Love and Loss

The years between my graduation from college and meeting you were filled with depression and loss; I was in an existential crisis; I was a tortured soul. I became an abuser of alcohol. But, that abuse went unnoticed because I lived in a college town where binge drinking was the norm. I worked a job where my co-workers partied hard. We had so many parties where I drank to the point of blacking out on too many occasions to count. I suppose the drinking was a way to cope with my distress. I can remember many occasions where I would be driving or doing any various mundane task and I’d burst into quiet tears because I was completely depressed.

The majority of my life was dedicated to the pursuit of developing a career as a classical musician. This was one of my primary dreams; an idea that was inspired by my heart and not my mind. I was 26 years old when I met you. During my musical studies in college I learned that most classical musicians who make it into the small population of hired, professional musicians make it when they are in their early to mid-twenties. If one hasn’t already established themselves by that time then it becomes exponentially harder to find positions in performance ensembles that could provide an income enough to live a decent life. The weeks before I met you, I learned that there was an opening in the US Navy Band. This was a dream job. I would have been permanently stationed in Washington DC, making $45K a year and earning all the other benefits of being in the military. I would never see combat. It was a position that when won most people stay for the entirety of their career. That being said, it was highly competitive.

I knew that if I had any chance of winning that audition that I would need to be free of depression so that I could mentally focus on the task at hand. I contacted my aunt, who was a psychiatrist. She knew my medical history as I’d suffered from mental illness since the age of five or six. She prescribed me Prozac. Little did I know that it wasn’t clinical depression that I suffered, but rather Bipolar II disorder(no one, including myself, knew at that time that I had that disease). Anyone who knows anything about having that disorder knows that taking only anti-depressants is very dangerous.

I can remember that after we’d decided to date each other exclusively I was so happy…but, not really. I remember being so happy to be with you, but my depression got worse while I was on Prozac. I remember lying next to you, attempting to fall asleep, thinking how happy and lucky I was, but I cried myself to sleep that night with the thought that if that sadness didn’t disappear I was going to have to kill myself. I knew it was the medication, but I so desperately wanted it to work, I so desperately wanted to be happy, to be “normal” that I continued taking the medication without telling my aunt about the worsened symptoms. Days and weeks passed and the suicidal thoughts disappeared, but hidden deep within my mind was the depression, subtly altering my personality. Although there were subtle changes to my personality, my salient characteristic was still there; I was still a good and overly-idealistic guy. And that person is who you learned to like I suppose.

I was coping with so much stress during our relationship. I was dealing with a DUI charge; I thought I was going to be sentenced jail time. Deep within myself, I knew that if I went to jail our relationship would be over. Why would you want to be in a relationship with someone who’d served jail time? I had no license, but I still drove when I needed to get around town. It was terrifying and extremely stressful. I was only working part-time at the public library, making little money; I was receiving unemployment benefits to supplement that income. But, still I was barely getting by. I wanted to give you the world, but I was just a pauper.

Weeks passed and I was in bliss and hell. My audition for the Navy Band was fast approaching. I believed that if I won that audition my life would be able to start. I would have had a life with you, a family with you; I would have had my complete dream, to be a professional musician and to be absolutely in love. I lost the audition; I was eliminated within the first round. While I was at the airport, waiting to fly back home I was absolutely depressed, barely holding back tears, barely holding back the realization that my dream was over. After I told you that I lost the audition and that I was on my way home, you told me that you were very sick and going to the ER. So, I put aside my abounding grief to be there for you during your illness; I put you before myself because I thought that was the righteous thing to do. I suppose I was wrong, I should have told you how absolutely devastated I was. You see, to me, losing that audition meant that my career as a musician was over, that part of my dream was over. But, I still had you; you were the light in the darkness. I suppose that in looking back now, I realize that having you be my light was too much of a burden for you.

The day I flew to DC for the audition you gave me the short book about penguins that described how some species of that bird chose a mate for life because of love. You were telling me that you loved me and in my eyes that opened a door into a whole new world of bliss with you. Even before you gave me that book, I knew I’d found something special with you. One night during the beginning of our relationship I was out with friends drinking and I sent you a text message stating that I was so glad to find you again. Of course you asked what I was talking about, “finding you again.” I suppose that you believed it was drunken ramblings. However, the next night I explained myself. I told you the story from the book What Dreams May Come. I told you how the protagonist whose wife had died by committing suicide later died himself. And in the afterlife he searched for her only to learn that she wasn’t in “heaven,” but in hell. His spirit guide told him that it was dangerous to go to hell, that it could suck him in and make you a permanent resident. That danger didn’t matter to him; he traveled through all the levels of hell to find her. And he did find her. She was in a drab world of unending and unrelenting despair. She didn’t recognize him, but he tried everything he could to bring her back from those fathomless depths of despondency. Nothing worked. But, his love for her was so strong that he decided to stay in hell with her, to let the darkness of that world envelop and consume him only so he could be with her. It was that sacrifice that awakened her, that showed her the light. He saved her; they were reborn into the world of the living as children and they found each other again in the world of the living and lived happily together. They were soul mates. I was so embarrassed when you didn’t respond to my story, my explanation of my feelings for you, but then I looked at you and realized why you didn’t say anything; you were crying. Your acceptance of my quixotic and romantic views of life only reinforced my love of you. I knew that I’d found “the one.”

A week after you gave me the book about penguins; a couple of months after I told you the story of What Dreams May Come, I noticed that you were pulling away from me. So, I asked you to again tell me that you loved me and that’s when you said I was “demanding” too much from you and you immediately broke up with me. In that moment I lost everything; I lost you, I lost my career as a musician. I lost everything that I loved. The depression and despair that was buried within me burst forth, made worse by the Prozac that I was still taking.

I asked you why you broke up with me and you said it was because I was a “quitter.” I didn’t understand because I’d never quit anything in my life. Even though I’d dealt with severe depression throughout the entirety of my life I was very successful because of my will power, my drive. I graduated from high school with honors, I graduated from college with a degree in statistics, I was accepted into one of the top 5 music conservatories in the nation to get a master’s in music performance. I couldn’t have done all of that if I was, in your words, a quitter. So, I didn’t understand why, between a week and a week and a half of telling me that you loved me, you broke up with me. You cut off all communication with me, you blocked my phone number and you stopped responding to my emails. I became obsessed with the question of why you said you loved me then broke up with me. I had to understand.

All of that stress coupled with being on the wrong medication sent me into a psychosis and I sent you dozens of emails everyday that became more and more bizarre. You told my friends that you were terrified of me. I didn’t understand why you’d be terrified of me. I never threatened you. I never attempted to see you in person. I assumed that you’d just delete the emails. And when I never heard back from you I attempted suicide twice within two days.

I wish I knew why you abandoned me. I tell myself that if the situation were I would never have just left you if you’d done the same things I did. And I suppose that’s not “normal” behavior, to commit yourself to someone who is mentally ill. I wish I could send you this letter or call you to explain myself, to find out what happened. But, I know that if I do attempt to contact you there will be legal ramifications. I know that we had only a brief relationship and that three years after it ended I shouldn’t still have feelings for you, but I do. I remember lying next to you, looking into your eyes and an untamable smile creeped across my visage; you asked why I was smiling and I told you it was for no reason, but within myself I recognized that in that moment I knew you were the love of my life.

I miss you; I know I’ll never see you again or speak with you again and my heart breaks every day with that realization. I suppose that it’s wrong to say this at this point in my life, but I still love you so very deeply. If you were here beside me I’d play Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and Led Zeppelin’s Since I’ve Been Loving You.

In the simplest of terms my feelings for my love of you and what happened can be explained by the following quotes:

“Because, he said, “I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you – especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land some broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, – you’d forget me.” – Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
-Anais Nin