 brought, namely my sister's death, that I felt like I was stuck. I couldn't live a happy life... almost like it was disrespectful to live a happy life because Danielle didn't get to. Paul gave me a quote that is now attached to the top of my screen in my home office that says "live the life she didn't (get to)". That one quote, that one phrase has turned around my life going into 2024.

I am not my sister's life, I am not what 2023 brought me. I am me and I need to live my life in the happiest and best way possible. I have made it a point to make sure that I hang out with the people that nourish my soul, I am making plans for our family to experience more life in 2024 and for me to be a part of it too, I am proud of who I am and where I have come with all of the help I have been willing to accept from those whom I love most. Despite what I had thought about Danielle's life, there are people out there to help you, to make you feel whole with simple acts of kindness. There are ways to celebrate your unique soul and the earth just by noticing and breathing and not being afraid to live. So going into 2024, this is my moment to live without fear and experience life the way it should be. I think that is something we all deserve and something Danielle would be happy to see.