Muted, but Not Monochrome

As my 39th birthday looms ever closer, there is something, well someone really, on my heart. Someone I won't see. Possibly not ever again.

Faithful readers will remember how I got all verklempt in the grocery store last April, missing my best gay guy  friend, Jacky. He & I met at the restaurant where we worked prior to Hurricane Katrina. We had a lot in common, both having grown up gay in rural South Louisiana & running a bit amok in NOLA in our 20s, and by the time we met, we were both trying to come up. There was no sexual chemistry there, but we got each other, laughed at the same things, were equally ruthless Scrabble players. We were a dream team at the restaurant, a big favorite with guests & management alike.We fled Hurricane Katrina together, and remained very close afterwards.Once I moved into my current apartment, he visited pretty frequently for Wine & Scrabble weekends. My sister, Diana & Jacky & I even rented a car together & drove to Austin from NOLA to welcome my other sister, Sara, home from Japan a few years ago.

He was the closest thing I had to a brother. 

He unexplainedly stopped responding to my text messages in December 2011, and in early January 2012, he sent me a text asking me not to contact him again. No explanation. I figured he got sober or got sick of how rough I talk to people or both. I honored his request for no contact for over a year, as much as it ate me up inside. 

It hurt like hell. This black empty feeling in my heart felt like it was swallowing me and finally I broke down & sent him an email:

It has been over a year since you asked me not to contact you & I haven't. I still don't understand why. All I can say is, whatever I did or said, I'm sorry.

I miss you all the time. Every single day, at least 1 thing happens to remind me of you. Of our friendship.

I can barely get thru a trip to Rouse's without bursting into tears. I keep hearing in my mind some funny thing we said or did and once or twice I've even been just about to tell you something, and I go to say it and you're not there and I don't know why.

I don't know what else to say. Please forgive me for whatever it was.

Sam

About a week later, he responded:

Sam,

Hope things are going well for you.

I made a decision to become the healthiest (physically, mentally, spiritually) that I could be, and I had to make some tough choices. I have been sober since Dec 7, 2011, and at the same time, could no longer afford to embrace your negative and constant belittling behavior. After the last conversation we had when you repeatedly called me and my decisions/thoughts/etc. "stupid" and "dumb" for the 8000th time, I finally had the courage to remove that negative energy from my life. I also realized that the majority of the reason why I had put up with that for so long was because you provided a haven  for me to get drunk. So I owed it to not only myself to delete negative energy from my life, but I owed it to you to stop taking advantage of the situation to benefit my addiction. I wish the best for you. Thanks for checking up on me; I think about you often as well. Especially during these past seasons of Drag Race, lol. I have forgiven you and will never forget the good times!

Jacky

If you don't feel it, you can't heal it, they say. Well, I sure felt this, like a hundred rats chewing on my guts. I must have read those lines at least a dozen times, trying to analyze every single nuance of meaning like some neurotic teen, but all I kept seeing was "I would have talked to you about this, but you are too damaged to bother with. You are just too fuckin mean to people for them to stand you unless they are loaded."

Anne Sexton, the mad poetess,  said:
I find now, swallowing one teaspoon
of pain, that it drops downward
to the past where it mixes
with last year's cupful
and downward into a decade's quart
and downward into a lifetime's ocean.

And so it was. I felt that multiplying teaspoon  wake up feelings of abandonment ranging from unanswered text messages to my biological father, whom I've never seen, who must have known even before I was born that I would just be too much trouble. All I could do was just lay down in bed and just fucking cry it out, sobbing til I had hiccups, going thru the Stages of Grief merry-go-round over and over. Denial-Anger-Bargaining-Depression-Acceptance-Denial-Anger---oh you get it.

I fell asleep and dreamed of Jacky and me, singing along with Dalida, (he'd learned the French lyrics phonetically), playing Scrabble on my porch on Grand Route St John, he plays the word "EQUATION," hitting 2 Triple word scores and getting 164 points. "You bitch!!" I say and then I look up and he's just gone. His glass of wine half-empty and nothing and nobody in his chair. And all the color just went out of everything, just drained away, blue skies and red wine all just turning different shades of grey and Dalida is drowned out by the ringing in my ears.

But I wake up. The world is in color again. Muted but not monochrome. The people I have in my life are an amazing, eclectic, loving bunch and I am grateful for all of them. I know I'm surrounded by love and affection and good will. But somehow the snack cakes aren't as sweet, the triple-shot espresso isn't as strong, and when the next person doesn't answer a text, it's really not the end of the world, just one less bell to answer.