I know. I haven’t done this in a while and you hate me for it. You think I abandoned you, blog. No, I’m not gone. I’m right here. I still exist in this moment and on this world.
Geez, Alyssa, where’d you get all existential?
Just shut up, blog. I came back for a reason.
I forget what you looked like sometimes. The only time I can remember what your voice sounded like was when I imagine you, mischievous smile on your face, as you yelled “aww, geez!” I sometimes try to reason with myself, decide whether you were ever really real. You existed once, but you don’t anymore. The only place you exist now is in my mind. You are what I make you. I’ve made you the best friend I ever had, and maybe you were.
Remember the time Corey Lang wouldn’t go out with me in 6th grade, and you felt bad for me? You asked me out and stayed with me for a month, just to make me feel better. I was 11 then. I’m 19 now. If you were still here, that would only be a difference of eight years. But you aren’t, and it was a lifetime. I was older at 13 than I will ever be again, because of you. No, I’m not mad at you for that. I thank you for that. I miss you to death, but I thank you.
I’ve grown so far apart from everyone I considered a friend in 8th grade. I didn’t want to, Matt, honestly. I miss them all so much. I miss them almost as much as I miss you. It’s like they don’t exist anymore, either. I want them to exist, I want you all to exist. I want eighth grade to exist, not just be part of my imagination.
But the question must be asked: If you were here today, would you still exist? Would you be hours away physically and galaxies away mentally? How awkward would the silence be if we tried to chat? Who would you be? Who would I be? Would you still have that mischievous smile? Would I still be clueless about what it obviously hid? Would you still be my hero?
My theory is that you were the smartest person I have ever met. You figured it out, Matt. At 14, you figured it out. You figured out that the past stops existing. Everything that ever made us happy stops existing. The best moments become figments of our imaginations. You are a figment of my imagination. My friends are all figments of my imagination. Tangible figments. Living memories of how wonderful things used to be. At 13 you knew this would happen, and you made sure it didn’t. You became the happy memory, you didn’t let them pass you by. You were never going to sit up, at 2:30 a.m. in a dark dorm room, looking at pictures of the friends you once had.
You’re so young. You’re 20 years old in this instant, but you’ll only ever be 14. You’ll always remain in the happiest time of all of our lives. You genius, you. I’ll never get to be an 8th grader again, you’ll be one for life. You lucky devil. You damned smart, lucky devil.
You child. You bright eyed, smiling child. I miss you so much. You’re the best friend I ever had, the best friend I’ll never see again. I used to think I’d see you in heaven, Matt. I used to be an idiot. We’re all in hell here, you were the last of us to get away safely. Tantalus never had it this bad, buddy. The happiness is only a few years past, dangling there in our conscious thoughts. The ones that are only real because we think they are. You, you’re there. Donnie is there. Zane, Kristen, they’re there. They’re perfect there. Perfect and unattainable. Figments of our imaginations.
I remember the time you broke the popcorn sponge. The time you snorted sour Skittles powder. The time you broke the blinds trying to get Cassy light to cheer her up. Do you remember? Would these all just be blips in time if you were still here? If memories of the person you were weren’t precious commodities?
Sorry for all of this. I stumbled upon a picture of you and Donnie and your other brothers. You’re just so young. Can we really have only been in 8th grade? Can I really have only been 13? How do you tell a 13 year old that her friend didn’t want life and nothing could be done about it? How do you make a 13 year old understand the permanence of life and death? How do you make a 19 year old understand the permanence of life and death? How do you make anyone understand that a 14 year old child can decide he is done with life? How do you make anyone understand he was a genius for it?
You just don’t. You can’t. You “accept.” You “move on.” You do everything the school counselors tell you to do when they call you for assemblies to try to make you feel better about things you shouldn’t feel good about. You do it all and none of it erases the scar opening in your life, if you are lucky. Pray it doesn’t erase that scar, you need it. You need it to survive in this world. Don’t ever let them take that scar from you, they are liars. He’s gone and all you have left are memories. That’s all you’ll ever have of him. That’s all you’ll ever have of all of the friends you say goodbye to at graduation and see only in Facebook statuses. He was preparing you for the truth, the reality, the future by making that scar on your past.
A genius. A God-blessed genius. A God-blessed genius with those happy blue eyes, that smile. 14 years old. And now it’s 3 a.m. but he’ll sleep long enough for the both of us. This blog post is going to say what I want it to. If it takes a sleepless year it will say what I want it to.
You’re a happy kid playing Bop-It in your All-stars uniform on Halloween. You’re a body in a casket in a cemetery in Allenton, Michigan, gauze covering the place where the face you didn’t want anymore used to be. You’re the centerpiece of a funeral attended by 5,000 people, half of the entire town. You don’t exist anymore. My mind fights with itself daily, and I wonder if anyone else understands the confusion I have. Surely they must. Surely they must wonder if you ever existed. Everything we have of you is in our minds. The past stopped existing and you are the past. Did you ever exist? Was it ever real? I can’t be the only one that wonders if we ever really did spend science class laughing in the back corner. I have nothing left of you. How am I supposed to know you were real when I can hardly remember your face anymore? You left nothing.
And I’m convinced I’ll never see you again. I’m convinced we all made up heaven just like we made you up. You’re too good for us. Paradise is too good for us. I’m convinced what you became was nothing more than a body in the ground. That’s all I’ll ever be, too. I hate that. I hate this, this wondering what comes next. Some say it’s the best part of life, not knowing what the next day brings, what the end brings. I hate that I was expected to move on. I never did. I never left February 10th, 2004. I never will, come to think of it. I never want to. I want to remember forever what it felt like the moment I learned we are all just animals. Just animals with a finite time on earth and nothing to look forward to. I want to remember when I lost my immortality. Not innocence. I’m human, I was never innocent. I want to remember when I lost my friend. I want to remember where I failed to learn the lesson that one day I would lose everything.
Halloween, 2000. You’d just turned 11. 3 more years. What were you thinking in that moment? That smile on your face, were you really happy? Was it just a lie, a 3+ year lie? What was I thinking? In less than a year, the towers would fall. In a year, you would ask me out in pity. In a year you would give me one of the best memories of what humanity could be like when it was good. One of the last memories of such. In 3 years, 3 months and 10 days, you would decide you were done. In 3 years and 27 days it would be your favorite number. 11:27. What was the significance? Anything? when I see 11:27 on the clock now I can still hear your voice. I imagine it is you talking to me. When I am having a rough day and I happen to see 11:27 I know you are there for me. When I don’t, I imagine you have better things to do. I understand that. You have so many friends, you can’t pay attention to all of us at once.
4 a.m. and I still haven’t found exactly what it is I want to say. I still haven’t made my point. I still haven’t found the words to make everyone understand what a picture of you from 2000 means to me today. I don’t have the words for the sudden feeling of numb that came over me when I remembered that I’d forgotten you. In 3rd grade at FFA day I saw a little black goat huddled in the back of a trailer, scared of all the noise. I told that goat I’d never forget it. I haven’t. But I’ve forgotten you, my last hope for humanity. How? How have I forgotten my little scar? Is it pretentious for me to say I feel ancient when I think of how I’ve forgotten you? Has everything I have said been pretentious, even if I meant all of it?
Look at me. Never learned a damned thing. Still pining for society’s approval. I’m only human. I’m not a 14 year old genius. I haven’t figured out how to break free. This was never meant for anyone else, anyway. It was meant for me. It was meant to explain how seeing your face in a still image, in a combination of chemicals and trapped light on a paper-like film, transferred onto a computer, made me feel. An intangible moment captured by someone intelligent enough to know you were one to remember. A memory. A figment of someone’s imagination. A…a word that hasn’t been invented. Something that cannot be described. You were there, right? You existed? Where are you hiding now? In your grave, underground? When will we see you again?
You existed in January, 1997. You were seven. I was in Florida. You’re in a shirt that’s too big for you. In 7 years and one month you’ll be in a casket that’s too big for you. Your Legos are in the background. Legos were my favorite toys, too. Our parents thought we were going to get married. They thought Karey and Donnie would be married, too. Parents are funny like that, they can’t see the future. You were always too smart for me. I understood school work, you understood the world. I’m in college now, you’re in paradise. You were always smarter.
4:30 and I feel a sense of calm. The rage and the sadness and the misery are passing and the storm is calling. I put your picture away. I can’t look at it knowing I’ll never be able to express what it means to me. I adore you. I often imagine meeting you walking around campus. I imagine suddenly seeing you walking toward me, coming out of your hiding place in the ground after all these years to greet me. I imagine leaping at you, wrapping you up in the biggest hug I’ve ever given. I imagine everything wrong in my life fading away and never coming back. I imagine regaining my faith. I imagine being able to believe again in miracles, hope, happiness, friendship, humanity, life…
But it is all a figment of my imagination. All intangible. I miss you so much, Matt.
