Peaking Over the Edge of the Abyss

My final paper is a personal essay. This is a draft of part of it...

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Twenty-three years ago, more or less, I had my heart broken for the very first time. Rather, I had my heart ripped from my chest and fed to a flock of flesh-eating aviary beasts and the man who did it sold tickets to the event. The details really are irrelevant at this point, but if I let myself think about it I can very easily get back to that black pit I spent nearly a year in.

From time to time, when I'm really trying to kill time, I run random names through Google to see what comes up. Tonight I ran his name through the search engine and didn't really discover anything particularly new, except that his life is thriving while mine seems to be stuck in perpetual development.

We'll call him J. J. went on to become an Episcopal priest and has developed quite a reputation within the church for his artistic outreach programs. He's now the director of what appears to be a quite successful program on the east coast. Of course, what I really was looking for was a picture of him fat and bald, preferably wheelchair bound, but alas there was none.

I have, however, run across one of his sermons which was posted somewhere, and I think after all this time I found a vague reference to me. He talks about his debiliating alcoholism and how it ruined many relationships in his life, especially one with a roommate. Chances are that's me, but who knows? He could have really messed up somebody else's life.
It was a brilliantly painful time that culminated in the two of us sharing a dorm room for four months not speaking. Not a word. He transferred the next year, and that should have been the end of it. For me, it wasn't.

I spent years trying to figure out why it didn't work between us. Finding his sermon helped a little, but there were two of us in that room, and from 1982 to 1996 I tried very hard to discover what my part in the failure was. I think from 1982 until about 1990, there wasn't a night I didn't go to sleep thinking about J. I was angry. A.N.G.R.Y.

And I'm sure he's never given me a second thought.

One of the websites had his phone number.

Of COURSE I called it! And of course, I knew I'd get his voicemail. But hearing his voice again brought it all back. I can't imagine what we would say to each other now, except maybe, "Weren't we a couple of immature little brats?" I think I might tell him that I really am glad he's done so well and maybe spend a minute or two getting caught up on details that I can't find on the Internet. But the truth is he was very important to me for about six months, and then the person I knew died; if in fact he wasn't always some sort of figment that I created and projected onto the poor kid who shared my dorm room.

But that person was funny. He made me laugh like few people had before, or since. He made me go to parties and I felt comfortable at them. He listened when I talked and remembered what I said. I thought that was love. He came from a very well-to-do family, and I came from poverty. In his pink button-down Ralph Lauren, he had more sophistication than I could have ever dreamed of having in my three-year old Sears sweatshirts. I let myself dream of a life that would never be and I convinced myself that he felt the same for me. He didn't.

The last time I saw him was the day his family came to take him home. He cleaned his side of the room and when he cleared everything out, without speaking, I took a rag and wiped his desk down. He came back into the room, took one last look around and then closed the door behind him. It wasn't even a soft close, or a slam. He closed it as if the room was empty.

It echoed in the virtually empty room. I had very little -- a few books and enough clothes to pack in one suit case. The sound of the door wasn't a click or a thud. Whatever it was bounced off the linoleum floor and plaster walls and I felt like I absorbed the sound. I felt it in my chest and I sat on my bed for several hours afterwards while that sound became part of me. It was a beautiful late Sunday afternoon and the sun was gold. I don't even have to close my eyes to be back in that room. I was wearing a baseball t-shirt with green sleeves. He wore a navy polo shirt and boat shoes. I couldn't cry, and didn't even want to. I really just wanted to get through the next part, whatever it was and however long it lasted.

I've spent a lot of time mourning something that never existed and protecting myself from the sound of closing doors, but I think it's time to move on.