Widow's Voice

It is just a spider.

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Yesterday, March 10th, Boris should have turned 31. But, as we all know, our people are forever frozen in time. In his case, he’s forever 27. I miss him so much every day, but on his birthday I always feel his absence a little more. For his birthday, wanted to share a memory and what I recently came to learn from that story.
One time I was driving and Boris was in the passenger seat. We were on Cobb Parkway just on the edge of Atlanta, which is a pretty busy area. As I stopped at a red light, I noticed a spider coming down from the ceiling of my car and it was dangerously close to my right arm. I began to panic. The light turned green at some point and I started driving ahead while panicking. I think I screamed. All rational thinking left my body. I put my hand on my door handle as if to open it (reminder: I was DRIVING). Boris firmly touched my arm and exclaimed: STOP! He said something else about how it was “just a spider” and snapped me back to reality. Then he rescued it—he probably put it outside the window. We laughed about it much later, but at that moment he was stunned that I really considered abandoning him on a busy road with the car in drive. Somehow my brain told me that the safest thing to do in that situation was to get out of the car because clearly, this spider was more dangerous than that. And the thing is—I would never ever think of doing that. I mean, that is insane! It was just a spider. But I panicked. I couldn’t think clearly. I was caught up in the fear. Tunnel vision. And Boris brought me back to Earth. It was just a spider.
And the thing is, Boris wasn’t always grounded. He was anxious, impulsive, and frankly made bad decisions all the time. But, in a different way than me. He often reminded me that things were gonna be ok if I just took a deep breath and, for lack of a better word, relaxed. It was just a spider. It wasn’t the end of the world. It wasn’t going to kill me (I mean probably not, right?). I was gonna be ok. The wisdom I recently gained from this memory is that I do tend to get flooded when something isn’t right or something unexpected happens, but once I take a deep breath and consider the issue in the bigger picture and realize “it is just a spider”, I am ok.
Since Boris died I have planned a day of service or some sort of fundraiser in his memory for his birthday. This year I never got a response from the animal rescue that I’d worked with in the past and then it became too late to use a different rescue because they were not available for us to volunteer on the weekend I’d planned. This really stressed me out! I felt like people were counting on me and I wanted things to be easy and fun and, well, perfect. After texting a few friends, I quickly was snapped back to Earth yet again–one friend told me Boris would not want me to be stressed about this. When I read her text, tears filled my eyes. She was right. It is just a spider! I just needed to take a deep breath and know that things were going to be ok even if it wasn’t perfect. Some things aren’t worth the panic and the stress. Some things can wait an extra day or maybe the terrible thing isn’t really that terrible. It’s just a spider.

About Victoria Helmly

My love story began in 2005 and though my love is no longer physically here with me, our story has not ended. I met Boris when we were 14, but it was not until our junior and senior year of high school that we became more than friends (he was my first kiss!). We went to the same college and although our relationship was a bit rocky through our early 20s, we made it through. He was my person. Our relationship grew stronger as we matured and learned about one another more as adults. I was certain that he was my forever. We talked about the future a lot and we knew we would get married, but we did not want to rush—he was still finishing graduate school and I was just starting my first full-time job. We did not realize how little time we had left together.

In the summer of 2017, Boris was hospitalized three times for active suicidal ideation. This was a heartbreaking, exhausting, and life-changing experience. After 10 months of therapy, medication, and support groups, Boris died by suicide on April 7, 2018. My life now has two parts: the one before April 7, 2018 and the one after. My very best friend, my person was now gone.

If you were to ask how I am doing now, 2.5 years later, I would say I am okay. I am living. My world continues to spin, and I continue to move forward. However, I still carry deep sorrow and loneliness. I have struggled with PTSD, anxiety, and depression. Sometimes I still cannot believe that he is actually gone. I still feel him with me, and I know that I will never stop loving and missing him.

I am currently in school for my Ph.D. and live just outside of Atlanta with our cat, Kitty Cat (Boris is responsible for the creative name). I work as a graduate research assistant currently, but I worked for three years with our State Unit on Aging prior to going back to school. I love movies, my friends and family, long walks, and traveling.