This morning I woke up with Abbott’s voice in my head saying “He’s a good guy. Don’t get scared and f*ck it up.” I haven’t heard Abbott’s voice so strongly in my head for a long time, not since right after the accident. (Don’t worry; I’m not schizophrenic until I can hear his voice outside my head)
It was one year ago today that I lost my best friend, Abbott, to a car wreck. I can remember every single second of the moment I learned the news. The days following the accident are blurry and run together. I remember having panic attacks in the bathroom at work. I remember Abbott’s parents coming and taking all of his things out of his office. I remember the memorial we held for him and crying on Mike’s wife’s shoulder. I remember Mike leaving. I guess somewhere in there January happened.
Here is the biggest lie people tell you when you go through a tragedy: “It won’t always hurt this much.” LIE. It will always hurt that much. There will be times when, for no reason you will be able to understand, your breath will catch and you will choke on the pain of losing somebody you love. The thing is, it will not always be as present as it is when it first happens. As time goes on, those moments become farther apart. The pain of them is always intense and you will always hate it, but it won’t be all of your moments.
Here is something else nobody tells you: The first thoughts you have when you learn of the death of a loved one are not always eloquent or philosophical. Sometimes they are bizarre and surprise you. Mine were “but he was so alive the last time I saw him” and “Goddammit, now I’m never going to get my Tatu cd back.”
Today I downloaded the Tatu album off Napster.
I miss Abbott fiercely. He drove me nuts! He was infuriating and funny and overzealous and hypocritical and fun and caring and incredibly narrow-minded about his own open-mindedness. He had a huge, loving heart and a contagious smile. He cared so deeply about everything he pretended to not care about and he was so passionate about life that you couldn’t help but feel more alive when you were with him.
But I don’t wish him back.
Right after he died I told myself that there had to be a reason for the accident, that God would never take such a beautiful soul out of so many lives if that soul wasn’t desperately needed elsewhere. I repeated it over and over, hoping that through the repetition alone I would believe it. I refused to think of his life as a waste, even though with his death coming at such a young age, it really felt wasteful.
The thing is, as painful as it was to lose him, he isn’t totally gone. Even now, a year later, I can still sometimes feel him. There are times when I am absolutely positive that if I let myself turn my head I’ll see him leaning in the doorway of the room I’m in. Aside from that, there are the changes in me that wouldn’t be there if I hadn’t known him. He was the one who taught me that not saying words is what gives them their power. He showed me that it is often the people who infuriate us the most deeply who are the ones we care the most about. He taught me how being a good friend means looking someone in the face and saying “Dude. You’re being a jerk” when they are, in fact, being a jerk.
When I look at where I am now, a year after the accident, I know that I am in a good place. If I did have the power to reverse that accident, I would probably still be in Vegas, slouching my way through each day, hating the city but not having the courage to leave. I wouldn’t have found out who my real friends are (not surprisingly, not a single one of them worked at my old bookstore). I wouldn’t have moved home. I wouldn’t have reunited so closely with my real friends. I wouldn’t have found a job where I don’t hate myself every second that I’m there. I wouldn’t have started blogging. I wouldn’t have met my new S.O. *
Oh haven’t I told you about my new S.O.?
My new S.O is a guy I know from the mall. Someday I will go into the detailed history of how I met him. Today is not that day. One night I was talking to one of my co-supervisors at the store and I was telling her about how much I enjoyed talking to him (my new S.O.) and how he seemed like such a good worker. She pulled me aside and asked, very slyly “is he single?” to which I very subtly shrieked “I don’t know!!” but I started to visit him more often. He started to ask me to visit him even more often. Before long we were chatting online (neither of us is really a phone person) and then started to spend time together outside of the mall.
Tonight he asked me “so when do you think we officially started dating?”
[Insert girly shrieks here]
I thought for a second. I had been wondering the same thing for a while but had been too shy (shut up, I am too) to bring it up, so I said “Um. Now?”
And that’s how I officially started dating again.
Sometimes you lose somebody you really care about. It is excruciating when it happens and you feel like you’ve lost a part of yourself. You start to think the pain you feel is what proves you loved that person. Then as time goes on and you start to feel that pain less often you worry that you are forgetting him (or her). It takes a long time before you can admit to yourself that the best thing you can do is acknowledge the grief and the pain and let it go, to let it be over.
For some of you, the new year won’t come until January 1. For me, I feel like I’ve started my new year already. The last couple of years were really hard. 2003 was just one disaster after another until the accident. 2004 has been about healing. I’m thinking 2005 might just be about moving on.
*the name will be revealed later unless a nickname we can both agree on is decided upon. Sorry kids, have patience!
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