{"id":1136,"date":"2008-09-16T23:52:45","date_gmt":"2008-09-17T07:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.godammit.com\/?p=1136"},"modified":"2008-09-16T23:52:45","modified_gmt":"2008-09-17T07:52:45","slug":"pausing-to-cry-and-reflect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/pausing-to-cry-and-reflect\/","title":{"rendered":"Pausing to cry and reflect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/mandy.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-1137\" title=\"mandy\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.godammit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/09\/mandy.jpg?resize=170%2C255\" alt=\"\" width=\"170\" height=\"255\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is Mandy. Today I learned that she died from an overdose. I don&#8217;t know what her drug of choice was. I think she took anything she could get her hands on. I met her at the rehab place where I went every week to visit a loved one.<\/p>\n<p>She was a very wounded girl who I wanted to save, but you can&#8217;t save people. That&#8217;s supposed to be obvious.<\/p>\n<p>She was around 23, anorexic, miserable, desperate and defiant. She manipulated everyone around her. Even me. I didn&#8217;t really mind it, though. I wanted to help. I thought she just needed love and support. Everyone at the rehab place expected her to end up dead, such was her commitment to hurting herself.<\/p>\n<p>One day after she left L.A., I erased her text messages, thinking they took too much room in my phone. I kept one though, and I don&#8217;t know why. It says: &#8220;Thanks, I had fun today.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Poor little Mandy. Underneath the tattoos and bravado, she was an innocent child who someone must have damaged long ago.<\/p>\n<p>She used to put her head down to show me her blond roots, which she hated. I always responded by showing her my own roots, the gray ones. It was like an alien greeting and it made us laugh.<\/p>\n<p>Other people are reeling from losses today, and my heart aches for them, but it aches most for Mandy.<\/p>\n<p>Send her a prayer to the god of your understanding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is Mandy. Today I learned that she died from an overdose. I don&#8217;t know what her drug of choice was. I think she took anything she could get her hands on. I met her at the rehab place where &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/godammit.com\/pausing-to-cry-and-reflect\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[1106],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7t44M-ik","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/godammit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}