This is love/hate.

I hate that you were living the life I always wanted.

I hate that you got the idea for your life from the dreams I shared with you.

I hate that you never experienced loss like I have.

I hate that you were tanning on the beaches of Australia while I was heading to school in -30 Celsius to go and write an exam for a class I didn’t even like.

I hate that everything seemed to work out for you.

I hate that you never looked back.

I hate that we lost touch.

I hate that you couldn’t talk to me.

I hate you for letting go.

I hate you for giving up.

I hate you for taking those pills and slitting your wrists.

I hate you for not giving me the chance to save you.

I hate you for not giving me the time to tell you how much I love you and everything about you.

*************************************************************************************

I received the devastating news today that a friend of mine, Christy, committed suicide Friday in her apartment in Australia.
From what was pieced together, she wrote down a list of all the people she wanted to have contacted(myself being one of them), wrote a few goodbyes, as well as her reasons for not being able to take life anymore. She then took several pills, and got into her standing shower, ran the water, and slit her wrists.

My old friends are dropping like flies. In times like these, I understand how completely powerless she must have felt, how helpless she let herself become.

I hate her for letting go. And sickeningly, all at the same time, I’m jealous that her pain is over.

I wish I had had the chance to tell her what a beautiful soul she had, that her smile lit up a room, and that her brilliant mind always had me on the edge of my seat.

There’s no sense in wishing.  It’s too late.

I love you, Christy.

A tale of a failed goodbye.

I can’t remember how I got there. In fact, I don’t even remember how my mom told me.

I do remember, however, a while before, my mother came home crying and called my name. I froze. I screamed at her “No, no, no”, over and over again and fell to the floor. This is when she came up the stairs and held me like a child, like an infant child. She tried to tell me through her own tears and through holding my convulsing body that it hadn’t happened yet. He wasn’t gone, but he was unresponsive and it wasn’t looking good.

I finally stood up and like an idiot, I had a glimmer of hope, a glimmer that maybe a god, any god would pull through and save my daddy. That’s the day I became agnostic. There is no god. Prove me wrong.

I can’t remember how she told me when it really happened. I can’t remember how I got there.
What I do remember, is how desolate and sick-smelling the hospital was at around 1 in the morning.
I remember the look of pity, a look that seemed to understand my sheer desperation, from the nurses.
I remember him lying there, so peaceful, with no needles, no monitors, nothing attached to him for the first time in so long, it seemed. He seemed so content. And at that moment, I felt so selfish for wanting him back.
I remember what it felt like to hug him and kiss him and whisper my attempts at goodbyes with my head on his chest where his heart used to beat.
I remember begging him with every bit of my soul to take another breath, to just wake up and jokingly say “Gotcha”.
I remember hating myself for not getting to say a proper goodbye. I still do.

I don’t remember getting home. I don’t remember how the rest of the next few days went.

I do remember, however a few days after the funeral, after the dust had settled, after all the family from out of town left our house, getting ready for bed. I remember washing my face and hearing a hint of a tune from the living room. I was used to this as the house was old and my mom had a lot of wind up musical things, and when a big truck would pass by, sometimes the wind-up figurines would let a tune, sometimes 2 escape.
This was different. This played the better part of the song. It resulted in me screaming for my mother and sister, yet not feeling afraid. I found what had played the song, and saw it was a picture frame with a poem in it telling me about friendship and how someone will always be there for me.  I know it was from him. As crazy as it sounds, I completely and totally believe it was him telling me he would be with me forever.
After that reassuring moment, I went and cried myself to sleep. As I did for many nights, and as I still do sometimes.

At times I think he would hate the person I have become. Others, I wish he was here to tell me he was proud of me because I know he would be.

I was 17 when I lost him, still just a child.  In 6 weeks it will be the 4th anniversary of his death. In 2 days, it would have been his 59th birthday.

All this, all this rambling, all these tears just to say, I miss my daddy and he will forever and always be on my mind and in my heart.

Save your strength for the morning after.

So it appears that I’m 21.

Guess what? Being 21 totally sucks.

My birthday was the 18th. Well the night before, shortly after midnight, I received a text message saying : “How does it feel 2 B da only 1 from da crew 2 make it past 20 free n alive?”

I assumed that I was getting that message because of all the friends I had gotten into trouble with, and the friends that got me into trouble, I was the only one to still be alive and out in the world.

Of a group of 8, 4 are in prison, 1 is in rehab and the other 2 are dead. I’m the only one of us who even graduated from high school let alone went on to go to college.

I got the text message from a girlfriend(maybe an ex…I don’t know) of one of the guy’s in prison.

So I interpreted that as her sick way of wishing me a happy birthday.

Thursday evening I went to a nice dinner with my mother. Then, I celebrated my birthday at the pub. Some people were weird but I was too drunk to care. My good friend invented a shot for me and named it the “Gabby Baby”. That was probably the highlight of my whole birthday celebration.

After the pub closed, we went to “The Zoo” (it’s actually called the Central Tavern but if you say Central Tavern, all you get is a strange look). Had some good times there.
And then waited for a cab in the freezing cold for over an hour. I peed in an alley way 3 times and threw up twice. Yay. Happy freaking birthday to me.

Friday rolls around and I am still too frozen to get up and go to school. Fuck that shit. I skipped school and stayed in bed. Til 4. So Friday was supposed to be the Pub Crawl second edition.

It was. We were supposed to be at the College to get on a bus for 830. Well. 845 rolls around and I get a phone call:
“Where are you?”
“I’m still in town”
“well we’re holding the bus for you. Are you coming soon?”
“We’ll meet you at the first bar.”

That made me feel special. They held the bus for my betch ass. Well we got there late, and ended up only starting at the second bar.
At the third bar, we are amazed and thrilled and beyond excited that yes, they have KARAOKE!
We sang. If you can call it that. I had a shot of god knows what…out of a glass…with ice…yeah. Dumbass bartenders.

Off to the fourth bar. I remember dancing and jumping off stages. Other then that, that particular bar is kind of a blur.

At the fifth bar, we went in and played some pool and I had Rev number who knows? And then took off to Amigos. I then got systematically ditched at the door. They almost didn’t let me in cause I had the hiccups.

Inside I went to dance and then went to get my coat to have a cigarette. As I’m putting on my coat, I’m informed by some transvestite looking security bitch that I am too drunk and have to leave.

It wasn’t even one in the morning. I also was not allowed to go tell my friends that I had gotten kicked out. Joy. I finally was able to call someone to come and talk to me as I was waiting outside alone. And then told them to have fun, I was pissed and that I needed to just go home. I then proceeded to get very very sick.

There are a few lessons I learnt from Thursday and Friday:
Lesson 1: No more Rev for Gabby. Rev makes her sick. And makes her vomit black. (cool huh?)
Lesson 2: Never hope or over plan. When you plan for an event in too much detail and hope that it will turn out amazingly, it doesn’t.
Lesson 3: Don’t have deep conceptual conversations when you are drunk with a random. They’ll think you’re interested.
Lesson 4: Think like I’m 20. Maybe then it won’t be so bad.

Now continuing the weekend. Saturday morning, I woke up feeling hungover and kind of miserable to being with. But then I got a text message and it made everything worse.
It turns out that I had not interpreted the text message from Wednesday night properly. And when she didn’t get a response she sent me another text.

The text message had actually been sent to tell me that one of my friends in prison died. He’d been sick for a while, all the drugs had really messed up his immune system, and his body just gave out on him on Wednesday afternoon.

“Da Crew” count as of now : 3 in prison, 1 in rehab, 3 dead. And me.

So yes, I was short with certain people Saturday evening and night. Yes, I was a bitch for no apparent reason. Well now, I would like to think that my reasons are apparent.

That may explain why I’ve been a recluse. Why I don’t want to deal with the world. Why I hate the world right now. And why right now, I just wish I could go to sleep and never wake up. But guess what? I have a stats test tomorrow. And I’m the only one to have made it to college.
I’m not only continuing this year for me. I’m going to make something of myself. For everyone who doubted me. And for everyone who’s believed in me.

*R.I.P. my dear J.D.(August 1987- January 2007). You will always and forever be in my heart and thoughts.