My best friend is dead… I just made a category named after him for posts involving this and realized it’s telling that I currently have only three sections, one for posts involving the cancer I had and still get tested for, one for posts while I’m in Seattle where I moved 2500 miles away from family and friends to try and pursue a career and life, and now this one. The first two speak for themselves as to how major they are, at a minimum they involve turning points in my life, and this is definitely one. I’d put this ahead of moving out here for sure and I don’t know how it compares to Hodgkin’s… Though at my lowest point dealing with Hodgkin’s I only got to the point of almost crying, never actually shed a tear (not to say that’s a good thing like, yay, I’m tough or some bullshit, just is) and since he died I’ve cried with tears a hand full of times if that says anything…
We used to talk, well IM and txt multiple times a day, usually some inane shit and some in depth shit. So much so that I just remembered that I didn’t hear from him for a little while was like, “wait, is something wrong? did something happen?”. Can’t remember specifically but it could have been as short as most of a day (like heard from him in the early morning and then not for the rest of the day) or could have been a day and a half but that would be the max. But that’s not something you’d normally think when a friend doesn’t say anything for that short amount of time but we were more than friends really, he was likely the person I was closest to out of anyone, not in a romantic way but like honestly, I had love for him. I’d say he was like a brother but I may actually have been closer to him than my actual brother… Well, maybe closer isn’t telling the whole story, my brother and I are close but we don’t always get along and he can only take me in small doses kinda, heh. Adam and I could probably count on one hand the number of times we argued and it was usually a misunderstanding and we worked it out quickly and that was the end of it. He and I were very similar in a lot of ways, we thought very similarly, had a similar background, originally from the same area, approached problems in similar way that talking to him was really easy for me because it was easy to get him to understand what I meant and he was always helpful with poignant advice or an insight or a fact or perspective that I’d missed. We were similar enough but different enough that discussions were basically always fruitful. That is something I will really miss. I could tell Adam anything and he wouldn’t judge me, think less of me, etc not one one bit. You also knew that when you told Adam something you were telling just him, he wouldn’t spread stuff that he thought shouldn’t be spread and there’s no fucking way he’d tell anyone if you told him not to. while the latter attributes are hard to find, I have people I can talk to, I even have people who I can tell basically everything to but I don’t have anyone that would approach that level understanding in my thought process or that is able to take vast pools of data or ideas and cohesively put it together in a similar way as I do, yet different enough to come up with stuff I haven’t thought of. I likely won’t ever find someone like that again. I’ve said it before and this likely isn’t the last time I will, he was basically my heterosexual life mate. He had my back 100% and I had his with whatever comes, if I needed money I knew he’d do everything he could to lend it to me no strings. If everything went to shit, absolute worst case I knew I had a room at his place. He was my safety net, and not in a bad way at all, he allowed piece of mind that no matter what, he would be there to help me through, and I did the same for him. It took the pressure off some. I tend to be pretty risk averse, but knowing I had a backup plan that was not a last resort in the “holy shit I hope I don’t have do that plan” way, helped me do somethings I may not have or at least helped me be less nervous about doing those things. I have people that would want to help and would help as they could but no to the level I know Adam would have. It’s feels a bit like it’s now sink or swim, not only are there no training wheels but now the fall is much farther and with much more unknowns. As I said in a previous post, I’m sorta gun-shy from what happened with Adam’s marriage, but it was actually a reassurance that no matter what happened with my girlfriend, Adam would always be there for me as a friend for whatever I needed. It honestly never occurred to me that he could go before me… I’m the one who’s fat, doesn’t eat right, out of shape and has had cancer twice…
I realized that I don’t think I’ve truly been an adult without Adam being around. We met in late middle school probably but didn’t become good friends until later high school, maybe even slightly after high school. He came to visit Jeff, a mutual friend of ours who’s house I was ad quite often, so we hung out and from there started chatting on AOL Instant Message and playing PC games on Kali.net quite a bit and ended up really good friends fairly quickly. I can’t remember if the thought that I hadn’t been an adult without Adam being around made me think of the song, or the song made me think of that but there’s a song named “Don’t Know How to Be” by God Lives Underwater. The chorus is the lines, “Without you / I don’t know how to be” repeated 4 times, sometimes it seems like he’s singing “Without you, I don’t know to be” and others it seems like he’s singing “I don’t know how to be, without you”. It’s a bit emo but I always liked that it was the same words with different meaning depending on how you constructed the sentence, anyway, both are pertinent in this case. He had that much impact on my life that I’m anticipating having to sort of re-figure some things out because of my lack of him… Well, I guess more like re-figure out my approach to some things… Sounds like I’m saying he was a crutch or something, but that’s not it. I think we both rounded each other out in both thinking and skill set. He will be sorely missed for so many fucking reasons…
There are some things that help slightly though. He accomplished many of the things in life that he wanted and even got some of the life long dreams. He was an amazing Dad and loved being a Dad to those kids. He was finally able to buy a plane. He had wanted to a pilot and own a plane basically since he knew what a plane was and was finally able to buy one in the last 6 months. He sent me some pics of him flying it home to his hanger from the guy he bought it from and one pic was of him with this little tiny smile, but that was him beaming. He got a plane he liked (didn’t love but it was his and it was big enough to do everything he wanted to do with it) and he was able to share his love of flying with his kids, who he loved dearly. After the divorce, I don’t remember exactly how he put it but it was something along the lines that he no longer gave a fuck what people thought because life was to short to give a fuck. He became much more outgoing and basically became the Adam I knew to more people. He ended up chatting up hot bartenders or chicks in bars, occasionally ending up with phone numbers in his pockets that he didn’t remember getting at the end of the night. Before the divorce, he knew people at his work and would go to things but I’m not sure he had much closeness to them. After the divorce he knew more people but also became good friends with a hand full. I feel indebted to Mike, who was Adam’s local partner in crime. They’d be at each others house all the time, when they weren’t out to a bar or going to a concert or some such. I’m really glad that Adam had someone like that locally, since I was so far away. I almost moved to Kansas City area basically so we could live close (and well, I’d be staying at his place to begin with) but I couldn’t justify skipping Seattle, it had everything I was looking for except Adam. I kinda felt like I led him on a little, got his hopes up that I’d maybe move down there and then didn’t and moved farther away than I already was, so when he became good friends with Mike, I was really happy he had that. As Mike said after the wake, well, something along the lines of, “everyone keeps thanking me for being his friend, he wasn’t some charity case, I got as much out of it as he did!”
The last time I saw him was two days before it happened, holy fucking shit am I glad I got to spend some time with him that Monday… anyway, I said something like, “You haven’t said anything like this but looking at it from the outside it seems like before the divorce you were happy but had a lower capacity for happiness. Like it was artificially limited by circumstances and also by you. But now after the divorce, you’re attitudes have changed and while I’m not saying that it’s always great and you’re always happy, and I’m not saying that the divorce was a good thing, but it may not have been a bad thing, in some ways, because now it seems have a higher overall capacity for happiness. Like you’re able to be happier than you were previously.” and he said something along the lines of, “Yep, exactly.” He basically finished his trading program and according to him it worked great (and he wasn’t a bullshitter, if he said it worked great, it worked great. the end) but he was really torn as to whether he wanted to start trading again because he’d have to quit his job to do it right but he didn’t want to quit his job because that was his social circle. I really think not quitting, as much as not trading grated on him at times, was the right choice, Mike could have still come over all the time but Adam likely wouldn’t have seen the others nearly as much he did and wouldn’t really have had an outlet to meet new people as easily as he did at the center. Before the divorce I’m not sure that’s a choice he would have made, I mean, shit that ISN’T the choice he made before the divorce, he quit and worked on trading and the trading program full time for a year or two!
I won’t say he died happy, that’s to saccharine for me and he still had his struggles for sure. I will say that I think overall he was happy, happier than he had been in years and I think he died more content with his life than he had been in even longer.