Verbatim PM I sent to WoF:
:
Zenia Magana, June 1 '91 - May 27 '10, texting while driving; ex girlfriend's bff
Amber Budnik, November 1, '91 - December 11 '10, heorin/xanax OD; ex girlfriend
Nicole Pyron, January 28 '90 - March 11, '11, picked up by some crackhead at a bar and murdered in a hotel room; platonic friend
James Welch, ?? - March 18, '11, heroin OD; one of my brother's long time friends
I'd taken the spring semester prior to Zenia's death off from school due to dwindling grades, but then re-enrolled and changed my major from English to rehabilitation studies to give myself some sort of vague purpose again. Then the Friday before finals of my first semester studying the art of helping people, the emotional counterpart from my last romantic relationship (~two years ago) died from the exact thing I've been going to school to for (I have an immense interest in disability advocacy and legislation reform, courtesy of incompetent government and baseless social stigmas). Nicole and James died on the first and second Friday of my Spring Break, respectively. I feel awful for having skipped Nicole's birthday party in January while I was still emotionally wrecked after December. In the meantime, my bestfriend of 8 years broke up with his highschool sweetheart/my other bestfriend two months ago. Their daughter was born only a month ago, and now he's moving solo halfway across the country next Wednesday on some misguided soul-searching venture. What sucks the most is that nothing I say will tempt him to stay here in the backwards ass Bible Belt of America, and I'm entirely at a loss to understand his willingness to forsake his newborn child. On the bright side, I was at least recently able to help get a manic depressive 19 year old laddy (who's estranged from his family) comfortably re-situated in Colorado after an unsuccessful suicide attempt last summer (and 8 months of unemployment while living on my friends' couches). Dealing with the death of others after two years of rampant personal drug abuse has been an absolute mindfuck, especially in the context of my recent self-aware foray into accumulating knowledge about the autism spectrum and its related implications. Admittedly, I've lost quite a bit of my former embrace of whimsy...
I feel a bit bad forcing such a wall of awkward text on you, but it feels nice on my part to get it out, and I'm sure you can make something productive of it as well. The only person I've been intentionally trying to piss off is MA and his perpetually excessive ragefest (you and Dipstikk are too sane and well-spoken for me to allocate any of my wild contempt for the world at large). Trust me, I come off as a lot less of a dick in person as a verbally awkward adolescent male who meticulously tries to avoid eye contact. Hopefully you can at least find some hilarity in my ironic and unavoidable appearance as some sort of super serious pseudo-troll.
Cheers, mate.
Forward Message
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That was about as concisely as I could phrase it.
The three drug-related deaths were all individuals that I knew had substance troubles of their own, but abstained from any semblance of intervention because I was so preoccupied with the dynamics of my own recovery. For what it's worth, I also forgot to mention that my childhood bff with Chronic Kidney Disease (yet another oft-terminal condition I've become very familiarized with in school) has been off at college in Arkansas, and is due for end stage renal failure any year now. To deal with all that baggage, I've taken an interest in throwing out my unquenchable pissed-offitude for the benefit of on campus activist organizations, which has been a surprisingly enjoyable experience (not to mention helped facilitate friendship with other folks as weird and angry about things as I am). Needless to say, I've been rather emotionally preoccupied for some time now.
Moral of the story: playing the role of a jackass feels a hell of a lot easier than attempting to convey a tumultuous year of epic fail. The last remnants of my old social circle have dissolved, and my scholastic goals are still stuck in limbo until I have a nice shiny diagnosis of some sort of another come late May (and save the pervasive trouble of trying to contest that my introspective suspicions aren't without some damn strong merit).
How's that for some honesty?
