Yesterday I sat for nearly four hours struggling to find the words. Trying to avoid the inevitable phone call. A humdrum of collective thoughts were bouncing around in my head and regardless of how many different metaphors I tried to draw, they would not come out in any logical sense.
I had so much to say, and I couldn’t find a way to say it, because I was afraid of what I would be losing.
A few days earlier I'd realized that I had almost everything, but it wouldn’t be enough to make me happy. It was the moment when you realize that your mind will never win the battle against your heart, and it was in that special moment that I realized I had two choices- accept it and move forward having failed my heart, or dive into fear and take a chance to get what I really want most at the risk of giving everything else up.
But it wasn’t all about me, I was playing with two hearts. After spending a few hours letting my tears drip slowly into a puddle around me I logged onto chat and began to open my soul to a good friend, he listened.
He rarely inserted much, he knew I needed that, and after a few more hours of him managing to make me laugh through my tears I found the strength to explain it to him by sharing Conrad’s story, it’s one that I’ve told before, but never to this audience, and never in the way I see it now.
Because now I have this feeling in the pit of my stomach, it’s not impending doom, but it creates the same physical manifestation, the one where you want to puke. This feeling that perhaps I’ve been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that the right place at the right time might not ever happen. The brutal reality that sometimes we need to put ourselves in the way of our greatest fear, because sometimes time is running out.
-------Conrad's Story-------
It was the day after my birthday and it was raining. The weather lead me to believe that he’d changed his mind. After all, the drive is a long one. He had no cell phone, his was broken. So as the hours ticked on from dusk to dark and became the chilly lonely hours before the middle of the night I waited with patience.
Some time after midnight I fell asleep, half expecting to get rudely awakened out of a dream state by the door bell, but seven AM came around and the daylight crept through the slats in the wood shutters.
I rolled out of bed and ran my fingers through my tousled hair. I had left the door unlocked, so maybe he’d let himself in and was snoring silently on the couch.
As I walked downstairs my manicured toes hit the slate floor and I quickly retreated to the last carpeted step. Grabbing onto the stair railing for support I peeked around the wall. He was not there.
Begrudgingly I headed back upstairs and logged onto the computer, I winced slightly as the almost fluorescent light of the screen flicked to life. One quick perusal through twenty junk emails showed the last email I had received.
"SweetCheeks, I'm coming down the coast, stopping off in Santa Barbara for a friends wedding then heading to San Diego, can't wait to see you."
As if there was an earthquake, a jarring sensation sparred my mind out of a previously thoughtless state and the rolling that followed caused my gut to drop. I felt a sudden ache, an unguided and misdirected fear that something was wrong. As I clicked the logout button on Yahoo Mail I realized Conrad wouldn‘t be coming to see me.
I can’t explain where the dreadful thought came from, it certainly wasn’t decided by the forefront of my mind, but something more raw and instinctual.
Something that defies all logic and reason, because when the intangible is involved you don’t think it, you feel it. But I did what any normal person would have done. I went about my weekend ignoring it. The way I saw it I didn’t have a choice. I wasn’t in a position to do much about it. So I let that emotion sit back there thumping blood warnings out of my heart while my mind proceeded on with life.
Conrad had the intangible, the one thing in life you can’t quite put your finger on. Conrad went to CalPoly and pulled a 4.2 GPA out of his classes, but he wasn’t satisfied, he wanted to see the world. So against my pleads he joined the Navy. Conrad went some 10,000 leagues under the sea. Despite the literal miles and the waters of the ocean we kept in touch, via snail mail every week and a phone call here and there when the submarine surfaced. Regardless, Conrad was never far, never far from my heart, and never far from my mind. Because Conrad had the intangible.
He had this ability to play battle of the wits, and beat me. He had this way to make me laugh so far down in my gut that it ached. He had this goofy way about him that made him endearing and made me want to protect him. He had this tough love attitude that kept me fighting to be the best person I could be. He had this warmth through his confident exterior that made me smile.
He had the intangible that touched me in the right place, the intangible is the one thing that despite our distance over the years, kept us seeking each other out. Because if you’ve experienced the intangible, you crave it. It’s not every day that you connect with another person like that. There are so few people that come into our life and have that profound affect on us, and it gets to a point that you‘d part the sea to have moment with that person. Because something happens when you see them that keeps you alive. Regardless of whether I wanted to or not, I loved Conrad. I loved that we shared the intangible and I loved that no matter what path our lives took we’d always be connected by that.
I think he felt it to, I‘d almost put money on it. But we never talked about it, and for the sheer fact that it was unexplainable to both of us, it was almost taboo. Over the years I dated guys, and he dated girls, and I eventually got married and we eventually went our separate ways, but the intangible never died. It couldn’t, it can’t.
At the end of that long weekend I sent Conrad an email, I kept it brief. “Guess you got busy, no problem, I’ve got a birthday coming around next year. Love you, SweetCheeks.”
Note that “Love You, SweetCheeks” is not the same as “I really love you for all that you are, and will ever be and I think about you every day that you’re not here.”
And two days later in the middle of another rain storm I got an email from Conrad’s email address. But it wasn't from Conrad.
"Michaela, this is Trish, I really don't know how to say this, and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to type this to you...I know how much you loved Conrad, and how much he loved you....Conrad is dead. He was hit and killed by a car while crossing the street leaving his friend's wedding in Santa Barbara."
My body tingled from one end to the other, I felt like I was burning alive. I threw the laptop down and ran out into the pouring rain. As I reached the driveway I screamed at the top of my lungs and dropped to the ground. I begged God, anyone, to please make it not true. My hands hit the asphalt as I bowed in child’s pose to the universe pleading to please bring him back.
My heart was pounding in my chest. He was gone.
He was 28 years old, and I had just turned 26. I’d lost my best friend, and I’d lost the intangible, the one rarity in life that is so hard to find. The one person who despite all logic and reason you are connected to, despite months and miles, and boyfriend and girlfriends, and life, you still think about every day.
He'd been stolen from me, and right then a little piece of me started to die, because without the intangible I started flopping like a fish out of water. I tried to find my purpose, tried to find my drive. But there was little comparison to the tough love, witty challenge, guttural laughter that he sparked inside me.
It took me a long time to get to a place where I could share Conrad’s story with the world, and on the two year anniversary of the night he died I wrote his story, and then I wrote him this letter and put it up on my blog.
“Conrad - I love you, and I miss you a lot. I miss that stupid yellow banger piece of shi* car you drove me all over the Divide in. I miss that you were there to pick up my broken heart pieces from all the losers I dated. I miss the fact that two kisses on your cheek had such a profound affect on you that 10 years later you still called me SweetCheeks. I miss the handwritten letters we shared. And I miss the fact that when I would hug you -you would crush my toes with your big galoofey feet, because you always were so damn clumsy. I miss talking to you, my friend. And completely and utterly selfishly, I miss knowing that you were there for me, without doubt, just because you wanted to be, and that no matter what happened I'd always have you. I guess in re-reading that sentence I realize, those qualifications make you one heck of a damn good Angel.
And when I see something that brings my mind instantly to your memory...I know that no matter how short your time on earth was, you're still very much alive in my heart.”
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It was right then that I realized, I didn’t need a metaphor to explain it. See, it took years to come across another being who had the ability to make me laugh like that, a person whose tough love made me fight to be a better person, a person whose words I hung on because of the intangible, I believed in what they said.
Through a series of events, some within my control and some completely out of my control I’m utterly disconnected from this person. Its as if they died. Out of self integrity and self respect I’ve done what any normal person would have done, I’ve continued on with my life.
But once you’ve tasted it, and your lips have graced the finest dark roast espresso it’s almost impossible to be happy with a cup of Folgers. You drink it, because you know it will satisfy the desire, you drink to the last drop because you’re trying to find one sip that provides you the same feeling as that dark roast, but once your palate has been treated to the glory of the intangible there really is no comparison. There’s nothing you’ll settle for, because it’s the intangible that makes you feel alive.
Each day I try to find a way to deny myself the thing I want most, and just press on like it never existed. But I can't rightfully live knowing that the intangible is twenty miles away, living and breathing and may not ever know how I feel. To have the intangible, I'd give everything else up, because the intangible challenges me to be the best person I can be, the intangible makes me feel alive.
Right now I'm sad for what I’d once had and given up, and once had and lost, and right now I feel like time is running out.