Daniel Duguid

Daniel. Who He Was. Even though Daniel had the slender physique of a grown man, and from the outside looking in you would have thought he was the most nonchalant person ever, Daniel was just a really tall teddy bear. He had a boyish nature about him but at the age of 24, he was stepping into his grown man era. The most captivating thing about him were his big, bright eyes and his wide, goofy smile; that is what had me hooked from the very beginning. Given some of the stories I have heard from others, that is what had them hooked as well. He was more than someone who just had me captivated from the moment I met him. He held so many titles: he was a son, he was a brother, he was a friend but most importantly he was a lover. Even though there were times where he would not show just how much he could love, he had the biggest heart. He was kind, he was loving, and he nurtured to the best of his ability. Don't get it twisted though, although he was a teddy bear, he was a very complex teddy bear. There were times he was extremely difficult to deal with, but it was nothing that those that loved him couldn't handle. Daniel had so many layers to him, layers that not a lot of people saw. I like to think of Daniel as a compilation of his experiences. I didn't meet him until we were 17 but I got to know about his childhood through his family over the years and what a beautiful childhood it was. A childhood he was able to share with two beautiful sisters and three amazing brothers. From the photos his mother shared with me, they were always on some sort of adventure. I like to think this is where he got his creative and imaginative brain from. Daniel was definitely a product of his family. He comes from a family that is extremely complex as well but full of so much love and that is exactly what he was: complex, but full of so much love. I feel blessed to have known him. I feel blessed to have gotten behind the walls he had up and seen him for who he truly was. I am blessed to have gotten to know the real Daniel. Who Daniel Was to Me. To me, Daniel was everything. I met Daniel when I was 17 years old. 17 years old is such a wild age. It's part of the time in life when you think you know everything, but time goes on and you realize that you knew absolutely nothing at all. One thing I did know is that what we had was real. We had gone to the same school since he was in the 9th and I was in the 10th, but you know, by the time I was in the 12th grade, I was only focused on one thing: college. Not boys. The dating and fun could come once I made it to college. I remember the day that I met him clear as day. I was working at my job at the time, Chick-fil-A, during my senior year. Him and his best friend had come in to get something to eat. I took care of them, and I told his friend to give me a second and I would come chill with them on my break. His best friend talked to me my entire break while Daniel just sat there looking at me. I thought it was weird at first but there was something that pulled me to him, his eyes. He had the biggest eyes that just drew you in. His friend and I talked to each other the majority of the time.I thought that Daniel was a nice guy, just awfully quiet. Following our initial "real" encounter, he started talking to me at school throwing little flirtatious hints but me being me, I ignored it. I am a firm believer of saying things with your chest. Well eventually, he asked for my number and politely asked if he could come to my graduation. I'm assuming that was his version of saying it with your chest and I didn't mind it. Of course, I said yes, there was just STILL something that was pulling me to him even though I barely knew him at all. Walking across the stage and seeing him at the very top made me so happy. I was thinking to myself "why am I so happy? I barely know him. Get it together girl and stop being so cheesy around him." After my graduation, we texted for a couple of days and then he officially asked me on our first date. I was so nervous because he was my first real date. Come to find out later, he was nervous as well. I really couldn't tell. On our first date, he was the perfect gentleman. I'm talking about opening doors, walking on the right side of the sidewalk gentleman. Even though we were only 17 and neither one of us had a lot of bad experiences, it was still refreshing because I knew awful stories from other people about their own experiences. High schoolers talk way too much. I remembered thinking to myself (I had a lot of private thoughts to myself), "Finally a guy who was raised to be a gentleman". Our first date was so easy. When we were talking it just felt as if I had known him for longer than what I did. That night, he asked me to be his girlfriend and we shared our first kiss. Weeks went by and I just knew I loved him and eventually we shared that three-word phrase with one another. Daniel was my first love. Eventually I met Daniel's family. I knew within the first interaction that his mom and I were going to get along just fine. She was/is such a good mom. My favorite moments with his family were what I like to call "Saturdays with Sabrina". This consisted of him, his two brothers Kobie and Zach, his little sister Delilah, occasionally his big sister Destaney and his mom Sabrina and I gathering around the table every Saturday morning to eat breakfast. I am a very family-oriented person; coming from a very large and close-knit family myself, moments like these were so special to me. Daniels family is special. It is so blended and so welcoming. Naturally, it is something I became a part of. I became a part of him, and he became a part of me. We made time for our friends and family in our lives, but we did seemingly everything together. His mom and I did much together, still until this day. His mom, his younger sister and I made time for one another. His brother Kobie and I at one point were joined at the hip. Everything became intentional between his family and I. Daniel was my family. Every relationship goes through its ups and downs. After 9 months, we had our first major down. We broke up. Daniel had become my very best friend, so it wasn't easy. He was the first person I talked to in the morning and the last person I talked to before I went to bed, he never failed to make me laugh and aside from all of that, he always told me the truth about myself even when I did not want to hear it. Not to be dramatic but our first break-up knocked the wind out of me, my 18, almost 19-year-old heart was completely broken. In a non-villainizing way, what made the situation 1000x worse is that he did not give me a reason why. He left my mind to wonder the reason. Part of me believes that he was protecting me from the real reason because he simply couldn't tell me that he wasn't ready to be in a committed relationship at such a young age. At my now age of 25, looking back on those 9 straight months of being together, I can't believe we did that honestly. I felt like we were in a marriage as teenagers. That was a lot to put on myself and a lot to put on him as well, especially during a time when we were both trying to learn ourselves. Let's be real, no one completely knows themselves at the age of 17/18. There are still so many years of learning and growing. Our story did not end with that first breakup. Like two young lovebirds, we ended up getting back together a few months later. Except this time, the pull to each other was stronger and I am not going to lie, it felt a little bit more toxic. In my head, I tried to believe that I had let our first breakup go, but I knew that I really didn't. I wanted to be with him, and I know that he wanted to be with me but part of me wanted him to hurt the way I had hurt after our first breakup. So, during our relationship this go round, I wanted to make sure I held all the cards in my hand. I wanted to always make sure the ball was in my court. I did not seek out to hurt him, I just wanted to make sure he never hurt my heart again. I was still very much in love with him, but my walls were not completely down as they were before. He knew this and this is where the rollercoaster for the next 5 years had begun. For the next 5 years, we went through so many breakups and makeups; sometimes he was the one to break up with me, other times I was the one to break up with him. I painted him as some villain that I loved in my head even though he was nowhere near a villain. Just as I was, he was a human trying to figure out life at a very young age. Life, along with ourselves, put our relationship through so much. We went through many breakups and makeups until we didn't in 2020. I still value and hold dear what we had though because we went through so much together, the experiences that we experienced bonded us for life. I remember one of my friends telling "I feel like you are intertwined into this man's DNA" and that's truly how I felt with him; Intertwined. Our souls were connected in a way that I could not explain. Everything that we went through together from experiencing the loss of a loved one in his family to sickness to petty arguments, major arguments, all of it, taught me a lesson…Daniel was more than just my first love, he was my twin flame. I honestly didn't know what a twin flame was until he had died. It just felt so weird calling him my ex. Ex has a such a negative ring to it and one thing I intentionally made sure of in his death was that I was not focusing on any negative. We shared enough positive. I knew he was my first love too, but I feel like that didn't accurately express the layers and depth of our relationship. Twin flames have an overly intensified soul connection, one that is unexplainable. Twin flames relationships can be challenging; however, at the same time they provide some sort of healing. After reading up on what a twin flame was, that is when I knew that he was mine. I could never explain our relationship to others and at a certain point I just got done trying. Parts of our relationship were toxic but there was no denying that the love was there. From the very first day that I met him, there was a gravitational pull to him. There were so many times I felt as if I were looking at myself in a mirror when looking at him. He could calm my nerves, but he was also the very same person that riled them up. He could soothe my doubts and be the same person that amplified him. Being around him, I felt like life made sense but in the same instance, made no sense at all. When him and I were good, we were great; however, when we were bad, it felt like the end of everything. Eventually he and I got to a place where we no longer spoke to one another. It broke my heart everyday that we had gotten to that point. He resented me and I resented him but what made it more painful to let go was that I still loved him, and I knew he still loved me. His mother would ask me "have you talked to Daniel?" My response, "No, I haven't." She would ask him the same thing and his response would be "No. I haven't." But even she knew that we still very much loved one another. I am now a firm believer in even though you might love someone; sometimes, you have to let them go. The Day It Happened. July 11th, 2022 changed my life forever. It had been a little over a year since I had spoken to Daniel. Our last interaction was not a good one. Daniel and I had started to go down two completely different paths. As much as I wanted him to go down a certain path with me, there were other temptations calling his name that were seemingly more appeasing. Although we had not talked for a year, I still cared for and loved him so deeply. I was now comfortable with the thought that he would always be family. I had always wanted the best for him and nothing about that was ever going to change. The only thing that changed is the fact that we couldn't physically be around each other. Our connection was too magnetic and at that point, too toxic & unless both of us had made significant changes, we would have fallen back into our same ole routine that was simply not an adult relationship yet. That day, everything was great until it wasn't. I was now living in Texas, acknowledging my Arkansan roots, but establishing a very great life in Texas. I had gone to work that day and that night was my first day of my second semester in grad school. After class, I remember thinking "okay, this is probably going to be the most challenging thing I have to face right now." That class was hard, but I was wrong though. That was only one of the most challenging things I had yet to face. Around 9 p.m., I got on Facebook, and I saw a picture of him that a mutual friend had posted. The post was in past tense, in my head I was thinking "was"?! What is this girl talking about?! Why is she speaking on him as if he's not here anymore?! What is going on?! Instantly, anxiety came over me. I went to his Facebook page to see if anybody else was saying something. There was one other post from one of his old friends that said, "Please tell me this is not true." At this point, I am panicking because what is happening?! But I am also telling myself that this is social media and misinformation gets spread all the time. I was not going to believe anything until I read it in an article or heard it from his mother. Later that night, his mom called me. My heart sank into my ass. I tried so hard not to panic while answering the phone, maybe she was calling to tell me that there had been some huge misunderstanding. When I answered the phone, there was the longest silence, and I just knew. My heart literally imploded within my body. She didn't have to say a word and I just knew. The silence was deafening. I felt like I was falling into it. All I could manage to get out was "Is it true?" I could hear the tears in her throat as she said, "I'm afraid so, sugar." I felt as if a piece of me had instantly died. I didn't know what to say or what to do. I think that I was too shocked to do anything. That entire night I did not sleep. I could not register what I had just heard. Daniel is dead??? There is no way. My Daniel?!?! This could not be real life. I stayed up all night and watched as the posts were coming in on his page memorializing him. With each post, I felt like I was evaporating into thin air. All the memories we shared came rushing in like a flood and I felt glued to my bed the very next day. I felt as if the universe was playing some sort of sick joke because out of all the evil people in this world, Daniel was taken. Daniel was gunned down and killed. I was so overwhelmed with every emotion the following week after, I could barely think. They say that there are seven stages of grief: shock and denial, pain and guilt, anger and bargaining, depression, the upward turn, and reconstruction and working through. I felt as if I was experiencing the first 5 every day, all day. Grief is in no way, shape, or form, linear. Daniel had a thing for being my first. Daniel was my first major loss. The Days After. I still hadn't wrapped my mind around what really happened. He had a balloon release a week after his death. The disconnect that I felt within myself and with those around me was scary. I felt disconnected from my own family, I felt disconnected from my friends, I felt disconnected from my coworkers and colleagues. Watching his mother, whom I love so dearly as if she were my own, have to grieve for her son that day broke my heart even more. His funeral was even worse. In all honesty, I did not want to go. It was hard but of course, I wanted and needed to honor him. I looked around at his funeral and saw so many lives that he touched. That part made me a little proud but that feeling slowly dwindled away once the service started because we should not have even been sitting on those pews at that church. I sat on the row of pews right behind his immediate family. His brothers sat across from us. I looked around in disbelief that we were actually sitting at a funeral for this man. He was only 24. After the service, which was beautiful, we had a repast at his mom's house. It was great that we were all able to be together, but it just felt as if something was missing. The missing piece was him. I would find myself looking at the door just waiting for him to walk through it. He could have been in a bad mood for all I cared, I just wanted him to walk through the front door. He never did and he never was going to again. It is such a gut wrenching, nauseating feeling to think of how permanent death was. His birthday passed on August 28th. Luckily, I was able to drive back home again and spend it with the family. I think the emotions and feelings that I felt on his birthday were actually worse than his memorial. It's like at the service you are sitting there trying to process everything so it's really a feeling of numbness & oblivion, you don't know what to feel or what you feel but on significant days such as birthdays and holidays, it really starts to sink in that the person is no longer here. Days turned into weeks and now weeks have turned into months and eventually those months are going to turn into years, and the missing and longing has yet to cease. There is never a moment of the day where he does not cross my mind, it was like that before he even died. There is never a day that goes by where I don't cry. I think to myself "will this ever end?" but the honest truth is that it doesn't. As long as you love someone and you've lost that one, you will always grieve for them. An Unconventional Grief. I feel like I am grieving two losses at once. As I previously mentioned, Daniel and I hadn't spoken in a year. I felt like it was for the best, he felt like it was for the best, so it had to be for the best. My heart still loved him. While there is nothing wrong with that, it is sort of a sad feeling to still want something to work with someone but knowing that for a specific time frame in both of your lives, it absolutely wouldn't. I am grieving two losses; the loss of a person that I loved for a very long time who was out here in this world I just had no communication with and now, the loss of someone who I still love who isn't physically here; therefore, I have no choice but to have no communication because he's only here in spirit. It's painful experiencing both of those losses simultaneously. During the time that we were not speaking, I found comfort in knowing that eventually Daniel and I were going to grow up, find ourselves, and come back around to one another. He was family, nevertheless. There was going to be some sort of common ground we would find, and we could return back to that familial love that he and I once shared so deeply. His killer robbed me of that. That thought alone makes me angry, a sort of anger that will consume your whole body if you let it. I refer to my grief as unconventional because technically Daniel was my ex. The response you get when you tell someone your ex died is not a normal response to grief; it is dismissive. Normally when you tell someone that your mom, dad, sibling, cousin or anything of that nature passed away, you can feel the sincerity in their response. I can't tell you how many times I have told someone, when asked if I was okay, and I was met with an "ooohhh, I'm so sorry to hear that." However, based on their tone of voice, you know that there was not an ounce of genuineness in that statement. Its performative sincerity that is met with confusion. So, then I think "well maybe I should start referring to him as my first love", maybe that won't be met with the same type of confusion. It is… and it's very frustrating. To grieve and for no one to truly understand the depths of how you feel is such an isolating feeling. Isolated is pretty much now I have felt within the last 5 months since his death which is so conflicting because normally when one pictures an isolated person, you imagine them cooped up and all alone. The gag is that I am completely functioning. I go to work, I still have my social life, I interact all across the board; but it is one thing that I can't ignore, this huge void that is now in my heart. When I think about it, I feel like I can't talk about it because no one really understands. "Why are you still grieving your ex, he's been gone for 5 months?" That's when I feel like even though I am around a group of people, I am still not there. Half the time I don't know where my head and heart are. I just know that it hurts. I hear about all of these stories where people have lost loved ones and it's extremely sad but it's always about a parent, or a child, or a sibling or a spouse. I have even read stories about a first love passing but it's usually many years down the line after they have had ample time to process the grief from a breakup and sometimes even have found a new love. I don't relate to any of it. I never hear too many stories about an "ex". It's a very lonely feeling. The most triggering part rears its ugly head when I think about the way that he died. He was gunned down. He was treated like his life wasn't worth a damn when his life was extremely precious. Dealing with grief is one thing, dealing with grief when it has the trauma of murder tied to it is a whole other ball game. A ball game that I am unwillingly playing in. The ball being thrown at me is a ball of sadness, confusion and anger. Every day I feel like I am getting up to go swing. I can either hit this ball that the pitcher is throwing out of the park and not deal with it, or I can strike out and lose, left to deal with all of it, the defeat. I just think about some people who get to prepare for the death of a loved one. For instance, you know a family member is sick and while it is still awful to even think about the possibility of death, you still have time to accept that fact. Trying to accept the fact that someone has died after they were tragically taken for everyone that they love in an instance is extremely difficult. How does a person make sense of all of that? Dealing. There are days when I feel like I have a handle on it; then there are days when I feel like I'm falling into this deep abyss that seems impossible to get out of. Some days I feel perfectly grounded and other days I feel like I am floating through the air. The longing and the missing never ever stops. There is a constant gnawing at my heart. Our relationship was so complicated and complex. There are also times when I feel so guilty as if I was the one who committed this horrendous act, and I wasn't. "Why did he not listen to me when I told him to stop entertaining certain things and people?" "Why did I walk away from him?" "Why did I give up?" My thoughts haunt me every single day thinking that I could have done something differently. Well maybe if I would've avoided this argument, that would not have pushed the wedge even further down between us. He was not perfect, but neither was I. Then there are times when I question my faith, question my beliefs and my spirituality. "Why do bad things happen to people who don't deserve it? Why God?" He did not deserve what happened to him. It makes me so angry with God. I prayed for him so many nights, why did you not cover him God? There are days I deal with grief and there are days that I don't. Everybody loves to say "you gotta deal with it, you gotta deal with" when they are the ones who aren't in your shoes. There are days that I believe that no you don't have to deal with it. Those days, I just sit with. I have to let it consume me and pass through me because if I don't, I will project whatever I'm feeling onto someone else and that is not okay. Those are the days I like to be alone. Then there are days when I rather not be alone and that is just a very slippery slope. It takes a very understanding community to help you deal with the grief that you are experiencing. Not everyone in mine has understood and that's okay, they don't need to. I am grateful though for those, the select few, who have understood. Those who have sat with me while I have cried, while I have had those nights where I couldn't sleep. It's imperative to hold on to people like that. Trying to Move Forward. Every day I try to go back to the "old me" whatever that means but the fact of the matter is that this experience, this loss, has changed me from the inside out forever. Sometimes I don't know if it is for the better or worse. I would like to hope that it's for the better once I can get through the rough parts. But it's true, grief will change you in ways unimaginable, ways that you really can't even explain out loud. You just feel it. With this specific loss, I feel very closed off and reserved, and for me that's strange because I am an extrovert. I feel as if I'm looking at everyone around me sometimes but only a select few people can see me half the time. I feel as if my brain has been completely rewired and reprogrammed. This experience has taught me to be more forgiving though, that I can say. Also, it has taught me to be slower to anger. It has taught me that life is too short, and it can be taken from anyone at any given moment so to love people while they are here if that's what you feel in your heart. So yes, there have been teachable lessons in this whole ordeal, but I still wonder why I had to go through something like this to learn it. Rest in love to the one I will always love, my Daniel.