Estranged // Napatsi Folger

Napatsi Folger writes on the strangeness and complexities of death, mourning and forgiveness as part of our guest edited month examining the theme "Life is Stranger Than Fiction."

Death and breakups are common writing topics because they’re rich and universal situations that readers can identify with in a significant way. The strangest emotional territory that I’ve been ruminating on in my thirties is the loss of platonic love and friendship. What happens when we break up with friends, or when estranged friends pass away? How do we deal with nostalgia when it comes to those friends who we no longer call friends? How do we reconcile the bitterness we hold for those who wronged us before they died?

This week, the one-year anniversary of an old friend’s suicide passed. That was a strange sentence to try to wrap my head around. The language around anniversaries is usually celebratory, but how do you talk about the anniversary of a death, the loss of something or someone you don’t have good feelings about? Losing people is strange terrain to wade through. The suicide occurred seven months after the painful dissolution of my friendship with him. I had struggled for months with my hate for him, my sadness for the loss of our love. He had been like a brother to me, until he punched me in the face (something so shocking I forgave him for it at the time, not knowing what else to do) and then hurt the people I loved in unfathomable ways.

The catalyst that actually lead to our downfall was related to my best friend. He was in a personal downward spiral and dragging her down into it with him. She was my best friend for most of my adult life; I was like her sister, and she was my family. We fell out of friendship and it was one of the most difficult breakups I’ve ever had. I still talk about her fondly, and when I’m with people who don’t know our situation, I always feel strange saying “my best friend.” Do I say “my former best friend,” “my old best friend,” “my ex-best friend”? What kind of language do you use for a person you used to know without inviting questions about your private life?

The strangest thing about the situation was that I had already mourned the loss of him by the time he took his own life. I was not at the point of forgiveness when he died, but I had reached the point of indifference. It didn’t hurt as much to see him in town anymore; I didn’t feel the anger that used to bubble up inside me when I saw his smug face at the post office. I had suffered enough, and it was time to stop caring about someone who shouldn’t affect me anymore. That’s when he killed himself. Almost exactly when I was ready to let go, he got his hooks right back in. He came crashing down, not on me, but on all the people that I loved. I held my dear friends as they wept for the loss of their dear friend, listened to my other friends fueled with anger at his lingering power to hurt them. I floated, confused in a vacuous stupor of other people’s suffering.

I don’t expect people to “take my side” and hold grudges that aren’t their own. I don’t expect people to speak ill of the dead, especially those who suffered severe mental illness in life. That’s the strange thing about death, I think. For some people death begets forgiveness. For others, like me, it has not—it caused more bitterness. I’m not mad at anyone for missing him, and I’m not mad at my former best friend anymore for her choices. I’m just sad. Sad that they’re all sad. Sad that his death meant nothing but more pain and confusion for everyone, not just me. All of our friends are hurt and I hate that he did that to them. That every year in April his death will continue to hurt people I love.

Will it get better? Like a burn, whose sting ebbs with time, but whose scar grows white and faint on your skin when the weather is cold, always present under the surface? Or is it more like a scar that’s deep and numb to the touch? Perhaps it’s different for everyone, every scar a snowflake of unique emotion, settling in silence all around us.

Napatsi Folger is a freelance short fiction and non-fiction writer from Iqaluit, Nunavut. She is currently in her first year of study in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia and a Contributing Editor for Inuit Art Quarterly Magazine. Napatsi studied history and English at the University of Toronto, and worked in policy for the Government of Nunavut for 12 years. She has written both fiction and non-fiction for publications such as Taddle Creek Magazine, Word Hoard, The Puritan Magazine, The Walrus, Matrix Magazine, the Town Crier and published her first Young Adult novel, Joy of Apex, in 2012 with Inhabit Media.