Part of Day 2

So the second day of knowing brian, we went up to the mountain. he was very excited and right when we got there, he, who already had everything he needed, headed up a ski lift. armin and i had to rent all of our gear with most of the other kids on the trip. after we got our stuff, i think we saw brian briefly at the bottom of the mountain, he had taken a few runs already and was probably more excited for us to be going up the mountain than we were for ourselves. We left him soon after that and headed for the bunny slopes. armin was on a snowboard and i was on skis. armin was just learning to snowboard and couldn't yet connect his turns, so he spent the whole day on his heels, back facing up and he slipped and slidded down the mountain. i was alright on ski. i knew how to do the side stop thing and could get up some okay speed. sometime around midmorning, we ran into brian again.

its strange, i have told this story so many times. especially that first week of february 2005, i felt like i told this story so many times that it became one dimensional, like i was reciting the plot of a tv show. and it almost sounds like it could be the such a plot. brian loved that kind of thing, the story afterward, especially if it were a cool story. and i think he would love how this one sounded, especially since it reveals each of our personalities as if it were a parable. It also has the benefit of having a lesson and a punchline. it was so damn self-contained that i couldn't help re-telling it over and over, even when it lost its originality and spunk and any organic meaning. i could feel myself telling the story in the same way, over and over, pausing in the same parts, saying brian's lines in a brian voice that did not resemble his voice at all, saying my lines in a voice similarly distant from a tone i would ever take. anyway, here is what happened. the moment that i could look back on, almost exactly three years after it happened, and say, yep, it was that moment, that moment when he fully caught my interest, when i knew him impact on my life would be huge.

So, armin and i ran into brian at the bottom of a run, where the bunny slope and a harder run emptied out. Brian asked us if we were having a good time, and we said yes. he then asked me if i had fallen a lot. his expression was the joking one he wore often, as if he wasn't really asking a serious question. but he was always serious about the question. they were never retorical or time or space fillers. i responded, probably haughtily, that i never fell. my tone was intended to convay to him that i was a good athlete, i picked sports up quickly, i was probably a natural on skies, and if he had seen me, he would probably know that. his response, however, was typical brian. he refused to be intimiated and responded in the same jovial tone, that i must not have been pushing myself hard enough. this, of course, stopped me short, because, like i said, i was supposed to be a natural. no one had ever questioned my athletic talents before.

so here is the punchline, because really, i have told this story so much and tried to infuse so much meaning into it that it really has lost all meaning for me, was that brian talked me into going down a green, the next level up from the bunny slope. he ended up taking me down a black diamond, a fact that he didn't tell me until i got to the bottom, and the he said, "congratulations, you just did your first black diamond." neadless to say, we spend the rest of the day on the slopes together. poor armin said he felt like a third wheel. by the end of the day, brian had me going off jumps. not that i got crazy, mind you, i didn't get that much air, i am not by nature a risk taker, but i had to impress this kid and show him that i could keep up.

i still wasn't sure what i wanted to do about him. and really, i know this is crucial to the story, but i just don't have the energy to tell it right now. so you (whoever you are, if you are indeed anyone) will just have to wait to hear how our day came to an end. i suppose i am tired, and have a bit of a headache. the same one i have had for a week and a half. i also just finished a little bit of a cry. i sent andrew an email, and he always does the auto response thing. this time it included a link of some plays that he had written. so i thought i would check a few out. he writes very well, but for some reason i was devistated that brian wasn't in any of the plays and that none were about him. he had evan, ryan and alex as characters. and it made me so sad to see that their names could all be together without brian. i have always wanted there to be a whole in that group, his whole, the whole that brian's absence left. but i never saw one. they all just re-coalesced. i don't know why i need them to be as messed up as i am about it all. and maybe they are, i didn't know them very well before (and still don't know them well) but it drives me crazy that it doesn't seem that their foundation has been destroyed. even more than me, i thought that their lives should have been torn apart. maybe because they are boys. maybe because they are younger than i. maybe because you have a different relationship with your friends than you do with intimate partners (intimate partern, eh, well, its a better discriptive phrase than lovers, or whatever other gender neutral phrase can be used to describe boyfriends and girlfriends, which is also sounds like a very juvenile term). maybe they just don't show me their feelings (except alex, sometimes). whatever it is, i feel like we should have a bond because we shared this together, and i would consider them family, if only they would let me. they were brian's brothers, and he was my family, so by extension, they should be my family now.

okay, now im really going to stop, and send my good night into the black hole. good night, sweet.

Ambien haze between the 12th and 13th

So i've just taken the second half of my ambien, the first second half that i have ever taken. apparently i am well on my way to drug addiction. actually, i did, for the first time ever, understand the desire to take a lot of pills. not because i wanted to commit suicide, but to see what would happen, to be taken to the hospital where maybe someone could figure out what is wrong with me. I know that there are chemical changes going on inside me -- the erratic weight gain and loss, the pimples that i missed in high school have re-asserted themselves with a vengence, the strange sleeping habits. I want someone to tell me what is wrong with me and what i have to do to fix it. i don't think its that easy, though. I know what's wrong with me, kinda. i mean, my whole world has been turned inside out. my mental world, that is. the way i believed that the world was structured has been changed. irrevocably. unless you have personal experience, you don't know what its like to be going on, as you had been every day before, and then get a call, that causes your world to tilt on its axix. and the funny thing, at least for me, is that the impact is delayed. i knew my world was going to change, but right after susan called, i think i went into instant shock and stayed there for months. in fact, i think i am still coming out of that shock, and its like alice, coming out of the rabbit hole and seeing this new world. only its not the nice 'shroom filed haze where the flowers talk and the evil queen is the worst you have to deal with. my sense of self is completly changed, my perception of my world, from the smallest things like the mountains that were always to the north of my parents house to the biggest where i am wondering if i am loveable or if i will ever be loved in a meanful way ever again, or if i ever was.
Knowing that there are no answers, knowing that the intellect which got me through life until feb. 2, 2005, wouldn't work anymore. i just read this quote: "the grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for." and well, i just about strike out. i don't really have something to do, well not something that inspires me or provides meaning such that i can say, i do something. law school. going to new york. i want to be excited, i want that to inspire me and fill me with hope of the oppertunities and possibilities. but all i can think of is what am i doing. i can't find a home in a city that rents 400sq. ft. apts for $2000. all i think i want is to move back to california, and what? what would i do? the idea always stops there, maybe because i was to go back to the california and the sarah who used to live in california. where it was the place that represented infinite possibilities and i was the person who could do anything, who was happy and secure where she was, so happy and secure that she was willing to leave the security to strike out and try something new. well that was a shit idea. i wonder if i hadn't left california, would brian have? and if he hadn't left california.... well, who knows.
wow, 20 minutes after taking a whole ambien, and nothing. maybe i just don't want to go to bed. i don't want to sleep, i don't know why not. brian something comes to my dreams. although my dream two nights ago totally sucked. i had been worrying about rebecca and brain. something i thought i had layed to rest. i thought i was finally at the who cares what it was stage and able to focus on who he was to me. but i was thinking about her and him on my run, and wondering if he did really love me. or if, it was her, and i was just a part of his past, like suzanna. Had he already put me in a box and moved on. if he had been hurt, would he have asked to see me. would he have wanted me there if i had come? so anyway, i had this dream, probably a reflection of all of that, two nights ago. We were hanging out with Caroline, and brian and i were talking about getting back together, but there were other things going on, like he wanted to be doing different things or didn't want to spend time with me. So i actually got up the courrage to ask if he wanted to be in this relationship, to ask him if he liked me. He responded by asking me why i was confusing the two things -- what was going on between the two of us, and the other external things. he asked why i assumed they were connected. so i guess i never got an answer to my question. if, as some do, beleive that this was a message, then i guess brian was telling me that i let other stuff get in the way of what we had when i was insecure. that what i took as problems were always my need to unify every emotion and apply it to our relationship. which i probably did. but, the irony, is that he never answered my question. so i still don't know what he really thougth of me. or maybe, the failure to asnwer implies that he is not really there, and the only help my unconscious can give is to point my search inward, to force me to ask if the insecurity comes from me. I still don't have an answer to the question of what brian felt about me. the last time i told him i loved him was in a phone conversation about three weeks before. and i had this huge ephinay around new years. brian had really pissed me off, and then refused to apoligize for being a jerk, so i decided to cut it off, i mean, i didn't need to continue to talking to him, right. so i didn't talk to him for about two weeks, the longest we had gone at that point. so he called me at midnight. and i didn't hear the call, which i think is good, because i would have wanted to talk to him. so his message was, "Hey. Its Brian. Im in San Fransicso." And that was all, but it was his tone, holding the "e" in hey, and the slight uncomfortable, i really didn't think what i wanted to say before called tone. and all the love i had for him just came pouring back. i loved this guy. and i didn't know what i wanted to do with it. i didn't think i wanted to get back gother, all the problems that existed before hadn't changed, but i loved him. what was i supposed to do with that. so we conneced by phone a few day later, i was in san luis obispo visiting emily and he was in carmel, getting ready to go back to virginia. I was with Emily in Solvang, feeling guilty, because i should be focused on my friend, but i just wanted to talk to brian on the phone. he finally suggested i come up and see him. I countered by inviting him down to see us. his response was classic, "well, i've got, ah, stuff to do." jerk. actually, he did, he was leaving in a few days and had to pack, but really, could the guy have ever stuck his neck out for me? Ever done something that would have made his life harder to make mine better? Okay, totally a gross overgeneralization, but its what i felt at the time. if he wasn't willing to come down and see me, i couldn't see why i should spend an additional 4 hours in the car to spend maybe a half hour with him. but i really wanted to. i was so tempted to, especially after meeting some guys and seeing how scuzzy they could really be. I wonder what would have happened if i had made the trip up. probably nothing, we would have had coffee, talked, he would have given me a hug and i would have gone my separate way. but part of me wonders if we might have given it another chance. I think i was sufficiently aware of how much i loved him and also sufficiently aware of how GREAT he looked in comparison to the other guys i had been meeting lately, that i might have been sufficienlty vulnerable to allow myself to fall back into a something with him. But i didn't so i will never know what would have happened. instead, about a week later, i was back in nashville, and he was back in charlottesville, i was having a great phone conversation with him. he was telling me that he was scared because his life was just about how he wanted it right now, and he was afraid that when he graduated, everything was going to change. I laughted at him, knowing that the reason life was as he liked it was because he had surrounded himself with like-minded people who saw the world the same as he did. Who would always be ready for a new expereince, a new outlook on life, those type of people would follow him as he traveled to new zeland or the phillipeanes, and would staff the labs when he went to grad school. I told him that he would make choices that would allow him to be surrounded by the same type of people he had found in Virginia. Also in the conversation, i told him that i still loved him. it was the first time that i told him since we broke up, and i premised it by saying that it was just something that i wanted to say, and something i wanted him to know, but that there were no strings attached and it didn't requrie him to do anything. i will always wish i had listened to his response better. i was so concerned about what i was saying that i didn't pay enough attention to his response. i think it was something like, of course we still love each other, six months isn't that long of a time. if that was indeed what he said, was he implying that i there would be a period in time where i wouldn't love him, and that he still loved me, but didn't plan to maintain those feelings. did he think that love was temporary, that when feelings exist despite the destruction of the relationship, that those feelings go eventaully to the wind. Of course, he could have said something completly different, but i am pretty sure that he somehow said he still loved me. Which i guess, in the great scheme of things only matters when i am feeling insecure. i guess the most important thing is that he knew i loved him, despite not telling him for six months, in the end, he knew.

After Fed Courts and Before Methods of Information Gathering

The great thing about a blog is that i get to go into as much detail as i want, and it feels like there is something listenting. As much as i loved my therapist (and i did, he was wonderful, there is no better feeling than getting to talk about yourself for an hour a week without worrying about having to listen to another's feelings or worry that you are dominating the conversation, especially when that people not only listens to you talk about whatever you want but validates your feelings and tells you "of course its normal to feel that way"), you couldn't to into the level of detail that each subject could bring up in your mind. For example, i was thinking today that i might like to include the list of songs that brian put on the first valantines day cd that he made for me. then i would would want to include what what of his friends wrote about his taste in music. That would be way too much information, and no one (not even Ari) would care what songs brian put on a cd for me. as i caved to the need to give voice the thoughts in my head, i would notice that the person on whom i choose to bestow this honor was not interested or was uncomfortable, so i would stop telling them, or tell them anyway but feel bad and weak for giving into my emtions. then the telling would not have the cathartic effect that i needed it to and i would have freaked out yet another friend, and would worry that i had freaded out another friend, and vow to keep the emotional disaster that is my inner reality to myself from that point forward, which would make me feel alone and out of control. So even if no one reads the post, which might never be created since it would require me to actually figure out the names of all the songs on that cd, i feel like i am telling someone all the details that i desperately need to share without actually boring someone to death with the resitation and causing myself untold emotional stress. yeah for blogs.

Sometime between February 7th and 8th

There is something comforting about being able to post my thoughts and send them out into the universe of the internet. Much more comforting than sharing them with friends who try to care or try to say the right thing. Its also better than announcing them to the AIM universe, because then people assume that you are depressed all the time. Which i very well might be. Who knows. Its easier to keep happy things to yourself, to hug them in and not need to announce them to the world. But for some reason, it is harder when the news is sad. You want to share the saddness, as if by discussing it, it will dissipate. But of course it doesn't, because you are always worrying about how people are reacting and how they are judging you. The blog is the perfect solution to the problem since no will will probably read this but me but i can be content to know that my thoughts are flying out into the cosmos and are not simply cooped up inside me, churning and festering.

I guess i will have to start telling the saga of Brian. Of what has happened to me over the past year and why my world has spun out of control. Its a long story and this past year has made me incapable of linear thought, so dear reader, I ask your patience as this story will probably take several days to tell.

I met Brian in late January of my junior year in college. 2002, to be exact. I was 20, he had recently turned 19. A baby, if you will, one who looked like the freshman he was. it was a ski trip organized by my college, and a friend had talked me into going the wednesday before the trip. $50 for lift tickets, ski rentals, meals and a place to stay. I didn't ski well, I had only been a few times previously, my childhood and adolescence was spent playing soccer and there wasn't much time for extra activities, plus my dad had a bad knee. I remember that i had just taken my second yoga class and went straight to meet the group after, i also remember idly wondering if there would be a guy for me on the trip. when i arrived in the erc rec room and scanned the assembed group, which was much smaller than i had thought, with only about 10 people, my first thought was, no, no one for me on this trip. of course, brian was in the room, but he looked so young that it never crossed my mind that he could be for me. i had to go to the atm, and so did brian, so we walked there together. i remember talking about all the activities i was involved with, magnanamously offering him any assistance if he felt inclined to get invovled. he later told me that he was moderately intimidated by the big woman on campus image. of course, he didn't know at the time that the image was deliberate on my part. not an intentional mask, but an aspect of my personality that i put to the front when i was meeting new people. we left on a friday night (i don't remember the time, but i remember that it was dark when we boarded the school van and headed toward the local mountains). at first, brian was sitting by me in the back of the van, and we were talking about random things, i was again playing the part of the cool, collected, more experienced upper classman, making statements which were designed for him to realize my superiority. what i remember sticking out was a look he gave me, a "are you for real" look. usually, people were impressed by my image and the pedigre that i could bring to bear. but brian questioned it, both in look and in statment. i remember being surprised by it, at the feeling that he was seeing through the image. i don't know if cognitive dissonance affects my memory of that moment, but i remember stumbling over what i was saying, a little self doubt added to my personna. We stopped for dinner at a wendy's or a jack in the box, i don't remember much of that. I was on the trip with a friend, and we were both friends with Darlene, my college student activities coordinator, so we felt superior to the mostly freshman that made up the trip. after stopping for dinner, armin, my friend suggested that we sit up front, so we could gossip with darlene about our friends and the drama that surrounded our lives. I would occasionally hear what was going on in the back of the van, they were playing seven degrees of kevin bacon, and other car games, brian, of course instigating them, making friends. i didn't know that this was typical of his personality yet. that he would talk to and engage anyone around him, even the nerdy female asians who i would have been nice to, but would have assumed that i had nothing in common with and therefore never fully engaged. i don't remember if i was jealous of the games that they were playing, i think i was surprised that they (meaning that freshman who i had met so briefly, because at that time, i was having trouble keeping his name straight, a problem i would have for the first two weeks i knew him, i would be pretty sure that it was brian, but then i would second guess myself, maybe it was something else that started with a b, brad, ben, something like that) would appear to be so content doing something i considered beneath myself, but they seemed to be having fun. i have aways been suprised when people find contentment doing what i would consider to be beneath them (actually i go back and forth, knowing that i sometimes fall into full geek mode and fall into geeky activities as a refuge or safe haven). When we got to the cabin it was something out of a horror novel, with one big room with several beds. i think that we were actually short of beds when we got there and had to go steal beds from other rooms. but the one big room had the scary pictures of jesus on the wall, the ones that are done in heavy oils when he is very obviously suffering. the clerk had probably previously worked at the bates motel and had an erie resemblance to the pictures of jesus on the wall. after we got all settled (i remember lots of snacks, junk food, candy, and all kinds of other things, but no alcohol, because it was a school trip after all) we got into a game of taboo. now, let me just tell you, i suck at most board games. for the most part, i lack the sufficient interest to pay sufficient attention to get all the details. brian was very good at board games. probably something to do with the fact that he is brillant in a problem solving way. he used to be able to predict the answers that professors were going to ask on tests and then study for all his tests by preparing answers for those questions and learning the answers. he was probably the most efficient studier that i knew. a good trait for him since i liked a lot of his time and he had so many other things that he liked to do. but, his intelligence was also manifested in his ability to play board games, cranium was one of his favorites, and he was always looking for an oppertunity and people who were interested in playing. when we were playing taboo that first night i met him, he managed to figure out ginko baloba from clues that included; "it grows on a tree" and maybe "it helps with memory". i didn't know what ginko baloba was at that point, so i was very impressed that he could guess the words based on the few general clues that he was given. needless to say, his team destroyed mind that night at taboo. after that, we all went to sleep, my bed was on the far wall, pushed into a corner, my head on the same wall as was jesus's.

I think i am going to pause the story for now. morning classes and all tomorrow. But that was my first memory of brian. but at that time, he was really just some freshman who i had spoken to for a few minutes on the van ride. the next morning, when i reluctantly opened my eyes when there was no way i could pretent to be asleep anymore as everyone else was out and moving around, the first thing that i saw was brian, naked but for his boxers, strolling around the room. this also did little to endear him to me, as his physique was that of a young active person who clearly wasn't a gym rat. don't get me wrong, there was no flab, but i was a snob, and he wasn't very cut. i later learned that cut is different than defined, which he was, and that he had trouble keeping weight on when he wasn't around his mother's cooking. bastard. but with his naturally skinny build and his lack of desire to work on his body (he would rather be outside, being active, which kept him in VERY good shape, but the results of which were not obvious to the superior eye, which i very clearly possessed at the time). so there was brian, strolling around in his boxers, saying that he had been up since about 6 (i think it was about 8:30 0r 9 when i finally dragged myself out of bed that morning) so excited about getting up to the slopes, and talking about a walk that he took to watch the sunrise. you know, its funny, if i wasn't there to attest to the authentic nature of his statement, i don't think i would believe that such a person existed, who did things like this spontanously and without seeming like he was putting on a persona. In fact, it was only as i was writting this that i realized how, kooky is the wrong word, but you get the idea, that some 19 year old woke up and took a walk to see the sunrise, all because he couldn't wait to get a start on the day.