Reel Expression

Dig it kats n kittens, today is the last day of my 20’s.

(Picture: Me on my 2nd birthday - 1979)

I’m not very interested in my birthdays. It’s all very exciting until you hit 21. You can drink (in the US) but after that, it’s all sort of blah. 23 was interesting because I remember as a kid figuring out that I’d be 23 when the year rolled over to 2000. Oddly enough, as a chick I have no fear of growing older. I think that stems from not being very interested in outwards appearances and growing older just means more experiences. I also think it in part has to do with looking much younger than I am and being treated as such. Then I have the issue of never actually feeling any different. It’s just another day, another year.

The rest of this blog post had started out as just a brief paragraph of why my birthdays make me sad but it turned into a long, exremly depressing and very personal thing. I’ve debated with myself for the past few hours whether or not to hit the “publish” button or to delete the entire story, but I’m feeling kind of whacky and think that it might make me feel better.

Usually I try not to talk about super personal things on this blog. I’m a relativly secret sort of a person but it seems more and more it just kind of comes out. In SL, I’m not an alter ego. I don’t roleplay. I am me. Some people don’t like it when content creators talk about personal RL things, or even things outside of what is considered “professional.” The fact of the matter is sometimes I just feel like typing about something other than SL.

So, I understand if you don’t want to read it. Fuck I don’t even think I want to read it. Just skip to the bottom where I talk about happy things again.

—- start sad bit —–

Birthday’s are a time of self reflection and (for me) whatever regrets we have in life tend to crop up. I have tried to live my life without any regrets and holding on to the idea of whatever doesn’t kill us, only makes us stronger. But for the past 7 years, my birthdays end up depressing. In April of 2000, a really close friend of mine commited sucide, his name was Ben. I had been friends with him for quite a long time and it’s disheartening feeling to outlive him yet another year. While the week of the aniversary of his death - usually centering around the day when I found out about it - is pretty bad, it always seems to feel worse around my b-day.

I’d hung out with him since I was 14 and pretty much knew this was inevidble the entire time. He’d attempted it several times over the years and the idea crept up in his writing quite often. We all tried to help him but there was little that we could do. I’m not sure if you’d heard the idea of the thin line between maddness and genius, but he quite often skirted it. He was insanly intelligent and talented at writing which is very difficult to grow up with. As an adult, I now know that everyone feels alone and trapped inside their head most of the time, but to grow up in a smallish city in NE in a society that frowns upon being different in any sort of way, after that moment of figuring out that no one thinks like you is a difficult idea to deal with.

As a group we all were like that which is what drew us together along with the same coping inabilty of using far too many substances to dumb us down. The thing of it was, was that our differentness was all so varied and we never once spoke about it. It was just this thing that hung over our heads but we tried to ignore it almost as much together as we did with “normal” people. I was the socially inept one with a scary photographic memory, intense ability for maths and science, and a very odd way of speech because of my dyslexia. For him, he had this great talent for writing that became a sordid view of the world and more specifically human nature. Eventually, before his 24th birthday it overran him and in the middle of the night after mixing alcohol with his anti-depressants, he hung himself.

The years that I spent the most amount of time around him was the three years of a relationship with one of his best friends aka my “high school sweetheart.” We were that disgustingly happy young couple that annoys everyone arround them. On the outside, it was what everyone called “perfect.” But looks always decieve and about a year into it, he’d changed drastically into a horrible drunk. The one person to help me through the 2 years of lies and broken promises of quitting was Ben.

The part that really compounds it all, is for the last 5 years of his life we had this on again off again thing. It was a very intense relationship where there was always something that just made it the wrong time in our lives to start something. At times it was him and other’s it was me and each excuse usually was valid. It had started the week after I’d finally called it quits with the drunk, but I put a hold on it out of respect for a person who’d treated me so terribly. Sometimes it was really needing to deal with other shit, but sometimes the off again times were results of miscommunication.

Years later, many drunken nights of reflection and a series of odd events, I now fully understand that the biggest issue was that there were 3 people in the relationship. Since we never did really talk about actual feelings toward eachother or the issues about it, a lot of it I had to piece together mostly after his death. Even though my relationship with my ex had been pretty bad, we’d stayed friends. That was all it was. At the time, I would never have believed someone would think that I wasn’t over him. Even now, it’s still pretty difficult. The last time we switched off again was right after a night out with my ex and his GF. We’d all stayed at my flat that night, had breakfast, and with no explination he stopped taking my calls. Life went on as it always did and a few months later I ran into him. I was pretty nasty and saddly that was the last time I saw him alive.

A few months after that, right before I left for SF, I was hanging out with another mutal friend who told me that recently Ben and my ex had a large public fight. I pressed him for more information, but he didn’t know anymore. After his death - 5 months later - I found out that the fight had been Ben yelling at my ex about how I wasn’t over him, it was my ex’s fault, and things of that nature. I really do think that’s the only time that I’ve ever wished I knew about drama earlier then when I did.

For many different reasons, to all but a few people what we had was a very secret thing. So the funeral was an absolute nightmare. Most people didn’t even know we’d been in contact for the past 5 years, let alone all the things that happened. It probably didn’t help matters at the after funeral drinking fest that I got so fed up with people treating me as if I shouldn’t even be there, I blew up and announced the entire thing. I’m not sure if it was a defense against their friend not telling something that happened over such a long time, or the constant anger at me for cutting off all ties to that group of intense partiers, but all I recieved was scorn and disbelief.

In all my years of doing all sorts of really stupid things, the only ones I regret have to do with him. And trust me, there are so many of them. I regret not jumping in the first time. It’d be a far better story about that one time after getting caught in the rain, standing under a tree, and kissing someone. Instead of pushing him away because it might hurt someone else. Yeah, it probably would have gone terribly wrong but at least I’d know. I regret telling Ben off the last time I saw him instead of asking what the fuck happened. I regret not actually trying to find out about the fight and setting it straight. I regret the many other times I didn’t fight for something I’d wanted for so long.

It was just this weird thing where I always figured there would be a time when it all fit into place. Saddly enough, life just isn’t fair. Fair is a place where pigs get ribbons.

For the most part, “I’ve moved on.” But the thing about death is that the only thing that the person leaves behind is the memory the living have of them. The scariest thing, for me anyways, is to have those memories fade. While I am sitting here missing him and regreting so much of the things I did wrong, in the midst of it all I can still close my eyes and recall a moment of youth when nothing else seemed to exist but whatever idea he was spouting off over a really bad cup of coffee in a greasy booth at our favourite diner.

—- end sad bit —–
For my birthday this year, hubbie is taking me to Rome for 5 days. Yay! We are staying in a bed and breakfast that is 1 block north of the Vatican Museums. They even serve breakfast on the terrace that overlooks St. Peter’s Basilica! Not to worry, I’ll take plenty of pictures and upload them after we return next Tue.

So… I’m going to be away for the next week pretty much. The next couple of days I’ll be dealing with all that birthdays bring, including making cup cakes tomorrow! Then I’ll be completly out of touch while in Rome.

Arrivederci!
Luth