To The Woman Who Lives In The Desert Of My Mind
(The names in this story have been changed to protect the guilty from being confused as innocent.)
I've been friends with this guy we'll call Jerry for a number of years now. Great guy, early 50s. Works part time at a comic store, which is now his sole income after losing his full-time work last year. We get along great - talk about movies, talk about hunting, talk about filmscore and all sorts of nerd guy stuff. He often hands me DVDs and music and we talk about Robert E Howard and Jerry Goldsmith (hence my choice in name change).
Yesterday I saw him for the first time in months. We talked the talk for a couple hours before he laid on me some bad news. A woman whom he was involved with heavily not-too-long ago had died very suddenly. She was a juvenile diabetes type one. Sugar spike. Straight into coma. Legally dead two days later. Pulled the plug. Organs harvested, the rest was cremated. Nothing is left now, just ashes and an urn.
She was built like, looked like Wonder Woman. Long lengths of black hair, stunning eyes. She loved Marx Brothers and Blade Runner. (If that doesn't sell a nerd, turn in your membership card and sonic screwdriver at the door.). Thoughtful, warm, witty. Don't ask me why it ended between them because I didn't know it had ended - it just did. Its enough to just know. Its enough that they tried.
And now shes dead. And heres this 50-something year old guy who can't process that.
And while he's explaining all this to me - which knocked me for a loop since it wasn't the usual guy talk or shooting the shit about film music or television or fishing - I'm left to wonder if I tried hard enough with other women. I say that I couldn't have tried harder, that I did no wrong with Amanda... that I made the right decisions with Elka... so why am I still wondering if I did go far enough or made the right choices? Why am I still beleagured with the memories of women who have come and left and forgotten about me?
Which is worse: the woman you loved and split from and is now dead? Or the woman you loved and she walked away despite the fact that she has regular dreams about you? Both involve a quantifiable death, I suppose; one simply more living than the other. And I keep telling myself "don't dream, its over" and move on and all the healthy platitudes of walking off with your own life. Shelter your inner self from outside harm. Avoid the blitz, hide outside London and in a subway station as the plaster blasts around you. And all the while your life or whats left of it are words without hope, as empty and stale as a used ashtray.
So Comic Book Guy and I now have something new to talk about - though its not something either of us want to talk about. Is that a guy thing? I suppose it is. The universally limited words between fellas over beer in a bar where the TV news is turned up too loud. I feel bad for him, which in turn made me feel bad for myself all over again.
(And then I feel bad for comparing my faults in living with his missing someone because she's dead. I find it very easy to relate to people's misery but often its because I see my own in theirs. I can't tell if thats a coping mechanism or self-indulgence.)
And this is when it happens: the crumple effect. When you think your life can't wad up any smaller than it has. And when it does, you literally feel the sharp paper folds curl around you and blot out everything. You feel a high come on, like when you hit a sharp hill and your lungs exhale too hard; its a sign you and your life are about to be pitched into a paperbasket.
I hadn't heard from my friend April in a while. You know where this story is going before I say any more - and you're right. She didn't take my calls or go on AIM because she was dead. As of this writing, I still don't know what happened but I have my suspicions it was suicide. She was manic - ranging from crippling depressions like I don't even want to consider to sexual manias so high that she'd do some acts that made me blanche - and had the kind of migraines that you only ever heard of in medical books or when people are about to have an apoplexy. Pictures of her in her shitty Hartford apartment with the thick curtains drawn to keep out the sunlight for days at a time, tears streaming down her face because of the pain in her temples. I wouldn't hear from her for days at a time or a week but I knew something was wrong this time. And google confirmed it.
She passed on May 5th. It was late, late the night of the 15th when I found her obit on Google. I had missed the funeral, missed everything. She was already shoveled into a grave or an urn by the time I had known.
And so after the Comic Book Guy told me about his girl and then my own hellbent horror to have this happen was a little too much. The extremeness of going from low to lower to lower still spiraled me past a point of safety I normally flag for myself. I hadn't cried this hard since Elka and had to have Jillian come over for a while to help me get a fix on things; what they say about sharing a bad mood is true, but often its best shared to let it go free. She understood better than she admitted.
The week had some specatcularly shitty things in store aside from whats described here (and I won't talk about them) so to say its been grueling may be an understatement. And worse still is that there is no reward to be had. There is no reward for the muck and mire I had to slog through just to survive those moments. Maybe just posting these things is enough. Maybe not.
I've been friends with this guy we'll call Jerry for a number of years now. Great guy, early 50s. Works part time at a comic store, which is now his sole income after losing his full-time work last year. We get along great - talk about movies, talk about hunting, talk about filmscore and all sorts of nerd guy stuff. He often hands me DVDs and music and we talk about Robert E Howard and Jerry Goldsmith (hence my choice in name change).
Yesterday I saw him for the first time in months. We talked the talk for a couple hours before he laid on me some bad news. A woman whom he was involved with heavily not-too-long ago had died very suddenly. She was a juvenile diabetes type one. Sugar spike. Straight into coma. Legally dead two days later. Pulled the plug. Organs harvested, the rest was cremated. Nothing is left now, just ashes and an urn.
She was built like, looked like Wonder Woman. Long lengths of black hair, stunning eyes. She loved Marx Brothers and Blade Runner. (If that doesn't sell a nerd, turn in your membership card and sonic screwdriver at the door.). Thoughtful, warm, witty. Don't ask me why it ended between them because I didn't know it had ended - it just did. Its enough to just know. Its enough that they tried.
And now shes dead. And heres this 50-something year old guy who can't process that.
And while he's explaining all this to me - which knocked me for a loop since it wasn't the usual guy talk or shooting the shit about film music or television or fishing - I'm left to wonder if I tried hard enough with other women. I say that I couldn't have tried harder, that I did no wrong with Amanda... that I made the right decisions with Elka... so why am I still wondering if I did go far enough or made the right choices? Why am I still beleagured with the memories of women who have come and left and forgotten about me?
Which is worse: the woman you loved and split from and is now dead? Or the woman you loved and she walked away despite the fact that she has regular dreams about you? Both involve a quantifiable death, I suppose; one simply more living than the other. And I keep telling myself "don't dream, its over" and move on and all the healthy platitudes of walking off with your own life. Shelter your inner self from outside harm. Avoid the blitz, hide outside London and in a subway station as the plaster blasts around you. And all the while your life or whats left of it are words without hope, as empty and stale as a used ashtray.
So Comic Book Guy and I now have something new to talk about - though its not something either of us want to talk about. Is that a guy thing? I suppose it is. The universally limited words between fellas over beer in a bar where the TV news is turned up too loud. I feel bad for him, which in turn made me feel bad for myself all over again.
(And then I feel bad for comparing my faults in living with his missing someone because she's dead. I find it very easy to relate to people's misery but often its because I see my own in theirs. I can't tell if thats a coping mechanism or self-indulgence.)
And this is when it happens: the crumple effect. When you think your life can't wad up any smaller than it has. And when it does, you literally feel the sharp paper folds curl around you and blot out everything. You feel a high come on, like when you hit a sharp hill and your lungs exhale too hard; its a sign you and your life are about to be pitched into a paperbasket.
I hadn't heard from my friend April in a while. You know where this story is going before I say any more - and you're right. She didn't take my calls or go on AIM because she was dead. As of this writing, I still don't know what happened but I have my suspicions it was suicide. She was manic - ranging from crippling depressions like I don't even want to consider to sexual manias so high that she'd do some acts that made me blanche - and had the kind of migraines that you only ever heard of in medical books or when people are about to have an apoplexy. Pictures of her in her shitty Hartford apartment with the thick curtains drawn to keep out the sunlight for days at a time, tears streaming down her face because of the pain in her temples. I wouldn't hear from her for days at a time or a week but I knew something was wrong this time. And google confirmed it.
She passed on May 5th. It was late, late the night of the 15th when I found her obit on Google. I had missed the funeral, missed everything. She was already shoveled into a grave or an urn by the time I had known.
And so after the Comic Book Guy told me about his girl and then my own hellbent horror to have this happen was a little too much. The extremeness of going from low to lower to lower still spiraled me past a point of safety I normally flag for myself. I hadn't cried this hard since Elka and had to have Jillian come over for a while to help me get a fix on things; what they say about sharing a bad mood is true, but often its best shared to let it go free. She understood better than she admitted.
The week had some specatcularly shitty things in store aside from whats described here (and I won't talk about them) so to say its been grueling may be an understatement. And worse still is that there is no reward to be had. There is no reward for the muck and mire I had to slog through just to survive those moments. Maybe just posting these things is enough. Maybe not.