When your day is night alone
I am still very much in the mood for cemeteries and gravestones. I actually learned yesterday what the difference between a cemetery and a graveyard is. A cemetery is any large burial ground whereas a graveyard is a burial ground next to a church. Who knew? I guess maybe I should have.
I discovered yesterday that this kid that was part of the group I was friends with in the mid to late 1990s is buried in the same cemetery as my recently late uncle and my father. In fact, he is right down the literal road from where they are buried. I've been going down this research road looking up old relatives and what not and I happened to remember him and decided to look him up.
I remember I received a call when I was staying the night at Peapod's one evening in 1999. I do not recall right now if it was from Exroommate or Betsy, but it was that this kid Mike was dead. He had killed himself in the garage with a hose hooked up to a car's tailpipe. I remember going to the wake and Betsy being close to hysterics because his family was not admitting or accepting the fact he killed himself because he was ashamed of being gay.
Several years prior, when I first became part of this group of friends through Exroommate I was known as "the guy who was gay but doesn't think he's gay anymore". It was during that brief period when I was a "born again" Christian. I cringe remembering getting into Biblical debates at one particular party. Within this group was also the first guy I'd ever be with, who confided in me that he was also having "those feelings". The bad news is when two people struggling to come to terms with "those feelings" get together, "those feelings" sometimes win out. We were very good friends and I think it only exasperated our plight.
Comically, he enjoyed being with me for a brief time and then didn't want to deal with it any longer or "be that way". I, on the other hand, felt I had betrayed myself, my family, God himself and everyone I ever knew by becoming a hypocrite, and yet I decided that it was simply who I was and I moved on from it more or less. Years later I came to discover this guy had decided he'd finally come out after his father died and was living (and possibly married) to some guy. Ain't that the breaks.
During this post-Born Again period of coming out for me, Exroommate also came out. And everything with us was "gay gay gay gay". I don't completely recall the timeline, but I do remember one night we were all out with this big group and this Mike kid approached me at one point and said he'd like to be able to talk to me some time that evening. It never happened, but I look back and I know that he was in need of someone to talk to and perhaps had I made the time to do so with him things could have turned out different.
This was still a few years before he killed himself. It's not like I blew him off and then he did it that evening or the next day. At the time he was also hooking up with this kid Nick he was friends with. It was something everyone knew, but no one talked about. I know as the years went on and I turned 21 (in 1996) I saw less of most of these people, and Betsy and Mike during this period were very close. I know she was "in love" with him during that time. It probably didn't help his mental situation as he was likely wondering why he couldn't "feel that way" about her in return.
I'd never known anyone who killed themselves before (or since). I don't have a very high opinion of suicide. I've spent many a night wanting to die and understand the mindset, but I could nor would ever be able to bring myself to do it. Even in it's worst moments I still found life worth living. I understand despair, and like this Mike kid, I went through all the confusion and rage over being gay. I get where he was at.
Even still, occasionally I do think about him even though we weren't very close friends. Just acquaintances through this group. I remember he was always very nice. I am not sure we ever had a one on one conversation. And I do feel sorry I did not speak to him that one evening. I've always recalled the memory clear as day, even before he died, for some reason. I just remember we were all getting in our cars to drive somewhere and he approached and said something about us having a chat. I think because I remember the incident that is why in my mind I feel like it was a pinnacle moment in the course of that slice of history.
I am not saying my words would have altered the course of his life. I am not implying that I have some power over which I would have changed his thinking. Certainly it is something never to be known as he's been in the ground 24 years this month. In fact, things in my own life with my own acceptance of myself were so tumultuous at that time. I think it was during my "affair" with that first guy I was with that he had approached me. If that was the case I likely avoided talking to him because I saw myself as such a hypocrite.
It's just sad that someone would end their life at twenty-years-old. He missed out of a completely different world. He never got to see people walking around with literal super computers in their pockets by way of smart phones. He never saw the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers and those horrors. He never got to have a first apartment, a first legal drink. He never saw all the movies that came our or read any books or heard any of the music that so defined my life in those years since. Hell, he didn't get to live to see a world where lunatics sold their freedom because they were afraid of the common cold, while simultaneously believing men can become women just by saying so.
The next time I find myself at the cemetery I am going to visit his grave. I always wonder when I am in cemeteries, if anyone visits all the various tombstones and crypts. It is odd to me that we literally drove past this kid's grave on Tuesday as the procession went around the cemetery and I had no idea he was buried right there. Of course, I had no idea my mother's grandparents were buried in the next section over from where my dad is until I started looking into all this genealogy stuff last year.
I wondered also if his parents ever came to terms with why this happened. I do not remember if he left a note, I only remember Betsy's rage at the wake about his family "not accepting" the truth and lying to people about what happened. Surely, she would have known better than his family since it was at least partially his shame about his situation in correlation with them. Who knows, perhaps they did know something and their reaction prompted his choice. Now two decades later the latest generation of young people won't shut the fuck up about being gay and all kinds of additional imaginary sexual identities... thinking they have it so hard when parents today are literally trying to make their kids gay just for the clout on social media in some cases.
He had so much life to live. I feel like I've lived ten lifetimes in the past 24 years. If only because of this journal, I am able to at least see a vague map of several of them. If he'd just held on maybe he could have seen the way out. It wouldn't likely have been in his mind the way things were "supposed" to be, but life is never what it is "supposed" to be. It is emotion and calamity and rage and pain and comedy and drama. Things hardly ever work out the way they are "supposed" to. Especially when you are that young.
In youth the world is new and exciting and everything is so exaggerated, and you think you're experiencing things no one has ever seen or felt before. But, that is the other aspect of youth: the ignorance. Pain seems so much more painful when you are young. The heart hurts so deeply because most people have never felt the depths of it until they reach young adulthood. And even then there's so much more to experience. So much more pain and excitement and ridiculousness. It's all worth it too because it is part of being alive. What is good cannot feel good if you have nothing bad to compare it to.
My heart truly hurts for this kid right now who hasn't existed in decades... who I barely knew. As if I could have done anything to change what happened. I cannot look back with my 48 year old mind, and 24 more years of experience from that time, and think I would have had something worth saying to him at all. I was just as lost. In the years after in some respects I became even more lost. Why I didn't end myself is sometimes a mystery. Why could I make it and he couldn't? Chance? Strength? Destiny? Belief?
I discovered yesterday that this kid that was part of the group I was friends with in the mid to late 1990s is buried in the same cemetery as my recently late uncle and my father. In fact, he is right down the literal road from where they are buried. I've been going down this research road looking up old relatives and what not and I happened to remember him and decided to look him up.
I remember I received a call when I was staying the night at Peapod's one evening in 1999. I do not recall right now if it was from Exroommate or Betsy, but it was that this kid Mike was dead. He had killed himself in the garage with a hose hooked up to a car's tailpipe. I remember going to the wake and Betsy being close to hysterics because his family was not admitting or accepting the fact he killed himself because he was ashamed of being gay.
Several years prior, when I first became part of this group of friends through Exroommate I was known as "the guy who was gay but doesn't think he's gay anymore". It was during that brief period when I was a "born again" Christian. I cringe remembering getting into Biblical debates at one particular party. Within this group was also the first guy I'd ever be with, who confided in me that he was also having "those feelings". The bad news is when two people struggling to come to terms with "those feelings" get together, "those feelings" sometimes win out. We were very good friends and I think it only exasperated our plight.
Comically, he enjoyed being with me for a brief time and then didn't want to deal with it any longer or "be that way". I, on the other hand, felt I had betrayed myself, my family, God himself and everyone I ever knew by becoming a hypocrite, and yet I decided that it was simply who I was and I moved on from it more or less. Years later I came to discover this guy had decided he'd finally come out after his father died and was living (and possibly married) to some guy. Ain't that the breaks.
During this post-Born Again period of coming out for me, Exroommate also came out. And everything with us was "gay gay gay gay". I don't completely recall the timeline, but I do remember one night we were all out with this big group and this Mike kid approached me at one point and said he'd like to be able to talk to me some time that evening. It never happened, but I look back and I know that he was in need of someone to talk to and perhaps had I made the time to do so with him things could have turned out different.
This was still a few years before he killed himself. It's not like I blew him off and then he did it that evening or the next day. At the time he was also hooking up with this kid Nick he was friends with. It was something everyone knew, but no one talked about. I know as the years went on and I turned 21 (in 1996) I saw less of most of these people, and Betsy and Mike during this period were very close. I know she was "in love" with him during that time. It probably didn't help his mental situation as he was likely wondering why he couldn't "feel that way" about her in return.
I'd never known anyone who killed themselves before (or since). I don't have a very high opinion of suicide. I've spent many a night wanting to die and understand the mindset, but I could nor would ever be able to bring myself to do it. Even in it's worst moments I still found life worth living. I understand despair, and like this Mike kid, I went through all the confusion and rage over being gay. I get where he was at.
Even still, occasionally I do think about him even though we weren't very close friends. Just acquaintances through this group. I remember he was always very nice. I am not sure we ever had a one on one conversation. And I do feel sorry I did not speak to him that one evening. I've always recalled the memory clear as day, even before he died, for some reason. I just remember we were all getting in our cars to drive somewhere and he approached and said something about us having a chat. I think because I remember the incident that is why in my mind I feel like it was a pinnacle moment in the course of that slice of history.
I am not saying my words would have altered the course of his life. I am not implying that I have some power over which I would have changed his thinking. Certainly it is something never to be known as he's been in the ground 24 years this month. In fact, things in my own life with my own acceptance of myself were so tumultuous at that time. I think it was during my "affair" with that first guy I was with that he had approached me. If that was the case I likely avoided talking to him because I saw myself as such a hypocrite.
It's just sad that someone would end their life at twenty-years-old. He missed out of a completely different world. He never got to see people walking around with literal super computers in their pockets by way of smart phones. He never saw the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers and those horrors. He never got to have a first apartment, a first legal drink. He never saw all the movies that came our or read any books or heard any of the music that so defined my life in those years since. Hell, he didn't get to live to see a world where lunatics sold their freedom because they were afraid of the common cold, while simultaneously believing men can become women just by saying so.
The next time I find myself at the cemetery I am going to visit his grave. I always wonder when I am in cemeteries, if anyone visits all the various tombstones and crypts. It is odd to me that we literally drove past this kid's grave on Tuesday as the procession went around the cemetery and I had no idea he was buried right there. Of course, I had no idea my mother's grandparents were buried in the next section over from where my dad is until I started looking into all this genealogy stuff last year.
I wondered also if his parents ever came to terms with why this happened. I do not remember if he left a note, I only remember Betsy's rage at the wake about his family "not accepting" the truth and lying to people about what happened. Surely, she would have known better than his family since it was at least partially his shame about his situation in correlation with them. Who knows, perhaps they did know something and their reaction prompted his choice. Now two decades later the latest generation of young people won't shut the fuck up about being gay and all kinds of additional imaginary sexual identities... thinking they have it so hard when parents today are literally trying to make their kids gay just for the clout on social media in some cases.
He had so much life to live. I feel like I've lived ten lifetimes in the past 24 years. If only because of this journal, I am able to at least see a vague map of several of them. If he'd just held on maybe he could have seen the way out. It wouldn't likely have been in his mind the way things were "supposed" to be, but life is never what it is "supposed" to be. It is emotion and calamity and rage and pain and comedy and drama. Things hardly ever work out the way they are "supposed" to. Especially when you are that young.
In youth the world is new and exciting and everything is so exaggerated, and you think you're experiencing things no one has ever seen or felt before. But, that is the other aspect of youth: the ignorance. Pain seems so much more painful when you are young. The heart hurts so deeply because most people have never felt the depths of it until they reach young adulthood. And even then there's so much more to experience. So much more pain and excitement and ridiculousness. It's all worth it too because it is part of being alive. What is good cannot feel good if you have nothing bad to compare it to.
My heart truly hurts for this kid right now who hasn't existed in decades... who I barely knew. As if I could have done anything to change what happened. I cannot look back with my 48 year old mind, and 24 more years of experience from that time, and think I would have had something worth saying to him at all. I was just as lost. In the years after in some respects I became even more lost. Why I didn't end myself is sometimes a mystery. Why could I make it and he couldn't? Chance? Strength? Destiny? Belief?