I Wish I Could Fight Your Monsters
A Hopeless Romantic
I have always been a hopeless romantic. Emphasis on hopeless… and I guess on romantic, too. A popular phrase in my vocabulary is “it would be so romantic if…”. It has been, to an unhealthy degree, a guiding principle in my life. I’ve been working to ensure that the degree to which it guides my life is healthy, but I think I’ll always like a little whimsy and magic now and then—certainly to the point that I won’t accept something that doesn’t feel like there’s at least an ounce or two of that. You need look no further for evidence of this than my relationship with Sinead Frances McDonald.
Sinead and I first met in 2017. If you know me even passively, you probably know how we met, too, because I was and am proud of it: we met in a meme group on Facebook. She lived in Australia, I lived in America. We just shared memes at first. Then the group had weekly selfie threads. I started posting selfies hoping she’d see them, and she always hearted them. I’d later learn she was posting in the thread hoping for the same thing from me before we’d really spoken outside of public comment threads.
I can’t tell you when we took the conversation privately, but I can tell you that I am not and have never been a forward person, so it was she who had to finally message me, in private, and strike up the conversation. Our conversation, for the most part, was really just us sharing memes we didn’t want to put in the group, the name of which I can’t even recall now as it has since dissolved. Over time, real conversations went on, and we started becoming more flirtatious, more forward, until I finally said that I really did like her and enjoyed our conversations, and wanted to know if we could talk about whether this would ever be something more. She wanted it to be something more, too, but the distance was, of course, a problem.
We looked at plane tickets and talked about how the VISA process worked. It had only been a few months of this flurry of romance when we started talking about the practicality of it. But it seemed feasible. It seemed possible. But then she disappeared—completely vanished—and I thought it was over. She wasn’t responding to anything, wasn’t messaging me, she just left. A couple of months passed and she reappeared, apologizing and telling me she’d been struggling, but didn’t want to talk about what she’d been struggling with. We reconciled, but the romance didn’t reignite—not immediately, at least.
For the next two years, we remained friends. We had our own lives to go about, we talked every once in a while. I dated other people—other people including one of the shortest yet most controlling and physically abusive relationships of my life, after which Sinead and I found ourselves talking more regularly. We’d both been having a hard time lately, and we found solace in each other again. It was just a strong friendship at first—we were mostly sharing memes again. But in that two-year period, we’d grown, and I’d gotten a much better job as a Technical Analyst that made our meeting more feasible. Knowing this, we became more open to turning things in a romantic direction, again. And we did. Very quickly.
Going the Distance
By Spring 2019, we had declared ourselves in a long-distance relationship. We were having regular phone and video calls, talking all day. The time zone made things difficult and easy—I worked nights, so our schedules mostly aligned, but my work was also extremely demanding and I hardly slept, so some days were harder than others to find time to speak. But we made it work. During this time, I don’t recall a single moment when we were not kind, affectionate, and loving. Everything was perfect, and come July, I had a round-trip ticket to Australia and an approved visa (the wait for which had been a real nail-biter), we had a countdown going, we were as ready as we could be. Every morning, we’d wake up and say “21 days!”, then “20 days!”, then “19 days!” and on and on until we finally reached August 19th, 2019—the first day of a three-week stint I would be spending on foreign soil, the first time outside of the country.
I touched down and we proceeded to freak out over Messenger about what was happening, where we were going to be able to meet, where the HELL I was because I had NO IDEA and everyone was talking funny. I was completely lost, completely confused, completely anxious, and completely exhausted after a 30+ hour airport-hopping adventure during which I’d been unable to sleep, finding myself only capable of watching the same ten episodes of Bob’s Burgers the airplanes had over and over and over again until my brain threatened to leak out of my ears. Yet, all of the aches, pains, and fatigue from being on the airplane for so long faded when I saw her, finally.
There’s a lot of weight to that finally. Finally after traveling without sleep for more than a day. Finally after speaking romantically and flirtatiously for the last six+ months. Finally after the last two years of knowing each other. Finally after heaven knows how long, I was seeing someone I loved. And before we even said a word to each other, we kissed right there in the airport terminal.
Part of being a hopeless romantic is that I will insist that a first kiss be memorable and romantic. And by insist, I mean that when a woman I’ve just met kisses me on the first date, I immediately lose all romantic interest. Immediately. That’s not romantic. That’s not meaningful. Not to a story chaser like me, anyway. I can recite my meaningful first kisses right here. There are not many of them. The first kiss with Sinead, in that airport terminal, is high among them. It was a culmination of many things, and it did—and continues to—mean a lot to me.
While we were driving home on the wrong side of the road, people kept honking at us, over and over. We could not figure out why for the longest time, and it was stressing us both out. Then we realized that for the last twenty minutes, Sinead had been driving with her headlights off in the dark of roughly 3 or 4 AM. This, I’d later discover, was hugely ironic as Sinead’s actual habit was to turn on every light she ever saw and leave it that way, forever. Her headlights that night may be the only light in existence she didn’t turn on as soon as she had the opportunity to do so.
We made it home, we went to bed, and I—despite being completely and totally exhausted, was wide awake while she snoozed away contentedly. I just stared at the ceiling, a tempest of feelings roaring through me. I had made it. We were there. We were together. Things were okay. Things were exciting. I was in a new place, with a new person. We had plans we’d talked about. She had arranged to ensure that our three weeks together were jam-packed and magical, and that I met as many of the important people as possible.
I had my own plans—when we went to an arboretum, I was going to propose, assuming all went well between my arrival and that point. I’d had a ring custom-made, and I’d been checking to make sure I still had it at least once every ten minutes, constantly. It was never off my person, except to shower. And before and after showering, I check to make sure it still existed—you know, in case it had fallen through a rift in time and space or something. Sinead knew I was likely going to propose on this trip—it wasn’t just romantic, it was logical and practical. Being long-distance was a challenge that could only be overcome through legal marriage, so our relationship was going to be running on rails if it went well. Thus far, it was going well.
Australian Adventures
This is not the point of the post, but I do want you to understand the magical whirlwind Sinead and I’s first weeks were together. We did everything that was feasible in that three-week period. We ate at numerous restaurants, we went to an animal sanctuary, we traveled to various place sin Victoria, Australia—we sought magic in every possible location. We had her birthday dinner, we saw her cottage way out in the country, we pet echidnas, we ate everywhere we could, we met my old friend who had come to the US on an exchange program when I was in high school, we visited museums… we did it all. And still, the most magical moments were the simple ones—waking up, going to bed, grocery shopping, making food.
Every single moment with her in Australia was absolutely, unequivocally magical. She seemed even brighter, lovelier, funnier, and more assured in person than she had during our long-distance communication over the prior years. It was all perfect. And so, at the Alowyn Gardens in Yarra Valley during Australia’s winter (my prior plan to propose at an arboretum had fallen through), I got down on one knee and proposed, and she immediately said yes. The Alowyn Gardens were pretty then, but they’re even prettier when they’re in season. I’d love to go back and see them then.
Unfortunately, the time came for me to go home shortly thereafter. It was—at the time—the most painful goodbye I had ever said to anyone, ever. How could the whirlwind just end? It didn’t die down, it didn’t ease out—we had grand adventures right up until the morning she and her mother drove me to the airport, while we sat in the backseat and tightly clutched each other’s hands. Amidst our grief, we started planning our next adventure, even while I was still in the process of navigating layovers and wandering the Auckland airport looking for food—I found a vegan burrito at a Mexican restaurant called… “Mexico”.
Before we knew it, we had another countdown: she was going to come see me in November, and would stay for three months, the absolute maximum she could stay on the visitor’s visa she was granted. This trip, though, would not be the same magical whirlwind we had enjoyed in Australia.
American Adventures
This is where I struggle, as I write this. I struggle because there are so many feelings and desires at war in me. There are aspects of Sinead and I’s relationship—and her passing—that I think I will be wrestling with for a very long time. Right now, I am having a hard time balance the hopeless romantic in me that deeply wants to romanticize Sinead and I’s relationship, and the honest, therapy-graced side of me that knows it’s important to be honest in my reflection. So, I’m going to let them both meet, and will give you an honest view of how my love for her and passion for the romantic proved both a blessing and a curse when Sinead and I’s relationship hit rocky, uncharted waters.
Sinead arrived in November, and I picked her up from the airport. We kissed, again, at an airport terminal, and I drove her back to my house. We held each other, we cried, and it really seemed like I was about to have three months of incredible, whirlwind romance. We were going to be snowed in, we were going to spend the holidays together, we were going to do it all. I had places I wanted to travel with her, things I wanted her to see in the city. I had family and friends for her to meet. She was going to be part of my ongoing tabletop campaign. I was so, so excited.
And we did have adventures, but we also had hardships between those adventures. Sinead couldn’t mask her struggles as easily around me while we were living together in my own home, for a long period of time, often snowed-in and unable to travel. I’d also quit my job to have those three months just with her, so she rarely, if ever, had a moment where we were apart, even when she tried to manufacture them.
I do not want to paint this woman I loved—I love—in a poor, unfavorable light. But I do want to paint her in an honest one. Sinead had monsters; she had a lot of monsters, and she was insistent on fighting them alone, quietly, and in isolation. While they took many forms, the inner turmoil she faced manifested in two primary ways: an eating disorder and substance abuse.
The former I knew she’d had, but had been put under the impression she had a handle on it before I proposed. The latter, I had no idea was a problem at all, and came as a complete surprise when I discovered that she had found a bottle of my vodka, drank it all, and hidden it behind the washer. As soon as I realized that, I knew there was a serious problem. Immediately, I went and dumped out any alcohol that was cheap, while the other alcohol I brought to my parents. In December, Sinead and I agreed we wouldn’t drink again—I’d previously had my own struggles with alcohol, and seeing her drink so much when I knew her body could hardly handle any at all was raising many alarm bells for her safety and well-being. I wanted—needed—her to be okay. And if that meant not drinking in solidarity with the woman I loved, so be it.
I haven’t had a drink since. Even though she’s gone, now, I have no intention of going back to drinking. I can’t, and I won’t.
The eating disorder was another problem. One she adamantly insisted wasn’t one, all the while it controlled everything she did while she lived with me here in America. That proved tougher to get a handle on than the drinking—she wouldn’t even admit it was happening, even while I was confronting her directly and begging her to talk about it with me, she was insistent that I was insane and that none of what I knew was happening was happening. She would turn any such conversation on its head, insisting I must not love her, that my family hated her, that my friends hated her, that all of this was just some sort of way to villainize her so we could break up. She threatened to break up with me numerous times during such conversations.
But in January, I made headway. She was letting me keep a closer eye on her without feeling judgment. She was eating and keeping the food down, even when it was hard. But this was hardly two weeks of time together. They were a good two weeks—as good as the three weeks we’d had in Australia. With her feeling more physically-abled and okay, we took one last trip together out to a tree house in Excelsior Springs. I thought it looked romantic—it was warmed by a wood furnace, in the middle of nowhere, had no electricity or internet. We could just be with each other. I wish I’d known that this last trip together really was our last trip together.
The Treehouse
The treehouse had wooden steps leading up to it, which were covered in ice. The owners of the treehouse helped us haul our bag up, thankfully, and provided us with lots of blankets and lots of firewood. Sinead and I then very carefully made our way up the slippery steps and got the fire going before we sat down next to it, wrapped in multiple blankets, and huddled together. Then we talked. We talked a lot. We talked all night. It was too cold to sleep. So we just talked.
I couldn’t tell you what we talked about for so long, but I can tell you that at one point, we both needed to go to the bathroom. The bathroom was outside. The bathroom was down the icy stairs. The bathroom was in the dark. So, we grabbed our dying phones, turned on the flashlights, eased into our boots, and slipped and slid our way down the stairs to the forest floor, then—absolutely terrified of whatever could be out there lurking in the shadows waiting to viciously attack us—we wandered until we found the icy bridge, which led to the icy footpath, which led to the little outhouse. She went first while I sat—completely alone and constantly looking every which way out of sheer terror—and waited. This was the sort of thing that you saw in horror movies, and that meant that unless the monster in this horror movie was a toilet monster, I was the one who was going to be killed first.
Somehow, despite the very strong “prologue in a horror movie where the couple in the woods gets murdered and forgotten” vibes, she and I both used the restroom and returned to the tree house unscathed. It was still dark and we were still cold, but we added some more wood to the first, huddled back up, and went back to talking. We didn’t sleep. We just talked. Our time together was coming to a close. We thought temporarily.
I thought temporarily.
The Plague
Sinead went back to Australia. She and I were filled with hope for the future. I would find a time to fly out to see her in the next couple of months. We’d do this a couple more times before getting married, as our immigration attorney had advised ensuring we had as much consistent communication and visitation as possible to prove the legitimacy of our relationship, as much as we both just wanted to be on the same soil without having to handle this back and forth, without having to put up countdowns. I had put in my application for renewed permission to visit Australia. It had been approved. I was looking at flights, but needed a job before I could get a ticket. I got a job with Zoom Video Communications, where I still work.
And then COVID hit, and everything went to hell. Everything slipped through my fingers. Australia canceled my VISA indefinitely—indefinitely, that is, until May of this year, when I randomly got an email that I had been re-approved and could come back to Australia… more than three years later. But we kept watching the news. Every day, I checked Australia’s border policy page, looking for some glimmer of hope. But all I kept finding were more and more depressing stories. People who were married couldn’t even get home to their spouses, let alone an engaged couple. I supported the lockdowns, but Australia’s policy was uncommonly brutal on this front, and it was disheartening for us.
Sinead’s mental and physical health was taking a turn for the worst. I was staying strong. We were communicating over Zoom constantly, now that I worked for the company. Every night, for at least an hour, we’d have a call. I loved her, and I kept loving her with everything in me. But it was becoming less easy over time, because I was noticing the person I love disappear before my eyes.
Monsters
I began to notice Sinead slipping on our calls. For, quite honestly, the majority of them, she was drunk. But she would deny it, even while slurring her words to me. Even while the way she spoke sounded nothing like the woman I loved. Even while I could see her drinking out of a bottle on the video camera before she would quickly hide it behind her back. She couldn’t even be sober for our video calls, and that was really hard to reconcile. It was hard to look at my fiancee and see her, but not hear her. It wasn’t her talking to me. I couldn’t hold an intelligent conversation with her, I couldn’t get her to understand or remember anything I was saying. She was glazed over half the time, and lying the rest of the time.
Every single call was harder than the last. I couldn’t be there to help, I couldn’t be there to hold her accountable. I told her I would leave if it continued like that—I told her I wanted the woman I loved back, that I couldn’t keep talking to a shell of her. I wanted to talk to Sinead, and this wasn’t Sinead. But every time she would course correct, she would immediately return to her monsters. I would get calls from her, indicating she planned to die that night, and it broke my heart every single time to beg her to stay. I was utterly, completely, and totally broken by the end. I shut down. I didn’t feel anything. I wasn’t doing anything. I stopped creating. I was just existing, and I had no hope for a future. I didn’t see myself having a real conversation with Sinead again. When I looked to the future, I just saw more of this heartache.
So, at the advice of caring, loving, concerned friends, I called Sinead one night in 2021 and I told her I couldn’t do it anymore. I told her it hurt too much and I was too tired. I will never, ever forget that call. She cried, I cried. She said “I wanted you on this journey with me”. I told her I wanted to be on that journey too, but I knew I couldn’t be there any longer. I expressed that, if she found herself again—if she became Sinead again—I would love to talk to that person. I missed that person. But I hadn’t spoken to her in over a year. I was engaged to someone I didn’t recognize, and someone who was only causing me pain.
I Wish I Could Fight Your Monsters
I wish, so desperately, I could have fought her monsters. I know that so many people who saw me hurting because of Sinead may have seen her in a deeply negative light. She was, in all honesty, hurting, manipulating, and gaslighting me. But the person who was doing this to me was not the person I had come to love—it was someone I didn’t recognize. It was someone whose mind was clouded by pain, substances, and poor self-image. I still loved her when I left her, and I still love her now, but the person I loved wasn’t there anymore and hadn’t been for so long.
I wish I could have fought the monsters Sinead faced. I wish I could have done something—something more—to help bring her back. I wish anything I had done from afar had helped. It is hard to avoid feelings of guilt when I think about this, especially after seeing her casket rolled away just a few hours ago but her other loved ones, but I know I did everything humanly possible for her, in the circumstances we found ourselves in. I clung, for as long as I could, to every single glimpse of Sinead that I could find. Every meme she sent, every “I love you” she said, every brief moment of lucidity on our video chats—I held on tightly to every single one. I fought to see more of those moments.
Sinead continued to fight her monsters without me, and we remained friends, chatting on and off now and then every once in a while, but it was never the same. I was proud of her for continuing to fight—for not giving up when our relationship ended. I held onto hope, every day, that she would be Sinead again for good. That she would become healthy and happy. Whether she fell in love with someone else or we found our way back together, I just wanted to see her as I’d always seen her.
So she fought, for two more years, until last week she couldn’t fight anymore, and she passed. I wish I could fight her monsters. I wish, before and after her death, I could fight her stupid fucking monsters. I wish I could place blame on something I could force to pay for this.
Sinead was wonderful, and she was loved by many. She faced trials and hardships that most of us are lucky enough to only ever imagine and sympathize with. She fought her monsters for longer than she should have had to, and amidst that fight, sometimes I was lucky enough to see the fantastic, fun, beautiful person leading that fight. She made me laugh, she made me feel loved and wanted, she made life an adventure. I watched that person slip away from me, and it hurt more every day.
I hate her monsters. I hate that she had to fight them. I hate that they took such a wonderful human from so many who loved her, including me.
For Sinead
Sinead,
You wrote me a letter you would never send, after our breakup. You expressed you heart, completely, fully, and honestly. I’ve only just read it, mere seconds ago, after writing the post above. It was hard to read. It was painful to read. But it was important to read, and I wish that this “letter you’d never send” had been one you’d sent. It makes me feel that perhaps I failed to ensure you knew how I felt, after we ended our engagement.
I knew you were pushing me away—that your own attitude of “he’d be better off without me” was causing some of your carelessness. My understanding of this was part of why I left. You were self-destructing more significantly to make me leave. You were hurting yourself in front of me to make me leave. If I left, maybe you’d stop. Maybe you’d be okay. I always clung to that hope, and I never stopped looking for signs that you were really you again. I saw a few, but I saw and heard more signs that you were still struggling against your monsters. That was hard, because I wasn’t there to fight beside you.
When I ended things, and you insisted you wanted me to go find “someone better”, I told you I had no interest in that. And I didn’t. I meant that, especially then. As you said in your letter, I felt like I’d found my person. But I had lost her over a year prior. Additionally, I had so much emotional fatigue that the thought of meeting another person was overwhelming. I didn’t even think I would heal from what I had experienced with you. It was too much.
But I did heal. I got better. I recovered. I found a new lease on life in friends and adventure. Evey now and then, I would think “Why couldn’t Sinead have been okay, so she could be here with us for this?”. It took me the longest time not to feel guilty when I was happy, because I knew that while I was off on a grand, joyful adventure, you were at home, fighting without me. I can’t say the exact moment when I stopped feeling that guilt, but eventually I allowed myself to be okay—I acknowledged it was okay to be okay, even if you weren’t.
What we had was not some awful nightmare from start to finish. There were so many beautiful, positive memories. When I reflect on us—really reflect—it is the positive that comes to mind. I remember the good times. I remember the treehouse, just like you did in your letter. This is why I so desperately wish you had sent your letter. I wish we’d taken a few hours to talk and clear up our feelings—to be deeply and truly honest with each other. Maybe an understanding could have been achieved. Maybe we could have been better friends after it all. Maybe I could have seen you heal.
I’m sorry so much happened to halt your recovery. I’m sorry the systems in place failed you. I’m sorry for the places where I failed you. I’m sorry I can’t follow you into the dark. I hope that, whatever comes after this, you are at peace. You deserve peace.
I wish that I could get one last glimpse of you at peace, and I wish I’d known that the last time I saw you would really be the last time I saw you.
I wish I’d lingered longer.
Taran
