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howveryheather · 6 years

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farewell to a friend

A really special guy I went to high school with committed suicide last week.

I can’t believe this is a sentence I’m writing. It does not feel real. I have been extremely fortunate to have gone (almost) 30 years in my life and not lost anyone who, I felt, was close to me or touched my life in a major way. This particular guy was so funny in high school. We had a few classes together and I loved it because he was always cracking wise. We wrote for the newspaper together and I loved his column, an op/ed about misc. thoughts he had roaming around in his mind. Every year, he wrote crazy things in people’s yearbooks so their parents could see it and go, “what did you two do together?” He did that up until graduating in 2005, when my last yearbook message from him turned deeply thoughtful. (Although I can’t tell you in verbatim what that message said because my yearbooks are about 2000 miles away from me and it has probably been a decade since I last opened them up.)

I don’t know if this news would have hurt me as much if high school was my last interaction with him. But, it wasn’t. The last time I saw him was three years ago at the start of 2015. I’ve spoken vaguely about the start of that year and the place I was in, but I now feel like I can openly talk about it.

At the start of 2015, my life as I knew it was ruined. I had been fired from my job (that’s a story for another time), had to sell everything I owned including my prized bed from Pottery Barn, and move back in with my parents. Amidst everyone getting married, buying houses, being promoted, and having children, I felt like a failure. I didn’t know how long I would be unemployed for (spoiler alert: it was almost a year), if I would ever get another job again (I would), and where my next job would take me (Orange County). All I knew was that I was back home where I had a nonexistent network. I interviewed for jobs everywhere in my hometown, determined to make something stick. I didn’t get any offers, but I did get a cold at one of those interviews that stuck with me for almost a month because the receptionist was very sick. So yeah, that was that. In total, only three people who were not blood relatives offered me any form of support in that city — an old friend from high school who talked about careers and the future with me, my best friend who took me to a wine bar a few days after I arrived, and this guy, who messaged me on Facebook to see if I wanted to meet up at Starbucks. He had absolutely no idea what was going on with me and it had been so long since I had seen him that I immediately said yes. He could have asked me to walk through a burning pit with him and I would have been like hell yeah, where and when. I wanted to catch up and hear about his life, desperate to be distracted from my present circumstances and hungry to connect again in person.

When we met up, he looked the same as he did in high school. He was a year older than me. He was reading a book which is something to note because everyone’s always staring at a screen today. He looked up at me and smiled and suddenly I was so very comforted. Every time I recount this story back to my inner circle, they immediately ask me if I had a crush on this guy. It makes sense to ask, since I always spoke so highly of him and he was cute. I had a lot of crushes in high school - hormonal af - but absolutely none on him. I had some weird hindsight way back then to put him directly into the friendzone. Plus, there was no sexual attraction there at all. There was good chemistry though, since we were both writers who respected one another’s craft.

We talked for hours on end and discussed what we had been up to since high school. He prodded gently at me to talk about why I was back in town again and I told him the truth - the firing and how it came about, which is still, in my opinion, massively unfair. I was deathly afraid to tell him any of this. I was barely even admitting it out loud to myself. But, I didn’t feel scared with him. It was because I knew I wouldn’t be judged.

When we said goodbye that night, that was the last time I saw him alive in person.

We kept in touch via social media in the years that followed. His life, for what I observed of it in those small fragments shared online, seemed to be doing well. He was on the road traveling. He had a girlfriend and a dog. He was working, although I was never entirely sure where at. In the week that the news broke, he was still actively posting to Facebook.

Then suddenly, everything fell apart. I found out on Thursday night - these posts on his wall that were scary to read. “I’ll see you with the angels, buddy.” My heart sank and just kept sinking. I reached out to a few people from high school, never wanting to assume I knew what happened because I couldn’t and hoping for the best although my heart feared for the worst. They confirmed it was a suicide and it felt like the world went hollow.

I’ve heard the best thing to do when one is going through this kind of grief is to try to be active. Go out with friends, talk to people you care about, just try not to let it bottle up inside. I went out to dinner with a close friend Friday night. I’ll be in her wedding in a couple of months. I started talking about him and what he meant to me because he had been there for me during a time when very few people weren't even if perhaps he didn’t realize the affect it had on me. And maybe I didn’t realize it until much later either. I cried because I wished I had known he was in pain. I wished I had liked more of his posts on Facebook, wished I had been able to reach out and message him more often. The idea that life will keep happening all around me, but he won’t be there hurts to think about.

For as much as I wished he could have shared more, I don’t know if it would have been possible. We’re in a terrible time where suicide rates are increasing — a 25% increase since 1999. Quartz recently published an article entitled “Why Are Americans So Sad?” that outlined potential contributors to suicidal thoughts and feelings. I personally think that the United States, as a country, has long been negligent when it comes to helping out the very people who exist in their own backyards. But, it’s all complicated and runs deep too. I think some good points are raised in this piece. I also think every circumstance is different and we all have our own dark places. I don’t think money can solve every problem (although it definitely helps). Same goes with success and fame. At the end of the day, we are all people just trying to do life on our own terms. That’s where I see an opportunity to help one another instead of shutting someone out. We’re all stuffed in this dumpster fire boat together. Nobody is better than someone else, or has it all figured out. Might as well grab an oar and row as a team to see where we get next.

Social media’s awful sometimes. On the one hand, it can make you feel like nothing you do will ever measure up to what your peers on your feed are up to. On the other, there’s a good opportunity to express yourself and tell your story. I’ve been checking out of all of it for the most part. The less I pay attention to these sites and platforms, the better it is for me all around. Maybe that’s a good piece of advice for someone else to follow too.

I don’t know. I don’t know how to wrap this post up, except to say that there will never be another guy quite like this one. He loved movies, Mad Men, and superheroes. He had a big funny bone and an even bigger heart. He was a real gem. He will be missed, but he will never be forgotten.

#personal

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theapanes · 4 years

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Reality vs New Normal

By Thea Panes

Earlier today, a famous public figure tweeted how much she hates this year – “really, really hate” is to quote verbatim. Some of her followers wondered what triggered her to using such intense expression of her feelings. Can anyone really blame her?

Each of us may be left in solitary reunion with Webster or Thesaurus and we will all have our different choice of words to describe the first half of the year 2020 that was. In retrospect, at exactly the same time last year, all of us were living as we think we should. At that time, my mind was literally in pendulum between a challenging project at work and on the personal front, wedding preparations. No one knew that a global pandemic was going to shift “our normal” to what has become reason for fear, anxiety, yes even hatred for some. No one had an idea that we would be deprived of hugs from family members and friends for months. I am absolutely certain that if we had at least any form of warning, people would have lived 2019 differently. A lot of us would have then reprioritized our needs (over wants). Unfortunately, no one has privilege to reversal and here we are today, trying to live with impositions of what we deem call as unprecedented times.

On the corporate side of the fence, I personally think those who are in C-jobs are dealing with the most unimaginable task of making decisions for both welfare of employees and future of a company. Those decisions we get to read about online, favorably so or otherwise, are stripped off from awareness on the difficulty to arrive at those same decisions. Whether they involved furloughs or retention will have more meaning months from now, perhaps even a year or so, when fate of companies continue to unfold globally and as a result of business volume plummeting to levels we never thought we would see in this lifetime. These decisions made by Executives define the company – or what’s left of it by end of this pandemic. While we kept asking and wondering why one decision led to something catastrophic, we can’t help but realize, in matter of a month, the domino effect seemed to have bloated the crisis with global brands folding up, declaring closures and even store or shop reductions to move to either online or “pick-up” and delivery platforms. Virtualization is killing a lot of jobs but it is the safest route to continuing some amount of business vs compromising more human lives. This is when we start to hear an earworm of a phrase, “new normal” as how majority calls it. Executive leaders are trying to tide everyone over to that new reality – regardless of whether decisions made were unpopular or not. When we get the chance to wear those exact shoes, we are only humbled by hope that we will learn from this and do better. No one has been in a pandemic of this magnitude before. It takes seconds to realize, no one has the map or a playbook to get through one. These people are leading and learning at the same time. Respect is important – at least for the courage that these leaders put together when they were unwillingly forced to make those decisions public that likewise made them take their identities to centerstage and morph to easy targets of judgment. Empathy doesn’t go one way horizontally. We need to exercise it in all directions and understand the aerial support we continue to get with some amount of vertical clearance. It would not have been called a crisis, if it were easy. They are also humans like the rest of us – trying to survive while thinking of ways to let others do the same.

On a rather personal side, I continue to challenge myself thinking there is “no new normal.” That “normal” by definition will continue to change and evolve. It would have varying dimensions to survival. Or so I think. This is where my other perspective comes in – prepare for “new reality” not “new normal.” What we had last year was real. What we are currently being plagued with is real. What we will face next year is also real. I do not want to get stuck to an idea or a perception of what that “new normal” will be. I just believe there is the reality of “now.” I have been entertained by emerging “raw talents” or coping mechanism of people that somehow brought respite from incessant negative news and unpromising decline of positive Covid cases as days go by. A lot of people realized they could bake, cook, paint, even coach for nutrition or help other friends through empathic conversations. People finally had time to withdraw from “the usual” to discover and unleash the “potential.” I take a lot of comfort in that – and quietly celebrate in my own little way as I watch Instagram feed of people who try to just “live another day.” I have chosen not to post my usual and trivial stuff for obvious sensitivity to different challenges of people around the globe. As much as I want to share a nice dish that I cooked for my husband, there are people who do not have anything to eat. As much as I want to share photos of past travels, there are millions of us cooped up at home and unable to do a simple haircut errand because of lockdown. Maybe it’s just me – but I most of all cannot stand people who continue to post OOTDs or endorsements by influencers especially during a time when people are struggling to survive. Again, this is just me and don’t get me wrong, I have not lost my personal appetite for social media (although not a frequent visitor of FB lately). It's the same reason I paused my youtube and vlogging. I just sincerely worry as to how an innocent post can aggravate what someone else is going through at the moment. I do admire and applaud the reality of people helping behind limelight, or any sense of public display of their intentions but continue to help anyway. That’s the kind that doesn’t need an audience because the purity and nobility of reasoning is unscathed by public eye. However, there are public servants, government officials who are then required to account for local government funds and hence they need to publicize; or showbiz personalities who also need to account for donated goods out of their own endorsements. Their “normal” is different from ours. Help, where it is precipitated to counter every pensive sense of hopelessness or desperation is welcome especially during this time – but let us not use it to promote personal agenda. This is reality, not a “reality show.”

Remember all those years when we weren’t doing what we are doing today. There is always that connection between past and present. What brought us here? What led to our current predicament? History has a way of defining future reality and while we still have that chance, we need to arm ourselves with “a bank of goodness” so we have enough stock of it during a different reality. At least, it’s the lesson I personally learned from this episode.

If you are hating, I hope you are soon overwhelmed by love around you.

If you are unwell, I wish you restoration to good health.

If you are in doubt, I pray that faith finds you.

If you are experiencing emotional, financial, professional unrest, I hope you find serenity in prayer.

If you are searching for meaning, I hope you get fulfillment in giving.

If today isn’t working for you, I hope tomorrow pleasantly surprises you.

If you are hurting, I pray that you heal.

This is an opportune time to find joy in the simplest of things; to rediscover what we value the most and to see life in its most precious form as the threat of Covid continues to put so many at risk.

Nothing about our current situation is normal so we can’t expect everything and everyone to be the same. However, it is our new reality. No one wants this to be our “new normal.”

We all have a right to a much better reality if we all work towards creating instead an epidemic of goodness where we don’t get to choose recipients, where all skin colors are brothers and sisters, let-alone gender-unbiased.

Our chance for survival is a personal responsibility. I have taken this bolder mantra because it doesn’t allow room for blame - but it requires FAITH. Where the latter is involved, trust that it always turns out to be a better story, regardless of any branded new normal, or reality.

We all have surpassed so many battles in our lives. This too, will end – and His timing will be unquestionably perfect. Sooner than soon, I fervently hope that we find ourselves wising up to say, “THIS” is why “THAT” happened – a reality that will perhaps help us reunite with a grateful heart.

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