We Get Too Soon Old.
My friend Bill, the one I stayed with in San Diego, called me a few hours ago. His brother Chris died yesterday evening. Chris was 41, and living with his parents in Arizona, a victim of the bad economy as well as some bad decisions of his own. Bill had told me the last few times we talked about how worried the parents were about Chris, how he seemed to have withdrawn and was very depressed. But thankfully for small mercies, it wasn't a suicide. The parents found him on the bathroom floor, shaving cream on his face. There will be an autopsy.
Bill is in shock. I guess I am, too, and before I explain, I want to say I cannot imagine what the parents are feeling. My heart is with them; I wish I could take away some of the pain they must be feeling. As it is, I can't. I can't even say I'm sorry.
A long time ago, when I was young and slightly more stupid than I am now, I met Bill at college. After various experiences I will not detail yet, I fell in love with him, as much as someone who didn't have any idea what love was supposed to be like could. Yet I always felt there was something missing with Bill. He was so closed with his emotions, so afraid to feel or express anything. (Many years later, I understood why. But, as I said, I was younger and stupider then.) I knew he loved me, but there was always this distance I felt, like I could never get through to him.
He took me home to meet his parents one Christmas, and I met his brother Chris. Chris was, to put it euphemistically, troubled. Emotionally fragile is how I would put it, he was emo before emo was mocked, and I always believed his parents should have spent the money on a good therapist and psychiatrist instead of sending him away to a school that was more designed for recovering substance abusers than the mentally ill. (Some people just have their brains wired differently than the average. His mother, a Very Devout Catholic, never could quite grasp that mental illness doesn't always mean a crazy person in a straitjacket.) Chris was passionate about the things that mattered to him, and he could get very angry when those things didn't matter as much to others. High-strung is a good descriptor.
When I moved to DC to be with Bill, Chris would come down to visit on occasion. And this is the part where I admit my mistakes and acknowledge my shame: I fell in love with Chris. And Chris? I believe to this day that he truly loved me, possibly more than anyone else ever has.
To make an already long story shorter, I left Bill to be with his brother Chris. It was wrong, and whenever I think about it, I cringe with shame. I hurt Bill terribly, and for that I will never forgive myself. I was twenty years old and desperate to be loved. I can look back now and see that it was my own horrible childhood that drove me to be wanted by someone, by anyone, so I would feel useful and needed - the equivalent of love to an emotionally neglected child. I was wrong. I did a very bad thing, and I think that karma paid me back in spades.
But Chris? Was not an innocent in all this. He wanted someone to drive the demons plaguing him away, and when I couldn't do that, he turned to self medication. He drank and smoked a lot. Then a lot more. Two years later, it reached a head. He was drinking 30 bottles of beer - a case and a six-pack - a day. His temper got shorter and shorter. I found myself apologizing more and more for nothing, trying to avoid doing anything that could possibly upset him. But even I had enough when he began seeing an old girlfriend and lying to me about it. The drinking, the temper, the anger, the lies: I said enough, and broke it off. It was as ugly as you can imagine.
Fast forward many years. Bill and I are friends again through the miracle of kind-hearted fate. Sometimes he volunteers information about his brother, sometimes I ask. Chris sort of wandered through life, settling in upstate NY for over a decade. He worked, he drank, he did whatever else he did. He drank a lot; both Bill and I know he was an alcoholic, but his parents were blind to it. (Father always has three or four glasses of scotch in the evening; Mother must have her half-bottle of wine. Facing his alcoholism would mean they had to face their own dependencies, just as admitting Chris had mental problems would be admitting they weren't perfect parents.) He made some pretty bad decisions about work and finances and burned through his inheritance from his grandparents. With nothing left, he moved in with his parents.
About six months ago, he contacted me on Facebook. I took a long time to answer; that period of my life is over and I didn't want to open old scars, or jeopardize my friendship with Bill. I did communicate with him, but only at arm's length and never about anything too deep. He wanted to call me and talk, but I refused, telling him I simply could not handle his drama in my life until I had worked through my issues in therapy. True to the person he always was, he got very angry with me, typing a three AM drunken rant about my grudge-holding and bitterness, demanding I talk to him.
Now he's dead, and I don't regret not talking to him before he died. I mourn a wasted life that could have been so much more after his death as much as I mourned it over the phone with his brother a month ago. I ache for his parents as much as I wish I could make them face their role in his misery, as well as the legacy of anxiety and withdrawal they left to Bill. I never threw away Chris's letters or mix tapes (hey, it was 20 years ago); I take them out every so often as a reminder of what Could Have Been and Never Would Be. I always believed he would drink himself to death; perhaps this was a kinder way. I wish life had been better for him, but I can't change the past. Maybe the best legacy he gave me was when I left him; that was the first time in my life I ever had the courage to say "no" and to do what was best for me.
I don't know what else to say, except I'm sorry. For Bill, for Chris, and a little bit for me.
This entry was originally posted at http://gentlehum-mel.dreamwidth.org/2066.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Bill is in shock. I guess I am, too, and before I explain, I want to say I cannot imagine what the parents are feeling. My heart is with them; I wish I could take away some of the pain they must be feeling. As it is, I can't. I can't even say I'm sorry.
A long time ago, when I was young and slightly more stupid than I am now, I met Bill at college. After various experiences I will not detail yet, I fell in love with him, as much as someone who didn't have any idea what love was supposed to be like could. Yet I always felt there was something missing with Bill. He was so closed with his emotions, so afraid to feel or express anything. (Many years later, I understood why. But, as I said, I was younger and stupider then.) I knew he loved me, but there was always this distance I felt, like I could never get through to him.
He took me home to meet his parents one Christmas, and I met his brother Chris. Chris was, to put it euphemistically, troubled. Emotionally fragile is how I would put it, he was emo before emo was mocked, and I always believed his parents should have spent the money on a good therapist and psychiatrist instead of sending him away to a school that was more designed for recovering substance abusers than the mentally ill. (Some people just have their brains wired differently than the average. His mother, a Very Devout Catholic, never could quite grasp that mental illness doesn't always mean a crazy person in a straitjacket.) Chris was passionate about the things that mattered to him, and he could get very angry when those things didn't matter as much to others. High-strung is a good descriptor.
When I moved to DC to be with Bill, Chris would come down to visit on occasion. And this is the part where I admit my mistakes and acknowledge my shame: I fell in love with Chris. And Chris? I believe to this day that he truly loved me, possibly more than anyone else ever has.
To make an already long story shorter, I left Bill to be with his brother Chris. It was wrong, and whenever I think about it, I cringe with shame. I hurt Bill terribly, and for that I will never forgive myself. I was twenty years old and desperate to be loved. I can look back now and see that it was my own horrible childhood that drove me to be wanted by someone, by anyone, so I would feel useful and needed - the equivalent of love to an emotionally neglected child. I was wrong. I did a very bad thing, and I think that karma paid me back in spades.
But Chris? Was not an innocent in all this. He wanted someone to drive the demons plaguing him away, and when I couldn't do that, he turned to self medication. He drank and smoked a lot. Then a lot more. Two years later, it reached a head. He was drinking 30 bottles of beer - a case and a six-pack - a day. His temper got shorter and shorter. I found myself apologizing more and more for nothing, trying to avoid doing anything that could possibly upset him. But even I had enough when he began seeing an old girlfriend and lying to me about it. The drinking, the temper, the anger, the lies: I said enough, and broke it off. It was as ugly as you can imagine.
Fast forward many years. Bill and I are friends again through the miracle of kind-hearted fate. Sometimes he volunteers information about his brother, sometimes I ask. Chris sort of wandered through life, settling in upstate NY for over a decade. He worked, he drank, he did whatever else he did. He drank a lot; both Bill and I know he was an alcoholic, but his parents were blind to it. (Father always has three or four glasses of scotch in the evening; Mother must have her half-bottle of wine. Facing his alcoholism would mean they had to face their own dependencies, just as admitting Chris had mental problems would be admitting they weren't perfect parents.) He made some pretty bad decisions about work and finances and burned through his inheritance from his grandparents. With nothing left, he moved in with his parents.
About six months ago, he contacted me on Facebook. I took a long time to answer; that period of my life is over and I didn't want to open old scars, or jeopardize my friendship with Bill. I did communicate with him, but only at arm's length and never about anything too deep. He wanted to call me and talk, but I refused, telling him I simply could not handle his drama in my life until I had worked through my issues in therapy. True to the person he always was, he got very angry with me, typing a three AM drunken rant about my grudge-holding and bitterness, demanding I talk to him.
Now he's dead, and I don't regret not talking to him before he died. I mourn a wasted life that could have been so much more after his death as much as I mourned it over the phone with his brother a month ago. I ache for his parents as much as I wish I could make them face their role in his misery, as well as the legacy of anxiety and withdrawal they left to Bill. I never threw away Chris's letters or mix tapes (hey, it was 20 years ago); I take them out every so often as a reminder of what Could Have Been and Never Would Be. I always believed he would drink himself to death; perhaps this was a kinder way. I wish life had been better for him, but I can't change the past. Maybe the best legacy he gave me was when I left him; that was the first time in my life I ever had the courage to say "no" and to do what was best for me.
I don't know what else to say, except I'm sorry. For Bill, for Chris, and a little bit for me.
This entry was originally posted at http://gentlehum-mel.dreamwidth.org/2066.html. Please comment there using OpenID.