mixtape

I was not lost or found...

May 11, 2002 4:52 a.m.

And when I chose to live

There was no joy, it's just a line I crossed

It wasn't worth the pain my death would cost

So I was not lost or found

After All - Dar Williams

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Last year, I didn't feel like I was worth anything. I felt that if I disappeared, no one would notice. If you had asked me to name five people who loved me, I probably wouldn't have. Probably the only people who made life worth living at all were Mike, Kris, and Stef.

Stef simply mad me laugh. She still can. She is pure joy in my life. No matter how many people call her an airhead, she has some deep knowledge of how to live life with pure, untainted joy that I have never been able to grasp, at least not in conscious memory. She made me cry too. When I called from the hospital, she was terrified I would hate her for what she had done. But I couldn't be. I loved her too much to hate her for that. Maybe, if I had been thinking more clearly, I would have been angry at her. Instead, I thought only in terms of being angry at myself for opening up to someone in the first place. At first I thought, that's it, I'm never talking to anyone again about anything. Now, I can look back and realize that I had simply waited too long to talk. But, I have learned not to send the letters I write. Only to write them and then destroy them.

Mike simply loved me. Pure and unconditional with no taint of fear or of anger. At least not that he showed to me. He let me hold his hand and cry onto his shoulder in the car, in the emergency room, in the exam room, right up until they kicked him out. He let me call and cry on the phone. He stayed on the phone with me one night at home until nearly three in the morning. Talking to me even though I hardly answered back, giving me a life line to hold onto, keeping the demons away so I could go on. He visited me on Easter, walking up with this slightly anxious look on his face wondering what I would be like. Nervously laughing when I offered him our impromptu Easter Dinner of take-out chinese food. He laughed when I made fun of the other patients and was appropriately somber in our goodbyes. He simply loved me, and that probably saved my life.

Kris... Kris is indescribable. She's like a drug that makes you so tripped out and wired that you can't believe it's still reality, but you're so addicted that you can't imagine life without her again. She called, and called, and was one of the first to yell at me and tell me how angry she was. It opened my eyes. I mean, how could someone be angry about it? Then it hit me, she wasn't angry at me because of what was going on. She was angry that I didn't trust her enough to talk to her. And angry at me because I didn't realize how much she loved me. And angry at herself because she couldn't be there with me. Anger is pretty powerful sometimes.

At that point, I realized that it would hurt people too much if I died. I still wasn't quite right... I only thought that I wasn't worth that hurt. But it was at least a step in the right direction.
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