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Sunday, January 29, 2006
Shadows Four years ago, I met a man I didn’t know – arms folded, leaning against the wall of a hospital waiting room. I wasn’t there for him, or really even for the people he was there for. Four years ago, I was there for a friend who, a mere four months ago, I wasn’t able to support and, in turn, I was there for the stranger.
In August of 2002, someone I barely knew – a friend of a friend I met on a few occasions – was in a near fatal car accident. For nearly a month, I visiting the hospital occasionally, lending what support I could to what seemed like the most amazing group of people I would ever meet. A group of 15 – never fewer – camped outside those hospital rooms around the clock to bet there – not only for their injured comrades but for each other. They chain smoked, played cards and exchanged bitter humor to pass the hours – but they were all wearing their own fears inches beneath the surface.
Since that day, I came to know a lot of them. BJ, with his sweet disposition. Aaron and his, at times, high and mighty understanding of humanity learned in books rather than life. Nate, pension for the melodramatic or not – still a human being struggling to learn to survive. Beka, who tends to take gulps of life rather than sips, resulting in a lot of wrong turns and unnecessary pain.
Those are the ones I can speak of generally,. Those are the ones that I’ve watched at a distance these last few years. For the others, no amount of words strung together on a page could explain. For the rest, I have loved like no other – and loathed equally.
Colin, to whom I turned to on so many occasions – who misused my trust and turned a relationship I treasured into a weapon far more dangerous than any other. King, who I loved to the day he died and still love in each moment of my days – who betrayed my trust and then broke the souls of every person he loved.
And the stranger. The stranger who seemed to want nothing more than a human connection, hungered for a ground into reality – a tether on the tangible. I’d heard stories and gossip and I knew his name, but I knew no more than what he meant to my friend and what pain he was enduring when he looked upon the eyes of a familiar face that no longer knew his name.
Four years has passed since I watched in awe of a scene I could so scarcely believe. 15 and torn, yet again, from my psyche was any concept of faith or trust in humanity. But there I was, standing before people who were standing beside each other. They restored my faith for the flicker of a moment and when the lie finally went out, I no longer had my friend, but the stranger by my side.
He sought no more than a smile and a laugh – thriving on the happiness of those whom he loved, but he bore no malice when the smiles and the laughter became scarce. He carried the burden of a betrayal too great for any soul to manage without complaint for all it’s weight.
We moved on, the stranger and I, piecing together a life neither of us had ever planned. My friend faded from our day-to-day conversations – but never was forgotten. He returned, after a few more years and a lot more bitter memories, to fill the place that was always rightfully his.
In the end, I don't know if this indescribably muddled emotion is about my friend or the stranger or both, but I do know this - at twenty years old, you aren’t supposed to know the ending. An outlook and a sense of sophomoric omniscience, of course, but nothing more. At the age of twenty, I know enough to know that I can’t tell you the end for the stranger and I, but the end for my friend was recorded in scars across so many souls.
posted by Kay @ 9:59 PM
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