On Loss
Posted on December 3, 2009
Filed Under May I Interject?, Texas, Thought |
An actual serious post.
I lost a friend recently.
I knew him through an ex-boyfriend whom I dated for three years during high school. For those three years I primarily spent time with him (the boyfriend), my few friends, and his few friends. Our groups were united and later coincidences happened with friendships. It’s very clear to me, if I could diagram the people then who mattered, who mattered. I could label their complementary contribution to the misery we all had due to geographic suffocation.
I go home to Corpus Christi and I tell my friends I will write a book about it someday. I remember when I was young they told us “Corpus Christi” was the only city named that in the entire world. I could have guessed that, and guessed that, and guessed that.
If you believe that people are most affected by their own selves, then this is the place that can exemplify your belief. I have never witnessed, in my life, the self-awareness that occurs there compared with any other place. It’s a self-awareness that becomes dangerous. I was on the verge and I knew and know many who have been, and who have crossed.
In high school I had a driving force to escape. Everyone wanted to escape. People said they were going to “move to” usually Austin or San Antonio (the only two acceptable cities in Texas) once they figured things out.
And once they say this, the hourglass is flipped. It’s only so long before we all lose our minds. It’s only so long before the 1,000th beer run is committed at the end of Saratoga Street and we need to buy something at the mall and our friends are taking pills again and those guys are having a party. It’s social poverty.
When an integral part of that experience died, I worried that it all might die.
I spoke with my ex-boyfriend after the funeral. He said, “Our friends are drinking themselves into the ground.”
And then I sit and I worry about my final project for graduate school in Pittsburgh, PA.
I’m still so self-aware, but I don’t know if it even matters anymore. This coincides with my desire to move back after grad school. To feel it again… To know what’s important… To acknowledge and to genuinely react.
I want to understand why Rob is gone.
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I am good friends with one of his cousins, and we hung out with him the day before Thanksgiving. Although I had just met him, he seemed fine. I do not understand it either.