Once upon a time I lived in a dumpy little one bedroom apartment on 13th street just a block from the Eugene city library. The main room was small, maybe ten foot by ten foot, and contained all the furniture I owned: a faux wood book case, octagonal kitchen table pushed into the corner and being used as a computer desk, the small children's desk with drawers I'd inherited from my sister, a banged up black filing cabinet, and computer chair. A blue and purple mountain bike sat parked in the short hall connecting the front room to the bathroom and smaller, spartan bedroom containing nothing but an old matress pushed against the far end. The walls around the desk were covered in black and white pictures of Tori Amos, The Buddha, and Kurt Cobain, that had been printed on my little HP 500 DeskJet. That little room was the Swiss Army knife, the entertainment room, the family room, the study, the kitchen, and someday, perhaps, the guest room.
I'd recently been kicked out of the apartment of the woman I loved. I'd become friends with a girl in Corvallis who I'd met online and while I had no intention of it being more than friendship she'd sent a letter with romantic overtones which had been intercepted and interpretted as a sign of present or at least pending infidelity. So there I lived, alone in that little apartment just a block away, hoping she, the true love of my life, would some day hear me, the truth, forgive me, and let me back into her life.
When I wasn't cycling to and from the University of Oregon campus or scribbling detailed notes in class after class I spent my days at the desk studying. Once or twice a week I'd walk ten blocks west to the Lincoln School Apartment where my creative writing instructor lived. There I babysat her newborn son, Connor, while she went out with her friends. And that was it, my social life consisted of a beautiful two month old baby boy; it was the only time during the week that I felt happy.
This was years before the World Wide Web came into regular use, when the Internet was mostly used by people like me who knew how to jump around Unix mainframes and use NN (News Net) and basic text Internet chat rooms. It was in one such NN group dedicated to Apple II computers that I met a much older man named Hank Levinson who I established a warm, empathetic rapport with. He was a professor of mathematics at Rutgers University in New Jersey and had once been a close friend of Albert Einstein. He too, had struggled with depression, he too had loved and been abandoned by love, he too had reached the point where he asked himself whether it was better to live or to die, and so while only over e-mail our correspondence brought moments of relief in what was otherwise a lonely, lonely life. He knew what I was going through and had nothing but love for me.
It was during this time that I met someone else online. She was about four or five years younger than me and also a student at the UofO. We opened up to each other, shared intimate details of our lives, and quickly became good friends who regularly joined each other for tea and poetry at a nearby coffee shop. She was beautiful, head strong, smart, and had not known the hardships I had, and yet I had no interest in seeking a relationship with her. My heart was already taken. While I cannot presume too much I think she found it comforting and safe that she could establish a solid relationship with a heterosexual man who wasn't looking fothales. Me? Having a core human need met I was happier than I had been in a very, very long time.
It was around the same time that I met another person online. He was one or two years my junior and lived in Portland. I felt a deep and immediate connection with him: as I once had he struggled with a deep suicidal Depression. I had made a vow to myself many years earlier, when conquering the bulk of my Depression and all my suicidal tendencies, that I would be there for anyone who was going through the same thing so I kept that promise by being there for him as he shared heart wrenching stories of his life, pain, and difficulties. We e-mailed each other daily, often several times per day. I listened. I offered advice. I gave him a virtual shoulder to cry on from someone who would never judge him and slowly, ever so slowly, I began to see him learn to build hope within his heart. Our friendship provided a sense of purpose and meaning; what I had survived had not been for nothing and now I could really make a difference in someone else's life. I was to him in many ways what Hank was to me.
My life has been replete with synchronicity, seemingly random events that, when taken as a whole, cannot be seen as anything but having some Divine reason. And though the odds were millions to one it was no surprise when I learned that these two friends, so far apart, were about to meet.
It came together slowly like clouds inching together to fill an empty summer sky.
I received a letter from him one day unlike any he'd ever written before. It was upbeat, positive, happy, a contrast so obvious that I immediately became concerned. He spoke of a younger woman he'd met online and they were hitting it off. As the days passed he spoke more and more of her until he spoke of little else. I warned him of the dangers of looking for a savoir, especially after he told me they were going to meet that coming weekend, and he did the, "Yeah, yeah, I know, but I've got it under control," thing.
The next time I saw my female friend she confided in me that she'd recently met an older man over the computer who she was taking a liking to. I asked about him and learned that he lived in Portland. She wanted my advice about meeting him. She wanted it to be safe and so we discussed not giving out her personal information such as telephone number or address and meeting him in a public place. That settled I went home.
Trying to believe this couldn't be but knowing better I e-mailed my male friend and asked him where the girl he'd become infatuated with lived and what her name was. I sent her one asking his name. He responded Eugene. They said each other's names.
The clouds darkened and thunder rolled through.
She planned to drive up to Portland that coming Friday and meet him on Saturday. It was Tuesday. I had only a few days to decide what I would do with the information I'd learned. An ordinary person may have been troubled but then shrugged and went on with life. I have never been ordinary.
My woman friend, who I will not name here for obvious reasons, was a rape survivor. She had suffered unspeakable suffering at the hands of another man and was only now healing from the trauma. Did she have the right to know the man she was going to meet was a troubled soul with a high probability of hurting her in her current state?
Some would say he had no place getting into a relationship until he got his proverbial shit worked out, but I knew better. For one, if we were to apply such a standard then no one except Saints and Buddha's should seek out romantic relations. And who was I or anyone else to say a solid friendship and relationship with a strong, supportive, loving woman wasn't exactly what he needed to ease his way towards healing?
I spent the next three days sitting on the floor in the center of my apartment. I didn't go to school. I ignored the apartments no smoking policy and went through pack after pack, barely leaving a moment between one cigarette and the next. I cried, God I cried for three days straight. And I called the woman I was in love with and begged her for some support, some help, something. My voice shook as I sang, "You are my sunshine." I did not want this choice. I had not asked for it. I didn't understand how I attracted this kind of bullshit into my life but it was there and my choices were do something or shut my fucking mouth. I knew I might very well loose one of the only friendships I had if not permanently effect them both.
I wanted to die...but as I'd promised myself so long ago I did not act on it.
Three long, difficult days came and went. I did not sleep and when I did it was often there on the floor with only a pillow and the stuffed elephant from my childhood (sorry for the second hand smoke, Eli). Pain radiated behind my eyes, pulsing, pulsing pain. I coughed up thick brown lipo-proteins. I stared at myself in the mirror trying to imagine myself strong, an angelic warrior sent here to do good in others' lives. The second hand on the clock ticked.
It was time.
I sat down at the computer and began to compose an e-mail to him. I told him that I was and had been close friends with the woman he was going to meet. I didn't share personal details about her life as it wasn't the honorable thing to do but I said I was concerned about him getting into a relationship in his current state and that she had a right to know what she was getting into. She had a right to choose.
Within the hour I received his response, a leader pleading--no begging--for me not to speak to her about it. He said I was right, she needed to know, but he should tell her. I saw in his letter more than someone who was afraid of loosing a potential partner but someone who wanted to act with honor and integrity. I wanted to give him that chance. Indeed, I jumped at the opportunity to see another person stand, to do the right thing, to learn and grow and be something beautiful and more wonderful and couragous than they ever thought possible and I knew that kind of person derserved a chance at a relationship.
I said yes.
I didn't hear back from him that day. I didn't hear from her. A day of silence passed and I became increasingly anxious: the worst always happened in my life but I'd done the right thing so maybe this time, maybe this time. I sent both letters, to him asking how it had gone and if he was okay, to her asking how she was. I don't recall who got back to me first but I do remember what is important. I received a hate filled letter from him accusing me of wanting her for myself, wanting to destroy his life and any chance for his happiness, of being a selfish asshole and bastard of a friend. I received a phone call from her; she likewise accused me of trying to undermine him and their relationship. And that was it. They stopped returning my letters and phone calls.
I was alone.
Three days I sat there doing nothing but focus on the right thing. Three days adrenaline filled my veins as I worried I would loose one of the only friendships I had. Three days of tears only to learn friendship had been replaced by hate. No one cared. No one knew what I had gone through for each of them, my sacrifice, my love. I was a terrible, terrible person, a selfish person, a hateful person, a screwed up, manipulative person. They say sticks and stones but the truth is names do hurt and they especially hurt when you have no one to hold you up, when you have nothing to set your self worth upon but the integrity of your character and sincerity of your heart.
A month passed before I was able to go to sleep without thinking about it or wake without it being the first thing on my mind. Six months passed when I received an unexpected e-mail. I looked at the "from" line and did a double take her.
She had gone up to Portland to meet him. She immediately fell in love with him. She moved in with him. And then his other side came out and it was much, much worse than I had previously know. He tried to kill himself in front of her. He manipulated her. He isolated her from friends and family. Worse he was a cocaine addict and sometimes beat her. Worse he got her pregnant, gave her an STD which took one ovary and a tubal pregnancy took the other. She told me I was right. She didn't care, however, what I'de been through. And that was the last time she spoke to me.
I have very rarely had times in my life where I've had to decide whether or not to choose to share something that was shared with me in confidence and it is never an easy, clear cut choice. I do not, as a general rule, gossip or talk behind other people's backs. I have so many things I know about so many people that I've never and will never tell anyone they number in the tens of thousands. That is just my way. And yet, though I do not like it, though I never choose it, there come times where I have to turn the hard six, make a choice based on the best information available to me, to share something that will hopefully prevent someone from coming into harms way. I never like it. And the last time I did it I lost my heart and my soul only to receive more hate, rejection, and mistrust than ever before in my life...and yet if my choice is between my happiness and the long term well being of another I will always do my goddamn best to choose them. And that makes me someone worth fighting for.
Your challenge for the day is simply that: who do you choose when the fires of your deepest fears rage at your soul's doors?
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