Or, reminiscing about the past
Me at about 17
A couple of weeks ago, I thought it would be a scream to ask a couple of old friends on Facebook if their first thought on seeing me again was a total “WTF” type moment. You know, because you’re always hearing people saying they saw this old boyfriend on Facebook and feeling relief that he got away or wondering what the hell they were thinking. And I wondered what it would be like to be somebody’s what-the-hell.
Of course, I was completely confident I wasn’t a what-the-hell, or if I was that these two friends were raised far too well to say so, and so I asked.
For the backstory, Sunnie, Mike and I met in drama club. She was my absolute best friend in the world and he was mostly my friend, then for a while he was my boyfriend and then that ended badly and eventually we ended as friends. We were creative and weird and bright and looking back my heart just swells with love for these three gawky kids, even me. We were, as they say, something else.
Back then, I suffered from clinical depression. Nobody really knew; I’m pretty sure they thought I was being dramatic, but much of the time I walked around feeling completely wretched and at the mercy of rage chased by despair and finally, a cold, dark emptiness. Eventually, I got treatment, but I think that having Sunnie and Mike and the rest of my friends kept me going much more than they could have possibly known at the time. They fed my creativity and pushed me to take risks and not let the fire within be completely smothered.
When I asked them for memories of me, Mike said:
Well, we were alternately kissing, crying, then howling at the moon whilst stumbling down the lovely cobblestone streets of Nuremberg.
We must have thought we were invisible…
And I remembered that it happened, but I couldn’t remember why we were crying. We’d gone to Nuremberg for a high school journalism conference. At the time, Mike and I were just friends, but there was the tension and the angst and I think that Sunnie wished I’d just shut the heck up about it. The first night we were there, we went to a bar and tried to get them to make us fuzzy navels:
You take the Pfirsch schnapps, the PFIRSCH, PFIRSH and mix it with ORANGENSAFT, ja? PFIRSCH! And then the VODKA!
And laughing ourselves silly because we were doing that speaking English with a German accent thing very loudly in the hopes of being understood. We never got our fuzzy navels but we got drunk and somehow snuck back into the hostel without getting caught.
I remembered why we were crying after talking with Mike. The next morning I was hungover and had to go to a newspaper critique with a real! reporter! I’m not sure why, but the teachers that came with us didn’t go with me to the critique and so I went alone with my friend Chris. I wasn’t really worried, because I was pretty used to blowing people away with my writing and other than maybe suggesting a comma or two, everyone thought I was a superstar.
Until this guy. My field of vision completely closes in when I remember and all I can see is his face, and his bloodshot eyes and this smirk, this hateful smirk as he’s telling me every single thing we’ve done wrong. Nothing is good, maybe some of it is mediocre but why would you say “extirpation” instead of “extinction” and you need more news and less fluff and watch the orphan paragraphs. And I can see on his face that he sees me biting my lips not to cry and my hands are shaking the paper I’m holding and that I’m a 16 year old girl being torn apart by a grown man but he doesn’t back off. He doesn’t say anything to soften the blow or to encourage, he just smirks and I realize that he’s enjoying this. His eyes stay on me and they have the filmy, unfocused look of a man who likes to drink too much and I want to ask him, but don’t have the nerve, “Are you drunk? What kind of an asshole are you?”
Instead I thank him, and Chris and I leave and I run to Sunnie and Mike and the tears won’t stop coming. I’m completely devastated and sobbing until I hyperventilate and they calm me down and I start sobbing some more. Because I was supposed to be a writer, everyone knew I was going to be a writer and now that somebody, even some drunk asshole nobody reporter, told me what I’d always feared was the truth, I can’t. I can’t.
Eventually the tears ran dry and we went back out and got some cheap bottles of vodka. I can’t remember exactly what happened but I was talking to Mike and crying some more and somehow it slipped out that he loved me and I loved him and even though I was washed up at 16 and facing no future at least we had each other. And so, yes, walking and howling and kissing and crying on the cobblestones, I can see us now and perhaps “Forever Young” is playing in the background and the people that see us think stupid drunk teenagers, but they’ve no idea have they? They don’t look at me and see that no matter how happy I look tonight, the beat of my heart is going “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t” and depression will win for several cold, empty years. They can’t see what Sunnie and Mike will go through because of this. All they can see are high spirits and vodka. We really were invisible, weren’t we?
There is so much more, so I will continue in another post. Funny how I thought I was doing this for the laughs but instead what I needed to write was something else. Drunk newspaper asshole guy would have a field day critiquing this blog, for sure.
Until then, enjoy this video. It’s from earlier than our high school days, but it reminds me of us.
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