I’ll preface this message by noting that I’m still feeling a little bit of the Bacardi I drank earlier tonight. Reader beware, and such.
So I got shit-faced with a couple of my friends tonight. Did same with same friends last night, and one of them, we’ll call him J, really opened up (to me, anyway–the other guys already knew the storeis) and started talking about really personal things in his past, that really made him more of a…person to me. A friend. And tonight, once the rum started flowing he really dug deep. He told me about his friend whose mom died, his friend who committed suicide, his friends from elementary school who always got picked on who he felt he could’ve done more to help, how much he misses his mom…
The whole night, by the way, we were watching my Family Guy DVDs. Doesn’t sound relevant. But we’ll get there.
I eventually realized that J’s life was in many ways parallel to mine. Although I don’t have a friend who committed suicide, and I don’t have a friend whose mom died, I had a friend in elem. school whose dad died, our parents and grandparents had similar history, we had pretty much the same elementary school experiences (almost freakishly identical), etc. etc. And he kept talking about his friend who died and crying because he gave her a joke graduation gift, not realizing of course that she would not live to see a serious sign of his friendly affection.
And all of a sudden it came flooding back to me.
This one girl–we’ll call her A–was a total ass to me when we met in 6th grade. So I was an ass to her too. We were asses to each other the whole year.
A couple of years later, in 8th grade, we run into each other again (having not had classes together since) and start talking and really become friends. I started having feelings for her near the end of the school year…we never got a chance to exchange numbers or anything, the year ended, summer came and went, we started high school and went our seperate ways at different schools.
My sophomore year of high school, I had started to think about A again. How nice it would be if we could get in contact again. How I should try to get in touch with her through mutual friends I still went to high school with.
And then one day, at school, another friend and I came upon an unmarked notebook. I started leafing through it to find out whose notebook it was…
And I saw a eulogy. For A. She died of cancer. In her sophomore year! Several months before!
Turned out the notebook belonged to a mutual friend who still went to HS with me. I returned the notebook to her, told her I saw a few things, apologized for leafing through it, and asked her about A. She said, “I’m so sorry, I thought you knew.” Same line everyone who went to middle school with us told me. “Sorry man. Would’ve told you, but I figured someone else did and you already knew.”
I looked her up online and found out her funeral had come and gone with me none the wiser. I vowed to find her gravesite and drop some flowers and a loving note and have a good cry there. I never did. I forgot about it. And now it’s all coming back to me–and I won’t even be in the same state as her gravesite until late December.
God, I feel horrible.
We all exchanged our stories and we had some crying sessions and we all decided we should start paying attention to Family Guy again as it would probably cheer us up.
So we watched. It was the episode where Stewie becomes a musical performer, and does an act with a girl in his theater class where they perform a love song with each other. And suddenly my last relationship comes back to me. My last GF–we’ll call her M–and I, would always get together and watch Family Guy. We were so close, when I guess she eventually she decided she couldn’t date a drinker/smoker and dumped me. I watched Stewie and Olivia proclaim their love for each other and each word was like a thousand pounds dropped on my head. M and I used to profess our love for each other, too. We used to watch the same episodes. We used to share so many things. We used to love each other in so many ways. But now she’s spending her time with another guy and it’s as if I’m yesterday’s discarded newspaper. Who was I ever kidding? She always meant so much more to me than drugs and alcohol ever could, and I told her so, and I meant it, and I felt it, but I was too busy having fun with my freshman year in college to really know it deep within myself. Now I know: I love expanding my mind with drugs and alcohol but I love M more, and if I have to give up my first love for my second, I’ll do it. Lord, I’ll do it any time. I want to meet with her right now and take her out to lunch and tell her everything I feel and then just go. And then let her decide whether to forget all about me or give me another chance.
But there are a couple problems with that. One is that it’s 5:40 in the morning, she’s not online and I have no right to wake her up (nor would I want to). Another is that I’m still a little buzzed, and she had to deal enough with trust issues with her alcoholic parents—I definitely don’t want to put her in a situation where she’s hearing my drunken ramblings and has to figure out whether or not I mean what I say. Yet another is that I told myself I would be a good sport about the breakup and not try to get involved in any of her future relationships or wedge myself in or anything. Of course, I can look into the future now and say “I’ll be responsible, I’ll just sit down for lunch with her once, tell her how I feel, and then leave her alone.” But I told myself I’d leave her alone and forget about it back when she dumped me, about a month and a half ago. And obviously I haven’t. How am I to believe I can do it this time? What if she really loves this new guy? What if he’s the one for him? If so, I have no business butting in with my sad sack stories and begging forgiveness.
Lord, I don’t know what to do! I’ve put AIM alerts on both M and a friend who can lead me to a mutual friend with A, so I can try to solve both problems as soon as possible. I think I will take M out to lunch once. But I don’t want to be the psycho ex-boyfriend who never lets go. I don’t want to try to butt in to her possibly very happy relationship with my sour grapes and stale news. I don’t want to be that loser who keeps coming back and begging for another chance. But I need for her to hear my story.
I don’t know if I’m asking for advice or compassion or anything at all. Nobody has to say anything. You can if you want. I just pray to whoever/whatever’s in control of things, that everything turns out OK for everyone.