Why TF is she blogging?
I fucking hate people who love media that sensationalizes violent crime, and by hate, I mean it’s a pet peeve of mine that is next to inescapable considering that most humans won’t experience a violent crime–at least not the kind that led to me writing this blog. My best friend, one of the most perfect humans in the world, is one of those people who loves murder podcasts, and I don’t hate her for that. I guess I’m jealous that I can’t also be in that group of people who finds someone else’s horrific traumas entertaining and a means to fuel my morbid curiosity. The way that tales of violence are cannibalized by people who have little relation to the victims of that violence is foreign to me despite the fact that I too used to enjoy murder mysteries. So, I won’t be using real names in most of my posts because if you don’t already know the names of the real people in the stories I’m telling, I don’t want you going down the rabbit hole that leads to the last moments of my friend’s life (not the aforementioned best friend).
I’m not sure how to describe the feeling of loneliness I’ve experienced since July 9, 2019. Five days before I was sitting on Friedrich’s porch laughing about how hard it was for three grown adults to start a charcoal grill. Well, to clarify that a bit, it was two grown adults because I hate fire so I sat as far away as I could from that damn grill. I moved to this town a year prior and didn’t have a whole lot of friends here (let’s be honest, I still don’t). I spent the first few hours of Independence Day 2019 at Jake and Taylor’s house who ironically (or is it ironic, Alanis?) lived almost directly behind my ex-boyfriend’s house whom I’d spent the previous Independence Day with. Long story short, when I arrived at their home I pointed out how close they lived to this ex of mine, and it turns out he was a friend of theirs who would be coming over shortly. Another funny tidbit about this story is that this ex used to live with Friedrich because he dated Friedrich’s roommate for quite a while before he ever knew me. Point being, this is a small fucking town, so I never expected to meet a “forever friend” so quickly, and I sure as hell didn’t expect that they would be roommates with my ex’s ex (she is awesome if anyone is wondering).
I met so many people in the first five days of my new job here, but meeting Friedrich was a highlight. I tend to love negative people because my generally depressed brain is comforted by people who don’t expect happiness from me, and Friedrich became my negative person. In reality, neither of us are really that negative, we just don’t like bullshit. We both genuinely care about our students and believe in tough love. We are hopeful for the future but refuse to believe the future is really going to be anything hopeful. To cut to the chase, this man was wearing a purple shirt that read “Feminist Killjoy”–a product of Sara Ahmed’s (my favorite author of all time) blog. He entered the room as he always does, with a grunt, a furrowed brow, and his face twisted in such a way that it’s like you could see the words he was holding back with his lips–a look I would come to love more and more. To tell you the truth, I have no idea what he was telling us about that day, but whatever it was, he was right. I never disagreed with him, which is odd given that I make a living teaching 19-21 year old students how to argue. I can tell you that we bonded over our love of cheeseburgers and McDonald’s breakfast that day, a treat I would buy him eight months later on March 27th–his birthday, the one and only day he took off every year.
Friedrich spent his 35th birthday to help me move across town. We were friends before that day, but this was the day we dove deep into our lives over that McDonald’s breakfast on my couch in my nearly empty apartment. In the months that followed we went on walks and told embarrassingly inappropriate stories about our undergraduate selves, called each other from our office phones to make the other laugh, had random drop-in meetings where we both put ourselves hours behind, co-mentored students, and bonded over the symbiotic nature of our lives. We shared similar familial backgrounds with working class roots, a Christian upbringing in conservative small towns, and a deep appreciation for the cognitive dissonance created by our past and our present. We both agreed by the end of that semester that we made each other’s lives easier. I freed up time for him by working with his students that most people tend to ignore, and he made mine easier by giving me the scoop, letting me vent my over-the-top feelings without judgment, and being a sounding board when my “principle of the matter” mindset took over.
We went on our last walk July 6, 2019 because I canceled our walk on July 7, 2019. For some reason, depression seems to hit me in the summer, which might seem odd to an average person who most often experience Seasonal Affective Disorder in the winter months. He didn’t know it at the time, but depression was settling in that day. When he showed up to my apartment, I tried to convince him we should drive to the grocery store, but he refused. We trekked a mile to the store, and by the end of that walk, the depressive mindset was next to gone. He had been losing weight, eating clean, and exercising, but we decided to reward ourselves with ice cream because there was no other way to watch one of his favorite films, Sordid Lives, a queer movie about Texas for two queer people, only one of which was Texan. I hadn’t laughed so hard or been so proud of my Texan roots in quite a while. He wasn’t convinced that in Texas we really do believe, “The higher the hair, the closer to God,” so I introduced him to the world of bump-its. Friedrich may not have been born in the south, but I was hell-bound on making sure he visited given his fascination with all the hairstyles the fabulous women in my family sported over the last few decades and of course his love of Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette. We discovered our new favorite ice cream flavors that night, Talenti Peanut Butter Vanilla Fudge and Salted Caramel Truffle, and we accidentally swapped spoons without a care in the world–a sure sign, in my mind at least, that we had just become forever friends because sharing dairy is usually gross to me.
He stood on my blue striped rug right by the front door in his purple “Feminist Killjoy” shirt before leaving that night, and we shared this genuine moment about how special the night was for each of us. It was that awkward moment where you’re becoming close, but you’re not sure if the other is ready for the hug and an “I love you” phase of the relationship–a phase that as an adult, I’m learning happens in friendships too. I remember when he left that I felt like I had missed an opportunity, like an overwhelming sense that I should have said more. I brushed it off though because I’m prone to guilt about things that don’t deserve my attention, and I assumed I would have other opportunities. The next morning I was running behind and feeling stressed for a trip to Salem where I was teaching at Oregon State Penitentiary the next day, so I cancelled a walk we had planned the night before. He told me not to worry about it, and we would go for a walk on Tuesday when I was back in town. About 36 hours later, as I drove back home on July 8, 2019, I got a few texts asking if I talked to Friedrich that day because he hadn’t come into work. I tried to assume it was nothing by using the coping mechanisms I’d learned in therapy–come up with six reasons it’s not as bad as you think it is. As I drove home I received a call from Friedrich’s close friend explaining that his truck was missing and there was blood all over his home.
On July 9, 2019 I learned Friedrich had been ax murdered, dismembered, and left in a cooler in the garage in his backyard directly in front of that porch I sat on only five days prior. Two weeks ago I learned that the man who confessed to murdering Friedrich will likely receive 25 years in prison with a maximum of 28 years through a plea deal. In the past ten months I’ve worked through a lot of the trauma, but the last two weeks drug out a lot of the fear, anger, and a myriad of other emotions that just can’t be put into words. The one thing that continues to stand out is just how alone I feel in the world despite having family, friends, and a partner who make themselves available to me in every way possible. This is a grief and trauma that can’t truly be shared, except with those who also experienced it. Yet, the unique combination of previous trauma in my life, Bipolar 2 disorder, not having long term relationships with most people who knew Friedrich, and living alone thousands of miles from home make this a profoundly lonely experience. What’s more is that there aren’t really books about this kind of grief, or overcoming trauma, which makes processing it all the more difficult for someone whose academic career is founded upon research about her own trauma. Research is how I cope, but how does one research the trauma of an ax murder, something that is such an anomaly? Absent neurological, biological, and other data driven science, there isn’t much experiential or qualitative research about family and friends of ax murder victims. I considered writing my dissertation about this, but I didn’t want to be told how to tweak my writing to fit into an academic box that could be published and owned by some greedy company who puts up a paywall. I hope there is no one out there feeling this sense of loneliness, but if they do, I hope whatever I end up writing here makes them feel like there is commonality in the human experience. I also hope this helps family and friends of people experiencing this type of trauma better understand what coping might look like, even if those family and friends are my own trying to better understand what coping looks like for me.