from: samwrites@gmail.com

to: mitchell_adams@gmail.com

date: Nov 12, 2018, 12:05 PM

subject: Intro to Lit Studies – Absence

Hi, Professor,

I can’t come in today. An old classmate of mine just called and said that one of my good friends from high school died yesterday. I don't know how, so I need to take some time figuring this out.

Everyone’s discussing We Were the Mulvaneys for the day, right? Or will you also discuss the upcoming project? I can ask someone else for the information later. You don’t have to send it.

Thanks,

Sam

…

Sam’s Journal—Entry #151, Notebook #3

Thursday, November 12th

They stop when I’m around other people. The tears; that’s what I’m talking about. It’s embarrassing, and you can even call it ironic if you want. Of course, “you” is me, and I find nothing ironic about being unable to cry in front of other people. However, don’t we cry because we want people to know we’re hurting? Some gene gets the waterworks going as a signal for help. Well, I’ve gotten none today, so what’s the point of forcing myself to cry around other people?

It’s awful to sound this melodramatic. I guess if there’s a place for shameless self-pit, a private journal’s it. I’m sorry to write this confusedly.

They come in waves, I was saying, and each time they go, I’m left expecting not to see them again. And by see I mean not see, because that’s what they do: stop me from seeing. Is that a ridiculous way to put it?

“That’s all?” I ask. “No more? I wanted more.”

And then they come back.

She deserved more than any pity party I can throw. Neither of us were the partying type, so maybe it’s fitting. Once, she’d said, “You’re a year older than me, but you’ve got the social skills of someone five years younger.”

Oddly, that’s the sort of thing that drew me to her. I never pointed out her lack of charm. She made sure to point out mine. It was refreshing, healing, like a cold shower after a day of burning in the sun.

She was fragile when it came to her appearance, admittedly lanky, almost like a pole. Didn’t mean no one wanted a dance with it.

I should erase that. It’s in poor taste.

Anyway, I hope the mortician makes sure she looks pretty. A dead teenage girl shouldn’t have to look as pale as she was when she was alive. It’d send everyone running straight through the front doors. But I’m sure the Irish elders would find a way to say it’s all just good luck and that no one need worry.

All my love

…

from: samwrites@gmail.com

to: edward_spier@gmail.com

date: Nov 12, 2018, 8:34 PM

subject: Contemporary Theatre – Possible Absence

Hi, Professor,

I just learned a couple hours ago that a close friend of mine from high school passed away. Suddenly. In the bad way, I think. The way of young people who’ve too much hurt.

I’ve been occupied with that. So I would skip class tomorrow, but I really want to be there for the discussion. I enjoyed last class and am mesmerized by the play. While I will most likely be there (I WANT to be), I can’t guarantee I’ll have the reading completely done. And that angers me. But this week has already been particularly troublesome, and I’m very close to pushing myself too far, if I haven’t done so already, so it’d be a real shame to fall apart this close to the end of the semester.

I’ve been up since 2:30am for an essay, so the day is kind of blurry at this point, with the way it’s only gotten worse and worse. I hope I’m not crossing any lines. I guess I just wanted to give you context for tomorrow if I don’t have much to say (I might be alright) or if I’m not there at all. I feel like every time something happens that makes me miss a class, it’s this one. I’m sorry about that.

Not to make things awkward. I am okay. I am processing. I know my resources for help, so don’t be alarmed, please. I’m on top of things.

Thanks,

Sam

…

Sam’s Journal—Entry #152, Notebook #3

Friday, November 13th

Another day, another breakdown. How do you like that for a turn on “woe is me”? Looking in from the outside of a brick house, every window boarded up. Nothing but a satellite, drifting silently. That’s me. Something like an astronaut, but without the autonomy and perfect vision.

Doesn’t this make you hate me. Or, should I say yourself? Well, I already do. As long as I’m being honest, I can get over writing things this trashy.

Look. I feel so wrong accepting sympathies. It’s selfish. My mom should know better than to humiliate me like that. My friends I can forgive. They don’t know what it’s like. Not yet, maybe. Two days ago, I’d have said the same for myself.

We were friends. Not best friends. Close. Maybe only to me. It meant a lot to meet someone new my senior year, someone I actually hung out with, at the park and in the fields behind the school. I invited her to my grad party, and I hardly invited any students. Not that this comes as a surprise to anyone.

I’ve never had many friends. And she was one. Doesn’t that mean something? Hell, I saw Call Me by Your Name with her before coming out to anyone. That was almost like my first time coming out, if in a cowardly, unspoken way. I never let my family know we saw that movie. I hid the ticket in a lock-box, next to my passport and stained social security card.

It would have given me so much happiness to see her over winter break. I imagined trying to meet up maybe once a year or so, in a Starbucks or a used book store. We could have been embarrassingly socialized. Eventually, we would have been able to call ourselves “old friends.” I suppose I’ll still be able to call her that.

I'm trying to find out when her funeral is. I don't know if it makes me a horrible person to not want to make the 5-hour each-way train ride home. I have my first performance this weekend with my a cappella group. I have so much class work and meetings. I can't imagine canceling all of that. But I can't imagine saying no to going. What’s socially accepted?

It shouldn't even be about that. It should be about what I can do to show I cared. But *I* know I cared. If she were able to know anything now, she’d know I cared, too. Why should I prove it to others? Her family, I guess, should know she meant a lot to me. As if I'm worthy of breaking into their world right now. I’m nothing to the parents of a dead girl.

And that's exactly how it should be, because what they're going through...of course I can't imagine. That's what everyone always says. "I can't even BEGIN to imagine how her poor parents must feel."

I’ve gotten 8 hours of sleep across the last 3 days. I have been sick for a week. I'm drowning in assignments. I was suddenly assigned a roommate after thinking I’d be alone till at least the spring. There goes my coping mechanism for the social anxiety. My only private space. It's been such a difficult week.

How do I make her more than just the bloody cherry on top of all these things? (Of course I still need to find out if there was blood.) How do I make her more important than sleepless nights, unfinished essays, sudden dorm life changes?

She's so much more than my experience of losing her. People have texted me to say they're sorry. But I wasn't her mother or her father or one of her siblings or Zach or another best friend or anything but someone who wasn't ever able to show her how beautiful she was.

All my love

…

from: samwrites@gmail.com

to: jade_benson@aol.com

date: Nov 13, 2018, 11:26 PM

subject: Hi

Mrs. B,

I’m emailing you because of what happened. I don’t know what to say. I don’t think I have anything to say. I loved her a lot. I was always so proud of her. She never appreciated herself. I was always trying to convince her. I didn’t succeed. Does anyone?

But I don’t want to assume that’s how she died…you know. Do you know? How she died? So that I don’t have to assume it was…you know.

I can’t stand the gossip that must be filling the suburban air over there. Of course, I can’t hear any of it. Boston’s got it’s own noises to clog your ears. And so do I.

I should delete that bit above. But I want this to be honest, and that’s what honestly went through my head. Its all for the sake of honesty, and that can be the ugliest thing around.

I couldn’t wait to see where she went to college. I talked to her in mid-September. I gave her this scale from one to ten, and it measured your mental health, worst to best. I admitted mine was around a 4 last year. She told me hers was a 6 back then. Now it was a 2. Should I have told someone?

Unless she didn’t die the way I think. Then none of that is important. Right? Can you tell me I’m right, even if I’m not?

I had a friend who really wanted to date her, and they would have been good for one another. And I would have been the matchmaker. I would have helped.

In the end, I doubt I did anything useful.

Her little brother is in my Boy Scout troop. She has other siblings. And parents. Of course. And Zach. How’s he making out as the head of the lit mag? I really miss everyone.

I wish I could be there right now. Because I knew “the one who passed away” this time. The previous ones, I didn’t. The car wreck when I was a freshman. The special ed girl. The boy who got into his dad’s armoire and shot himself. I never knew any of them.

Maybe the magazine could do a dedication page. She was an editor, even if only for a year. Zach will know what to do.

I wish I could be there.

So Long,

Sam

P.S. My mother always tells me to never say goodbye because goodbye means forever. “Instead, say ‘So long,’ and pray you meet again.” That’s how she put it. I think it was her grandmother who told her that. She’s the one who fifty years ago saw my uncle walking down the street to the school bus holding hands with the devil. He was sober for years before he died last spring, so I’m thinking my great-grandmother was a little misdirected in her superstitious talk. I’m realizing now that no one says “goodbye” at the end of emails. I feel stupid, but I’m too tired to delete all this and write something else.

…

Sam’s Journal—Entry #157, Notebook #3

Wednesday, November 18th

I’m too caught up in the very fact that she died to consider the concept of her death, the reality of it. It’s as if she’s really alive and some condition has been thrown onto her to make everyone feel unreasonably by undeniably sad about the idea of her.

She doesn’t exist anymore. I can’t understand it. It’s not a human ability to understand death, I guess. It is the opposite of human because to be human is to be alive, and that’s the opposite of being dead. No living thing should be able to grasp death. Like darkness never truly knowing light. It can see it. It can fight it. It knows how they are different. But it cannot be in the mind of darkness. It’s not composed of anything that makes up darkness. It is everything the darkness is not. It is the presence, and darkness is the absence. I cannot know my own absence, or that of someone else. If I did, that’d be too cruel.

Why are we sad when someone dies? They’re not in pain anymore. Are we sad because they went through pain? Sometimes they didn’t. In her case, I have no idea if there was pain, if there was blood. Some believe the dead are in a better place. And for those who don’t, like me, the pain someone went through doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing matters anymore because they ARE nothing anymore.

If not for pain, are we sad because the person will no longer go through the events and feelings of life? It is sad to not live, as living is good. Some of it, at least, and that is what I imagine we would be sad about. Not the other stuff.

The sadness could be selfish if it comes from no longer having that person to enjoy and learn from and gain from and heal from and live alongside. In this way, we’re sad for ourselves, because we’ve lost something useful to us.

We glamorize our own sadness; we channel it with a burning pleasure because it’s proof that we are feeling creatures, that we have hearts, empathy, which is a form of intelligence and therefore a form of superiority, of success, of ability, skill.

Maybe we are sad because we glamorize how others might be sad for us. We glamorize the sympathies we gain. When we cry, we’re thinking of what people would say to us, would think of us, how special and pitiful and innocent and strong we are to them in this moment. We love to be cared for, even if through pity. Sometimes that’s the most satiating. We yearn for attention, and pity is the most severe form of attention—when you’re the object of someone else’s sadness.

If I’m a satellite, I’m the satellite of an unmoving planet, one as dark and haunted as my metallic eyes.

            That was all a mistake. It sounds too messy. I’m never showing this journal to anyone.

All my love

…

from: samwrites@gmail.com

to: zach584@gmail.com

date: Nov 25, 2018, 7:02 AM

subject: I’m Sorry

Zach,

I’m sorry if it’s stupid of me to reach out. But I think you deserve it.

I don’t want you to feel obligated to respond. You don’t owe me your time right now. Through this whole thing, please don’t feel you owe anyone anything. Except what you owe yourself, which is your own love.

I’m sorry. That’s what people say. I don’t quite know what to say…that never stops me from blabbing on, though. All I know is that it would feel selfish of me not to acknowledge that you meant something good to her, and that means you deserve to read me saying that. We deserve to know when we mean something to other people, even if who we meant something to isn’t the one who tells us.

I don’t know if you’ve gone through trauma like this before, as if this is something to hold up against other things for comparison. And to call it a thing. This. What happened.

I do know your life is now, in a way, “before” and “after”. It’s not normal or fair or human to have this happen to you or her. I loved her. She meant a lot to me. I know she meant a lot to you, much, much more. I know that what I’m feeling now is excruciating. To try to consider what you’re going through is something I can’t imagine. That’s another thing people always say at times like this. And even that, “times like this,” because it’s too hard to admit the fact of the matter, because you know it hurts every time it’s said, and you can’t bear to feel guilty of causing more hurt. I hope this email doesn’t do that.

I won’t take any more of your time. But you should know that I am thinking of you, and my heart breaks for you, and it breaks for her family, and the rest of her friends, and it breaks the most for losing her. I loved her a lot. Please take care of yourself. Whatever that can possibly mean. Be kind to yourself. And don’t you dare take time you don’t have to respond. That’s not what I need. I need you to know that I’m thinking of you because you deserve to know that. That’s all I need. I can’t think of a way to end this. I’ll just say again the most dreadful but only conceivable thing to say, which is that I’m sorry.

So Long,

Sam

P.S. That might sound like a weird way to close an email, the “So Long,” but it’s a new thing of mine. I hope that’s alright.

…

Sam’s Journal—Entry #180, Notebook #3

Friday, December 11th

How can I be in the heart of Boston where they put silver Christmas lights on the hedges in the Public Garden when she’s accepted into Yale but unable to go because she’s dead?

Why am I here, where a statue of a man with a sword and smile tops the hill of the Common when her parents don’t even know I cared? It’s cold, it’s late, and there are Christmas lights on everything. People pass me, and I know that anyone seeing my face would make the tears stop, as if they’ve caught me acting, and I must retire in shame.

How can I be here, all these states away, and she’s lost everything beautiful? Why not kill me, too? Or instead; whatever works to get her back.

I’ve got to keep walking or the cold cuts right through my coat, the expensive one, the one we got on sale, the one that makes me look like I’ve got money, the gift from my grandmother I got a month before she died. My grandmother who never even finished high school. Yale would have turned their noses away.

So how can I be happy that she got in? Maybe it’s just because that’s what I was expecting, and the confirmation proves I knew what she was capable of, and somehow that proves I was a friend, because I knew her and cared about her.

I’ve got to get up and keep walking. The cold blows straight into my ribcage, tears the soul right out like dust on a row of book spines, each alone with gaps in between, balanced.

I love to feel bad for myself. That’s what I’ve done with her death.

I cry and cry to let out the bad, and then I dare think the bad is gone. What a privilege, to purge out that gook like playing a game, to return to something clean, or only dull and blind, to be able to have my pity party, say, “Boy, life really is tough,” and then to go back to spending my parents’ money—the money they could use to get a house by the ocean—to go back to mindlessly sucking up air, wasting the carbon I burn up, making nothing of what loving people pump into my ambitions, dreaming I’ll somehow make them proud.

I’m sorry to make you into something to make myself into something that looks vaguely like a creature capable of feeling. I’m sorry to transfer your loss into another speck of emotion, one I can’t handle properly, and to use your absence to get myself to tears so I can wake up tomorrow refreshed, rejuvenated, ready to take on another hollow hour of forgetting my troubles till biology calls on me to clean out the gook, spring cleaning. I’m sorry to use you as just another sponge in the sour pit of my chest.

It’s getting colder. That, or my body heat is wearing off. I’ll head inside for some sleep. Maybe some reading. Now that the episode’s over. Just another moment to tuck away. Just another bruise to fade as if the shadow of it doesn’t still scar the stopped heart of a girl who’s been turned into nothing by the world and something far from beautiful by me.

And when all the juice of her death’s run dry, I lay my head on my desk and feel my pride. To own the unique beauty of a weeping face, to gain the empathy of others, or to imagine it, the way they’d feel so bad, so sad, for me!

How could I think I had the right to be happy?

All my love

…

Unsent Letter from Sam’s desk, January 15th, 2019

My friend,

How dare I make you my beloved?

Be loved. Be love. My love. Mine. Be mine.

How do I make you distinct from the others I’ve lost? From even the other pains I feel? They didn’t give me the solo, they didn’t award my short story, they’re dating someone right now, I have so much hunger, I haven’t gotten any sleep, I need some time to think.

How do I isolate you? How do I keep you from the sour laundry list of problems in my planner, adding you in like nothing more than a T-shirt, a rejection, a lost lover? You’re more.

How do I communicate with someone who doesn’t exist? You’ll never know how much I’ve cried for you. As selfish as it sounds, this is what hurts the most. You won’t even know for sure that I loved you, that I still do, because I can’t remember having ever told you.

I’m sorry that ultimately, even if only in moments, other times for hours or even weeks or possibly months, for these varying periods of careless time, I will forget you.

I might even ask, “What was her name? The girl I knew in high school, the one who was  skinny and tall. Very Irish. My mother would have loved for me to marry a girl like that. She was bright. She was thoughtful. God, I really should be able to remember her name. It was beautiful. People would complement her on it all the time. If they didn’t, they should have.”

For now, I know. Can it be enough? Can it honor you? Can it meet your worth?

For now, I know too the answers to these.

All my love, and so long,

Sam

P.S. Deep down, I know the truest thing to say is goodbye. But despite being an atheist, I just can’t get myself to admit that, while loving you every day, I’ll never see or hear or touch you ever again. And you’ll never get so much as to read, to know, to hold a single word of anything I’ve written here. All of it was for you and no one else. This is it, then. This is what hurts me the most.