8:09 p.m. - 06/06/03
remembered.
more remembering
I met Kyle in Chas' English class - the one with eighteen students that lasted two periods and thoroughly changed all our lives. He came from one of the small schools on the edges of the district (the ones Stephanie went to when she left that year or two), and all four schools spent most of seventh grade learning that the other students didn't bite, weren't snobs, and weren't foreign. At least, not as a group. By eighth grade, we meshed fairly well, forgetting for the most part who we'd known since kindergarten and who we'd never sat behind before. I liked Kyle because he smiled with his entire face, almost like he couldn't help it, and he had such genuine gentleness and humor. I loved the way he could make Chas laugh (not to mention the laughter he drew from my own throat), and I loved that he sometimes blushed at the attention he drew. He looked like he might have been shy once, but now he was a clown. A small-circus sort. He had a semi-dorky, goofy way of being that was darling, was infectious. And I don't know how many words we exchanged over the four years I went to school with him, but they probably wouldn't have been enough to fulfill the requirements of one essay we turned in. Still, he was in Chas' class of eighteen. The class that began every session with a British-flavoured, "Good ahftehnoon, Miss **". There was a long part of the year where he sat near the front and the people in the front always seemed to lead us in that recitation. One day, for one project, he wore a dress to class, and he seemed entirely embarrassed, but he'd still agreed to do it. That was Kyle to me, grinning and blushing and laughing madly, not entirely sure of himself but still willing to take the risk, not so far up he wouldn't speak to me, not so far down he understood where I was coming from.
And I was glad because...his laughter pulled me up a bit some days.
He's another one... I didn't know him as well as I wish I had, and the logical thing now is to believe I never will. And who knows, maybe we'll stumble across each other's paths somehow, down the dim roads of the future, but for now, it's just nice to say, hey, kid, you meant something to me. In a time when few things broke through long enough to mean anything...
One day, I scribbled "death" in my algebra notebook over and over again, entirely lost in my own depression, forgetting anyone was around me. Kyle sat next to me, and looked at it and then at me, with worry, with a question in his eyebrows. I shrugged it off, or tried to, and quickly flipped the notebook shut. It meant something to me, though; it stayed with me. I think, lost as I was then, the idea that he could see it, simple as that is, meant something to me. The idea that he could go into my world even that far, that he could see the words I wrote in my notebooks, that he could care why I wrote them, all hit me. I was sick enough that everything I saw blurred, like color so vivid it can't stay clear. Everywhere I went, I heard noise, only, as if the world spoke a language I didn't know. I walked the hallways believing I was invisible, and when I lost that ability, I started panicking and going home early, or coming in late. Eighth grade was the last year where there was really hope for me, and Kyle was part of that hope. He was one of the students who decided, however rarely, to look at me with high enough intensity that I knew I was real. Eighth grade was the last year when the firmness of someone's look could almost balance the pain of being seen, when knowing I was real didn't always hurt.
And now I'm thinking of Natalie, a girl who deserves her own entire entry, a girl who proves that I picked the cream of the crop when it came to best friends. But I'm thinking of eighth grade, when my closest friends stuffed my locker with gum and balloons and a card, and by the time I'd cleaned it up and made my way to first hour, Natalie was up front by the chalkboard (instead of Mandy), and she began conducting, "Happy Birthday." That whole day was incredible; the whole school seemed to know it was my birthday. When they sang to me in Chas' English class, the history class next door sang along. "Do you even know who you're singing to?" the history teacher asked halfway through. "Of course!" they responded quickly. "Everyone knows it's Mary's birthday..."
Everything was different that year. I was falling apart, I couldn't eat, I wouldn't sleep, I couldn't pull myself up from depression, or down from anxiety ... but there was hope. There was a community of people who treated me with compassion, sincerity, even love. When that went away in high school...that's when things truly turned fatal. That's why, as my memories surface now, most of the stories I want to tell come from grade and middle school. The best of what's happened since you already know: I was transplanted to Wisconsin and successfully re-raised. That's the part I have an impossible time explaining to others. There was no hope my freshman year. There was no hope my sophomore year. I was dying, and there was no hope of ever getting free. But my junior year, I did. So you see, even when there is no hope, you wait. Years maybe. Impossible years where you lean on the smiles of boys who don't know what they mean. And then you have hope again.
I have a silver ring on my right middle finger that says "hope." It's from a set of five, the rest of which seem to have disappeared...hope, live, love, trust...and something else I don't remember. This one reappeared the other day, and I've been wearing it non-stop, even when I sleep (which takes some adjusting to.) I want to send it to Sara in the package I'm preparing for her, but in the meantime, I don't want to take it off. I want to hold onto hope for her, until I know she has it for herself (and after.) And I want her to know when she wears this little silver ring, that in some indirect but important way, she is holding my hand.
Every time the phone rings, I jump and wonder who it will be with what news. Then I stay on-line for hours straight, knowing no one can get through. Maybe I need this right now. Maybe I need a few hours where my life is the only one I see. There are many, many people in this world worth saving. I need to gather my reserves again, so I make sure I don't go about trying to do so. You have had the power all along. I didn't tell you before because you wouldn't have believed me. I made a really decent Dorothy in middle school, but even in Oz it was clear that we supported each other, while going after our own dreams. I didn't give the lion his courage, the tin woodsman his heart, or the scarecrow his brain. I just walked with them, up and down the stages on which we performed, forgetting what was life and what was theater (in a time, when that sort of escape seemed magical.)
I guess I'd say I'm still where I was Wednesday, though the high of graduation's wearing off a bit into exhaustion. I'm taking my sleeping pills earlier tonight, as ordered, in hopes that my sleep will get better. If my sleep normalizes, my eating will as well. (I was doing fine, and then slept through most of today, which makes it hard to eat appropriately.) I'm also in better spirits when I don't spend the whole day in and out of bed. So, fix the sleep, balance staying distracted with staying in love...
Remember so fondly, it lessens the need to go back.
chord
*please keep up the hoping*
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