Telling Truth, Telling Lies, I Used To Have a Friend

I say it means a lot.

Facts are, the General's first post placed a ticking bomb into my subconscious  and the four trunkbumper's "No Hero" has been randomly popping up again and again on my playlist in the last two weeks. I couldn't help it; this is a topic I usually try to avoid at all costs, but here we go, with a complete post, thought-out, written down, waiting to be published.

Everybody's got stories involving  Zack. The one I'm about to tell you isn't really about him though,and mostly not about me, either. It's more about figuring things out, all kinds of them, at different points of our lives, sometimes three halos away from the persistence of loss. Cryptic metaphor.

I guess our starting point is a cold day during that damned winter of 2008/2009, so and by far the most miserable period of my life. Early afternoon, I'm walking down on the street  behind my school when I spot Zack getting into a car parked at the side of the road. He's still there when I catch up with him. I knock the window on the passenger side, he turns his head to me, that typical grin of his flashing up and he opens the door for me.

"Hey, jump, in," he says. "Need a ride?"

We live pretty close to each other, but I'm not headed home yet.

"Maybe. Could you drop me at the hospital by any chance?"

"Sure," he says, and I sit down beside him. He fires up the engine; some obscure ska-punk song starts shouting from the whatever-player, and the record quality makes it hard to tell whether the lyrics are about pig slaughter or a Jewish wedding.

"So what's your business with the hospital?" Zack asks, as we roll out to the main road.

First I consider joking about the urology clinic, then decide it could be a bad omen, so I tell him the truth.

"Psychiatry, believe it or not. Got the pills and have to see a shrink once a week."

"Feeling depressed?" Zack asks, his eyes leaving the road for a second, the perfect amount of irony and honest understanding in his voice. "Like an outsider, cast out by society, normal people and their standards?"

"Something like that.They say I'm not far away from offing myself, but I don't think I could ever do it." I just had to add that, thinking Congratulations son, you've just been identified as a living cliché.

"I've been there, too, felt like shit about myself all the time. Got better when I started listening to ska."

It's hard to picture a self-loathing Zack. Suddenly I feel like an idiot for not listening to anything else than dark industrial and the moodiest of Swedish movie soundtracks for the last two months.

A few minutes pass in silence, and we reach the local hospital. Getting out, I  say thanks for the ride, and Zack tells me he knows a song that's almost totally about my situation.

"I'll send it to you, you're gonna fucking love it," he promises as we wave goodbye.

The music arrives the next day through a friend of ours. "Institutionalized" by a band called Suicidal Tendencies. Yeah, I told you this was a story about figuring things out, on many levels. By the three minutes mark I can't stop laughing at the way it's mocking depressed teens and the way parents and society reacts to them.

Of course I could not do it, and why would anyone else, I don't really understand. There's a handful of truth buried into the song's irony, but at the moment really fucked up kids, deviant thoughts, self-harm and suicidal tendencies themselves are nothing but a musical joke to me, imaginary concepts of pop-culture, hovering in a safe distance from my everyday life. I'm still six days away from meeting someone who actually cuts herself, and I still have almost three seasons to tell Zack how much he helped me with this shit.

The first anniversary of his death finds me at freshman camp. Late August, it's the second night, I haven't been sober for a while, and I can't stop myself from announcing a kind of half-assed toast. My freshman teammates are into it though, and  for a long minute Zack's memory rules a silent room. Magical moments, definitely not just because of the booze, or because I was able to drown my shyness in it, and for the first time this group of almost-strangers heard me talking loud and clear, in front of all of them.

Jumping into retrospect, I always feel sorry for a lot of things regarding those days.

Most of the night following the memorial I've spent hanging around with him, and you can't possibly imagine how much I want to remember more details, recall a lot more sober thoughts and moments. He seemed like a cool guy, friendly and open with everyone, had a nerdy interest in military tech, movies and music.

He had the song used in the 300 trailer on his phone without title and artist named. Bravely spitting into fate's eyes we climbed on top of a two-story building (just to make sure nothing happens to a girl who was already wondering up there, at least that's what we told ourselves) all the while trying to figure out the track's name. I knew it was a The Fragile piece by Nine Inch Nails, and although normally I could name every track on that record, that one particular halo title seemed to slip my mind. For a while, at least - figuring things out, that's our theme, remember?

"It's 'Just Like You Imagined'. Cool title," I declared finally, safely on the ground after the roof adventure, and even more drunk thanks to our female companion's wine. Calling it a night, heading back to our quarters he played the song again for what it seemed like the hundredth time, and we still loved every second of it.

At the end of the camp we said we should keep in touch, hang out sometimes during the semester. The beginning of a beautiful friendship, and all that stuff. I never saw him alive again.

Six months later you could define me as a college dropout by choice. In this web2.0 age it's hardly surprising that the news of his death came to me via that dreaded social network, with shocked people e-whispering about suicide. Although I did not know any specific details - to this very day I don't -, a cold déja vu fell on me, all-too familiar guilt mixed with simple, yet puzzling questions. How?, Why?, and Why is this happening again? Did someone expect it? Could I've done something to stop it? and Who will be the next one?

Answers are either obvious or nonexistent, depending on the situation. The only constant is that during your lifetime you are going to lose people, sometimes at an alarming rate. Hardly a surprising fact, I know. Want some kind of moral or lesson about it? Fuck me, it's difficult.

Feeling guilty, unsatisfied and disappointed in yourself is inevitable. It's the devilish, resilient-as-hell side-effect of grieve. But I figure (atyaégbzmeg) you can subside it by keeping your eyes open around yourself and around the people you care about. Be with them, make times that will be worthy to remember, to think about, and to relive as sweet anti-dote if that gray, soulless feeling ever finds you because of them.

Here's the real take-home value: I don't care how shy or anti-social you are. As long as you've got the chance you should not hesitate to seek out possible and almost established friendships. I miserably failed with this not once, but two times now, and boy, I can tell you it sucks.

Never.

Fucking

Again.

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