vulnerability

vulnerability

“Evan is dying.”

I'm panicking. I know that at best I only have twenty-four hours to make it to Massachusetts. As I fly over to where he is, all the while thinking, “Am I going to make it?

Will I at least be able to say goodbye?”

When I get to the hospital he's fading, blood still staining his face from the accident. The massive weight of grief and defeat brings me to my knees, eating me alive from the inside.

So, this is it. I'm going to lose yet another friend.

Death is, perhaps, the ultimate form of abandonment.

I awake from the nightmare at precisely 7:58 AM in a cold sweat on November 26 th, 2014.

Unable to fall back asleep, I lay there in my bed, my anxious breaths filling the room. It's the only sound within earshot on this eerily quiet morning. I wait until birds welcome dawn.

Outside my window, I can see people out for their morning jog on the track in Wingate Park.

Evan's not in his room. He's away for Thanksgiving break. So I send him a text.

Not even a minute passes and I receive a dimly-lit selfie of him bundled up in bed, his raised cheeks suggesting a drowsy smile obscured by the shadow of a blanket that is tightly wound around him. I groan a little because he looks ridiculous, and also because I feel ridiculous for being so needy.

The semester is almost over. Maybe no one will die this time. I can't explain why I was so sure someone was going to. Nevertheless...

These are the moments I cried during the week of March 26, 2014: 1. A few minutes before class began I was on Facebook when I saw an influx of posts by

2.

3.

4.

5.

people from my hometown all saying the same thing. Emily was this. Emily was that.

My heart sank lower and lower as one after another a different person posted a picture of her and talked about how amazing she was. Was. Past tense. At first I thought, “Maybe she's just sick. Maybe she just got into an accident.” Eventually I saw enough “rest easy”s for it to finally register. She was dead. I excused myself from class and ran to the single bathroom on the 10 th floor of Steinhardt, my reflection grieving beside me on the mirror to my right. Earlier that day I had decided to look nice for no particular reason, but the dress shirt was too big and the khakis were too short. She used to tease me about wearing pants with legs that weren't long enough.

Once I had gotten back to my old house in Wilmington, there was nothing to do but wait until the memorial service the next day. My parents were on vacation so I was completely alone in the house for the weekend. Emily's little brother, who I hadn't seen since he was in elementary school, made a post on Facebook saying how much he loved and missed her.

Later on the same night I contemplated on whether or not I should say anything during her vigil. There was nothing I could think of except “She was strong and brave to the very end.” I kept repeating those words in my mind until the reality of her death and having to refer to her in the past tense settled in.

At the end of the service, I went up to the front of the hall where a few friends had gathered. That’s when I saw the casket. For the entire service I had been sitting all the way in the back, not even realizing that it was up there the whole time. She was right there, but at the same time she wasn't. The casket was closed. It looked so small from where I stood.

I ended up speaking at the vigil. People would call me brave for it, but the truth of the matter is that I was completely dissociating at the time, burying my emotions and consciousness so that the words would flow automatically out of my mouth. It's like I wasn't even there. It's what I usually did in situations like this. But at the end of the vigil Christine immediately came up and hugged me. She didn't say a word, but feeling her arms wrapped so tightly around me cleared the dissociative fog in my head, and I was back in reality from the space in my psyche I had retreated to. And I completely lost it.

November 8, 2013: Sophia Glaser, a college friend, unexpectedly passes away January 27, 2014: News spreads of an NYU student who leaped to his death from the Third North dorm.

February 12, 2014: News spreads of another suicide at NYU. March 26, 2014: Emily Spiegel, a childhood friend, takes her own life.

June 18, 2014: Justin Orr, an acquaintance from high school, takes his own life.

August 23, 2014: My grandmother passes away from old age.

August 30, 2014: My great uncle unexpectedly dies in a car accident.

“But they get to see something that no one will ever experience while they’re alive,” Taylor immediately says. “Think about it! In your final moments, you’re about to see what happens after. Wouldn't you be excited? I mean, you'd at least be curious about it, right?” There's a glint in his eyes, so animated and full of life whenever he goes on his rants about death.

“I don’t care about what happens after,” I tell him uneasily. “For me, it's always the act of dying that scares me the most. When I first heard about Sophie’s death, I couldn’t stop thinking about what it was like for her. Was she in pain? Was she afraid? Did she know that she was about to die? And what about the people you love? Would you be so quick to want to leave them behind if you were dying?”

There's a moment of hesitation from Taylor. “No,” he mutters quietly. He's pacing now, indicating that he's in a state of deep thought.

“It’s like, you die and that’s that. You don’t have to feel anymore. But those that are still alive do. And when it comes to suicide, it’s as if you’re making the decision to pass all of your suffering on to the people around you.”

“It’s not that I want to kill myself,” Taylor clarifies to me. “But what if I just died suddenly?

Something beyond my control. I get hit by a truck, or a meteor just crashes into our apartment and takes us all with it. I'd be okay with that.”

“Fair enough. But let me ask you something,” I say. “If you were to die, would you rather be remembered, even if it means subjecting the ones you love to the pain of losing you for the rest of their lives? Or would you rather just disappear from the world completely, and everyone will forget you even existed?”

Taylor's pacing ceases as he deliberates on the question. It doesn't take him very long and he looks at me, his visage softening, the inner corners of his eyebrows ever so slightly raised. The glint in his eyes has shifted into something else, an unspoken pain deeply buried underneath that morbidly cerebral exterior of his. This is the expression he always wears when he's at his most vulnerable with me. And his voice would always take on this frail, tenuto quality, so different from his manic, staccato musings.

“I’d rather be forgotten.”

THEO Why do people commit suicide? (ranting) There’s this poisonous plant, the gympie gympie, that causes excruciating pain just from touching it.

It’s like being constantly burned and electrocuted, and it can last for months. People have been known to kill themselves because it’s that agonizing.

(KASEY takes the sunflower still adorned in HAYDEN’S hair and gazes at it.)

THEO Take a look at some of the people in this ward. How long have they felt that that kind of poison in their souls?

You put someone out of their misery when their body suffers too much and it’s a mercy kill. But if the suffering takes place in the mind, killing yourself is selfish and stupid. It’s a “permanent solution to a temporary problem.”

(THEO walks downstage until they are right behind HAYDEN and KASEY. HAYDEN begins calming down at this point.)

THEO (more soft-spoken) There are those who will never have to step foot in a place like this. They make up the majority of the people around us. And they’ll never truly know what it’s like.

(THEO takes the sunflower from KASEY. THEO lets the sunflower fall next to KASEY’s wallet, then exits. KASEY gets up to retrieve both the sunflower and the wallet before sitting back down, clutching both items tightly.)

October 20, 2013. The train back to Prague rolls past castles, mountains, and hills. It's a beautiful sight.

“I think it’s cool that you don’t stick with one particular group of people,” Sophie says to me. “Everyone in film is close like a family, but there can be drama, too. You do your own thing, though, and I like that.”

My exchanges with Sophie did not number as much as I could have hoped for, but when we did talk her words had a way of sticking with me.

November 9, 2014. It's been a year since Sophie passed away and I end up attending a gathering that consisted mainly of film people and a few of my other peers who lived in the Osadni dorm in Prague. We drink, smoke, make a copious amount of food, and watch Too Many Cooks. A few people sleep over. There isn't much open discussion about Sophie herself, but throughout the night her presence can still be felt. Here is a group of friends caring for and supporting each other, all united by the one person who had impacted their lives in such a profound way in such a short amount of time. And I see, really see, the family that Sophie had been a part of.

Dear Emily, I know you've been feeling bad lately so I hope this cheers you up!

I tried to get you an Elmo doll at the skeeball game in Hershey Park but I didn't get enough points :(

Spix0red: SNARL Comic Comix 8: *throb!* Spix0red: oh yes! I can’t take it anymore!

Spix0red: *shot’d* Comic Comix 8: *stagger* Comic Comix 8: UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH Comic Comix 8: *dies* Spix0red: ?

Spix0red: omg, I tried to shoot myself and missed!

Comic Comix 8: haha Comic Comix 8: you stupid child.

Comic Comix 8: that big O must have been distracting ya Spix0red: uh huh Spix0red: I wonder if you can die from having one for too long just like you can die for having hiccoughs for too long Comic Comix 8: you can die from hiccups?

Spix0red: yeah Spix0red: you die from fatigue Comic Comix 8: oh wow..

Comic Comix 8: I scary Spix0red: but it takes like 2 days Comic Comix 8: crap Spix0red: *choke shoot stabbity stab* Spix0red: >=D Comic Comix 8: asdjfl2kw4j23$J Spix0red: akjshdfuiasdhfysagdf8y?

Spix0red: lajusghdlhhhhh!

Comic Comix 8: !!!!!

Comic Comix 8 is away at 5:20:04 PM. Spix0red: http://home.comcast.net/~stoleyourcar/family_guy_-_elmo_shut_the_fuck_up.mp3 Auto response from Comic Comix 8: I’M FREEZING MY ENORMOUS ASS OFF, getting a hoodie... brb Comic Comix 8 returned at 5:20:48 PM. Comic Comix 8: I hate yoooooooou Comic Comix 8: :’( Comic Comix 8: except not Spix0red: xP Comic Comix 8: !

“I thought I loved Emily.”

Sirens blare down the street, a recurring result of our living down the block from both the hospital and the fire department. This time it's an ambulance.

“You thought?” Taylor repeats.

“I had a huge crush on her when I was in fifth grade, and it kind of carried over all the way into high school. She was more popular and had more going on in her life, and the whole time I would wish that she would pay more attention to me.” I take a deep breath. This is the first time I've made any such confession out loud. “And then I go back to her Livejournal now, all the shit she wrote when we were in elementary school and middle school, and I see everything she had written about her eating disorder... I... was so fixated on making her feel better without understanding what she had been going through. It just went over my head.” My voice gets quieter, but I do not lose momentum, even as my voice quakes slightly. “How could I have wanted her to pay attention to me when I wasn’t even paying attention to her?”

“But she made you feel something, didn’t she? You cared about her. How is that not love?”

“The only thing I wanted was for her to like me back. I made it all about me and hardly about her.”

“But... just because you wanted something from it doesn’t mean it wasn’t genuine. She was your friend and you were concerned for her well-being, and I think that the fact that you're going through this guilt also shows that you loved her.” Though the words do not convince me, his voice is gentle and full of compassion. Why? Taylor is usually quick to play devil's advocate over pretty much anything in our conversations.

I'm looking at our feet. We have the exact same shoe size, Taylor in his sambas and I in my neon blue Nikes, no socks. “Senior year of high school she helped me get over a point where I was suicidal. Then we... fell out of touch by graduation. I never talked to her once we were in college. She got so involved with mental health advocacy, and publicly wrote about what she would be going through. And I really admired her for that, but I didn't tell her. Even after I got out of the psych ward and started getting help and everything, I didn’t think about sending her a message. I’m alive because of her and I never got to tell her. And I have to live with that for the rest of my life.”

“Oh, Kevin...” is all Taylor can say. The sympathetic manner in which he utters my name only makes me feel more sorry for myself.

We're on the stoop in front of our apartment, like we always are. It's summer, but the air is dry and cool. With the passage of these restless hours it becomes even chillier and gradually our arms become crossed, our shoulders hunched. Taylor flicks his finished cigarette where it tumbles onto our ugly, patchy lawn. The cigarette spews tiny red lights before landing amongst all the other discarded butts that have accumulated over the course of a few weeks. I had already smoked my cigarette for the night, and unfortunately I had also picked up Taylor's habit of just tossing them on to the pathetic excuse for grass in front of our building. Most of the time I would bring a bottle of whiskey to sip from instead.

I have that with me too, a Balvenie 12 year.

We continue to talk for the next six hours straight, but none of it is about Emily.

Serenade No.1: Helianthus Elysium (excerpt)

We're sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park at night. He asks me, “What do you ultimately want to do as a musician?”

I reply, “I just want to be able to perfectly convey whatever I'm feeling.”

“Well, I'd say that's what most composers want to do,” he says with just a hint of lighthearded sarcasm. “That's good, though, that you have a goal in mind.”

In the same conversation, the topic of depression comes up. “What is it that you struggle the most with?” he asks. “Because I know it's different with everyone. Like for my brother its his anxiety.”

“Self-loathing,” I say without a beat. “That's why I've always clung to people. It's like, by being around them all the time, I don't have to deal with myself.”

As I explain he nods with understanding, and for the first time outside of a psych ward I feel like someone is listening to my experiences without judgment.

Seven months later, I had just finished Skyping him from Prague when he messages me saying there's one more thing he wants to talk to me about. I'm on the top floor of Osadni, sitting in the porch-like area of the lounge with large windows overlooking Holesovice.

Once more, his face pops up on my screen, and I ask him what's up.

“I just wanted to make sure you're okay,” he says. “Because I freaked out a little when you said that you were planning on going off your medication. Have you even told anyone over there?”

“Uh, no.”

“Am I the only one you've told?”

“Yes?” “See, that's what worries me! How will people be able to check to make sure you're okay if they don't know what's going on, especially when you're going to be traveling alone? And why are you only telling me when I can't really do anything from across the ocean? I wouldn't be able to do anything if something were to happen to you!”

“I'll definitely tell people,” I promise him, “but it's been hard for me to start trusting new people.” Besides, going to Ireland and Scotland and Spain was going to be a blast. Even if there were times I was going to be on my own, what could possibly happen?

It's in the Guinness Store House on my third day in Ireland where Emily G. receives the call about Sophie. But as upsetting as the news is, we have to keep moving. We do our tour of the store house, taking plenty of pictures and enjoying our complimentary pint at the top of the tower. We meet my hostel roommate, an attractive Australian named Michael, and go on a massive pub crawl throughout Dublin. Emily G. casually tears a coaster to pieces.

Laura suddenly wanders off for a while and it is by luck that we run into her again on the street. I get sexually harassed by a middle-aged woman but am too drunk to care and proceed to smoke an unfiltered cigarette that gives me a cough that will last for a whole month. We never make any mention about Sophie at all in front of Michael, but I have a feeling he knows something is up. Or maybe he just thinks we're acting weird because that's just how we are. The following day everyone except me goes to see The National, and so I spend the day in the Botanic Gardens and then dance the night away at The George.

And then our time in Ireland is over and we go our separate ways. Suddenly, I am alone in Scotland. Emily S. is still alive, but at that moment the only thing on my mind is Sophie.

I walk aimlessly through Edinburgh. Somehow I end up all the way to the docks of Leith, and when I get back to the hostel Sophie's death finally hits me and I cry for almost an hour in the shower.

The next day I go hiking in Loch Lomond. The train station in Glasgow reminds me of Budapest, and how Sophie had owed me some money for the apartment I had booked for everyone. Moments before our train had arrived I kept scrambling back and forth between her and the snack vendor, asking for fts from her and buying things in an attempt to have no Hungarian currency left over. Each time she smiled and handed over a few coins, and eventually I successfully rid my person entirely of forints while also getting my hands on one of those packs of breadsticks that you dip in cheese sauce. A silly memory, but it's one of the few memories I have of her. “But you go and do your own thing, and I think that's pretty cool,� she had said. Now, though, being on me own is probably the worst situation to be in. I eagerly make my way to Barcelona where I meet up with Evan and Eddie. It keeps raining for the rest of the trip.

Another four months later, Emily S. is dead. My thumb hovers over the call button under his name.

We do end up talking, but I never tell him about Emily. I'm not entirely sure if I ever mentioned Sophie to him either.

“I would rather you just not tell me,” Taylor insists heatedly.

“But I'd have to tell you!” I shoot back. “I literally get panic attacks when I internalize something like this, and it's... It's too much.”

“Look, I'm listening to you telling me that you're someone who is irrational and reacts extremely to minor things... and I'm not going to lie, it makes me uncomfortable. It's just something that I'd be better off not knowing how you feel.”

Both of us are standing. Before we were pacing back and forth as our conversation began to escalate, but now he is on top of the stoop, while I'm one step down.

“It's a part of who I am.”

“You can't expect everyone to just accept it, though.”

“Well, then I'll look for the people who will!”

“Fine, but you can't hold it against the people who don't want to be around you! You tell everyone that no one can understand you but then get mad when they don't want to understand you!” He is not wrong in pointing out this hypocrisy.

As I speak, I have to strain myself to keep my voice from quaking. “Taylor, this is why my roommate from sophomore year, who was supposed to be my best friend, decided I was too much and moved out without telling me until the night before and refusing to talk it out. And this is the reason why I ended up in a god damn psych ward after that. I thought everyone I got close to was going to end up treating me the way he did, and that I deserved it. I'm tired of that fear. I want to trust my friends. I assume they can't understand, but of course I want them to be able to.”

My words seem to reach Taylor in some capacity, but he is not quite ready to yield his position as devil's advocate yet. “All I'm saying is that when you tell someone these things, it can be difficult for them to listen to,” he says in a manner that is simultaneously gentle and assertive. “They might not know how to deal with it.”

“Well, yeah, of course,” I say. I mean, no shit. It can be exhausting being around someone like me or someone like Emily, in all our emotional instability. So he's right about that much.

Taylor is so prepared to keep arguing that he is taken aback by my concession, and his eyes briefly dart side to side. “Okay!” he concludes, a little bewildered.

The sky is blue now. Through our arguing we had completely missed the sun rise from behind us. We go back into our apartment and sit in the living room for a moment. “I'm glad we got to talk that through,” he says. “I was so angry during that, I was about to storm upstairs halfway through.”

“I know. Me too.”

We sit in the living room, I on the couch and Taylor on the black Ikea chair. It's probably 7:30 in the morning and neither of us have had a wink of sleep. On the other side of the wall behind me, Colton and Evan are still asleep in their shared bedroom.

“With us living together,” I say, “I wanted to explain why I can get so emotional,” I say.

“Like that time I yelled at you and Evan when you guys were talking about Tinder.”

Something clicks in Taylor's mind and he says, “Oh, well, I wouldn't call that being irrational.

That's more like an overreaction. That's fine. My brother does it all the time.”

“Wait, what?”

“When you said irrational, I thought you meant like I'd give you a present and it would piss you off for no reason or something. Because something like that is confusing and hard to understand. That's why I couldn't get what you were trying to say.”

My sleep-deprived face doesn't show it, but I am completely aghast. What the fuck were we even fighting over for the past six hours?! Instead I just say, “Oh.” “Even then I wouldn't call the way you act an overreaction. I mean, you can get as pissed or upset as you can about something, and that's just how it is for you. There's nothing wrong with that.”

The Balvenie 12 year is in my hand. I take a few swigs. “That's where the borderline and codependency stuff come in. I need constant validation from others, and... I'm always scared of losing them.”

Taylor sullenly casts his eyes downward. “I think I can understand that.”

And that's all I need.

HAYDEN (quietly) I spend so many nights like these wandering aimlessly, unable to calm the storm in my mind. I’m tired. I’ve wanted to rest in a way that sleep won’t fulfill.

(CAROL enters from auditorium, house left. HAYDEN looks at her in awe and disbelief. KASEY follows HAYDEN’s gaze.)

HAYDEN I’ve been going on for so long under the hope that I will finally find peace.

KASEY I want my life back. I want to feel alive again.

HAYDEN (realizing) It’s a battlefield.

KASEY What?

(HAYDEN looks back at THEO, who goes into the auditorium to join CAROL’s side.)

HAYDEN Why do people commit suicide? Because it doesn't matter how strong we are, if no one can love us when we're weak...

KASEY Do you think people can, though?

HAYDEN Maybe. I get it now. That's all it's ever been. Right, Carol?

KASEY (pointing into auditorium) The sun is coming up.

HAYDEN It’s pretty.

KASEY Yeah.

(As CAROL sings, HAYDEN approaches KASEY and offers their hand. Now holding hands, they go to the edge of the stage. They look at each other. KASEY nods. HAYDEN displays a glimmer of a smile. Together they don’t jump but rather ease themselves into the auditorium.

HAYDEN clutches the sunflower to their chest before adorning their ear with it. KASEY and HAYDEN walk through the auditorium, house right. When they are in line with CAROL, they stop just as she is finished singing. ERIC exits, with HAYDEN looking back just as he disappears from sight. HAYDEN then looks across at CAROL and THEO.)

HAYDEN Goodbye.

(HAYDEN and KASEY exit. THEO exits. CAROL exits after she finishes singing.)

(BLACKOUT)

(End of HELIANTHUS)

It's senior year and Isha is visiting in Flatbush. “He looks a lot like Jordan,” she whispers to me.

My face immediately lights up and I slam my palm against the couch excitedly. “That's what I thought when I first met him too!” I exclaim.

“What?” Taylor calls from kitchen.

“You look like someone from our hometown,” I call back to him. “Here.” I pull up Jordan's profile on my phone and scroll through some photos as Taylor pauses from his tomatochopping to saunter over and see.

“Yeah, kind of,” he observes.

Colton takes a look as well. “I can see it,” he says.

I'm in fifth grade, and being the starstruck 11-year-old child I am I write a letter to Emily professing my love for her and how I wish that there was something I can do to make her feel better whenever she feels sad. Without realizing it, it's my own issues that causes me to resonate so much with her. Thirteen years later, I will realize she was the first person I ever felt emotionally intimate with, and since then my instinct has always been to fixate on connecting to others through shared pain.

It's spring of 2013 and I'm meeting up with someone I had met in the psych ward. I tell her about a friend I have named Emily who is part of a group at her school called Grow and how inspiring it is that she's so open about her experiences and how I wish there was a similar group at NYU. I can't be the one to start it though. I don't have even a fraction of the drive and leadership that Emily has to do so.

It's summertime, and we're playing Mario Party but Emily loves playing Yoshi as much as I do and we spend a good amount of time screaming expletives while fighting over him and resetting the N64 constantly and when we finally start the game we're still yelling “FUCK YOU!” to each other because it's Mario Party and then Scott calls from upstairs, “Emily, I am tired of the language” because we're 12 years old.

I'm at Linda's house, where a bunch of us are gathered to see Isha off to Canada and to also meet up one more time before we all go to college. Emily and I don't say much to each other, but when she leaves she gives me a huge hug and tells me good luck at NYU and I quietly say goodbye. And this is the last time I ever see her alive.

It's December 17, 2012, “Is something wrong?” I ask my roommate and best friend, noticing that he has been acting strangely tonight.

“Yeah, there's something I need to talk to you about,” he says.

“Well, you know you can tell me anything,” I assure him.

He then proceeds to tell me that he can't live with me anymore and that he is moving out the next day. Without ever thinking to talk about it with me beforehand, he had already made up his mind, and so anything I say ends up being meaningless in the end. He moves to a room just down the hall, and after that he does not want to see or talk to me again.

There's a guy in high school who I end up calling fifteen times in rapid succession until he finally picks up to tell me to fuck off. I am horrified at my own desperation and obsessiveness, but at the same time I can't help but remain angry at him. Emily, along with everyone else close to him, struggle to stay on good terms with me while knowing that I should not be around him more than necessary. Because I am a fucking idiot I don't recognize the complicated situation for what it is, concluding that everyone is just staying nice to me out of pity, and believing that even Emily holds nothing but disgust for how broken and insane I am. And so, nurturing that self-indulgent resentment for the rest of high school I go into college without ever talking to her again. Even at the funeral, when Jordan tells me that Emily loved me and always talked about me, it will not be until three years later while I'm looking through pictures of her and I smiling together that I actually believe it.

In the spring of 2013 I attend a support group where I meet someone who becomes instrumental in helping me put the pieces of my life back together. For a long time he's the only one I talk to and open up to.

“You say that you have borderline tendencies, but I don't see that when you're in here with me,” Dr. Hammonds says during one of our sessions.

He's not the first therapist to make this assertion. I can't help but laugh. “That's because I don't feel close to you,” I answer frankly.

I'm in Prague, having planned out a trip to Budapest when I am informed at the last minute that one more person will be joining us. I am a little annoyed, because now there isn't room for both Raj and Eddie to stay in the apartment I had booked. Just who is this Sophie whom I've never even met yet?

I'm in Barcelona and I announce to Evan and Eddie that I've been off my anti-depressants for two weeks, and they are bewildered by the news because they didn't even know I had been on them in the first place.

It's Evan's turn to be on the stoop with me this time. “Taylor kind of looks like a guy that Emily went out with in high school,” I say to him. “And the way he acts sometimes reminds me of her. It's weird, it actually agitated me when I first met him and that's why I'd get pissed at him.”

“He was a lot different freshman year than he is now,” Evan tells me. I know what it was that caused Taylor to change, but ultimately that's his story, not mine.

“All of us were happier freshman year,” I reply only half-jokingly.

At her memorial service, we watch a music video that Sophie made set to “All Wash Out”

by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. Wearing a dark dress she makes her way barefoot through the woods, inter-cut with another scene that has her by a foggy, rocky shore, her hair drenched in rain. In both locations she appears to have trouble with her footing, extending her arms all the way out to the sides to maintain her balance. Then she's spinning and dancing through a field at sunset, wearing a white crop top and releasing some sort of powder that flares up from the light of dusk. Back in the woods she descends into a creek and bathes in it, and when she leaves she is able to walk more confidently now, looking outward at the trees with wonder, the faintest of smiles on her face. She starts to dance at the rainy shore, and then she looks up at the sky and laughs with joy before facing the water and yelling triumphantly into the foggy void.

It's Halloween night. People are panicking and demanding to know where our friend who was with me went. I'm panicking too. Sophie notices this, looking at me deeply. “Kevin, listen to me... You didn't do anything wrong, okay? It's not your fault,” she says firmly.

“She was like a very chill and laid-back version of Emily,” I will tell Dan months later. By then, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes will have chosen Sophie's video as the official music video for “All Wash Out.” “Evan told me that you go through depression,” Taylor informs me as we're getting high on the roof of our apartment. “And I was... I was wondering how you deal with it.”

“If there's anything you need to talk about, I'm here,” I assure him at the end of the night.

It's graduation day at Yankee Stadium and the old roommate from sophomore year who had moved out on me is sitting only a few rows behind me. I find it strange that there is so little about me that he knows now.

Brian tells me about his mother with borderline personality disorder. “She had a way of latching on to people, and it scared me how trapped I'd feel. The way she'd freak out, it was like I could never tell her how I really felt because she would just shut me out. I'd have to tiptoe around her to not set her off.” As he opens up to me, I find myself better understanding him and his pain. Brian is the type of person who lets himself feel the emotions he talks about, so different from my tendency to dissociate into a cold automaton when discussing difficult things. Then I feel the pendulum in my heart being drawn up, up, up, towards the territory of idealization. I have to catch myself, because I know that the farther up the pendulum goes, the harder it will swing into the direction of devaluation. And that's how I can become the very person he is describing: Someone who hurts others by guilting and trapping them.

“It sounds like a lot of people were drawn to Emily despite how troubled she was,” Dr. Hammonds suggests during one of our sessions. “Do you know why that is?”

“She was open about how troubled she was,” I say. “People just knew. People knew about the time she tried to stab herself in the heart at a party, but she was still popular and loved.

She poured her whole heart into the school, being class president, bringing everyone together, taking care of people. And deep down, even if others didn't realize or admit it, they could connect with her pain in some way. They saw her strength and passion and kindness in spite of everything she was going through and...”

I could go on about how inspiring she was and how shocking it was for her to still end her own life, but then it hits me. Every time someone has called me “strong” or “brave,” it's not like I don't recognize that such comments are not without merit, but I would always get uncomfortable. These days, everyone likes you when you're vulnerable in a way that shows strength and courage. That's why I started doing it. But what does any of that matter when there's still a part of us that feels utterly unlovable? What we're truly looking for is to be accepted and loved when we're at our weakest.

But that's such a tall order, isn't it? It's when we're at our weakest that we hurt and scare and exhaust the people close to us. It is a truth that neither side can deny. What right do we have to ask anyone to accept and love that?

Is that what you were thinking, Emily?

Emily is dead and I'm at her funeral and the more I look at her casket the smaller it looks to me. There's a doleful finality with having her right before me like this. Josie smiles tearfully and kisses her palm before placing it on the closed wooden box. Jordan silently kneels in front of the casket, one hand against its side. These are the two images from that weekend that become most prominently etched into my memory.

Separate Destinations (2011) I know there's a chance that the sun won't ever rise again But the clocks will never break or relent And when the sky falls you can take it all Words on wings that have yet to be sent You can run back to me To chase a memory For every hello there is a parting to follow Let go It doesn't have to last forever If you remember You're not the only one who feels like nothing will ever be the same You're not the only one The stars are still young even as we move along You said that we would never do each other wrong But girl have you seen all these changes going on?

There are those who will stay while others fade away I hope with all my heart that you are the former Don't go There's no way of telling where all the tracks lead But I can see Some leave while you're broken, some will pick up the pieces and always make amends One can only hope I'm standing in the summer rain Around me are faces forgetting the pain From old photographs At the shore that has listened to all of our cries Look into my eyes one more time The train leaves at the strike of twelve It's the time for farewells Unwind and subjugate the wheel Steer your course for a memory It's there you will find me, it's the place that I will return to someday Someday, just not today

December 14, 2015. Under the pretense of going out for a cigarette, I find Laura Stevenson loading her gear into her van by Shea Stadium after her show. I had requested to work that night so that I could get a chance to speak with her. She recognizes me and smiles, thanking me for helping out during her set.

I tell her that her most recent album really resonates with me, particularly the last song, “Tom Sawyer / You Know Where You Can Find Me.” It's about the grief of a friend's sudden departure and the pain felt by those left behind. “I wasn't sure what people were going to think because it's so sad,” she says.

To which I respond, “I think these kinds of things happen to more people than you think, it's just that they don't talk about it as much. And it's important that you gave a voice to those feelings.” And I then I talk about Emily.

She sympathizes, then explains that the song is actually about a friend whose status remains unknown. She doesn't know where he is, how he's doing, or if he's even still alive. I think, then, of Taylor. I remember him telling me before he moved out that he just wasn't the kind of person who stayed in touch, but I didn't expect that he would just drop all contact entirely once he was gone, not even responding to texts or emails. Virtually all of his friends in New York have been met with the same utter silence from him. He could be dead for all I know.

Just kidding. These days I can still see his Venmo transactions with the people he's with now. The sense of abandonment is still there, though. I know Evan and Colton are hurt by it too.

When it comes to writing about personal experiences, our need to form a narrative to make sense of the events in our lives becomes much more apparent. When someone dies, we scramble to gather the remaining fragments of their existence to keep them alive in our hearts. Photos, an AIM conversation, birthday cards, people who remind us of them. We project. We transfer.

Sophie and Emily were both artists who exuded kindness and had a natural way of making you feel good about yourself, but their similarities end there. Taylor and Emily were hardly alike at all. Even his manic episodes were way different from hers. But nevertheless I still felt this need to justify why I had ended up feeling so protective of him, perhaps to make up for where I felt I had failed Emily. What remains, though, is that I did deeply care for him.

We read Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried in high school. In one of the essays, he reveals that he feels the need to exaggerate and fabricate gory images of war in order to properly convey what he experienced serving in Vietnam. There's an implied insecurity that his trauma otherwise wouldn't be validated in the eyes of the reader. I don't think it should have to be that way. Our emotions are real. Our experiences are real. Nothing can minimize their significance.

Strangely enough, it was Taylor who had said it best after that one fight we had. There's nothing wrong with the emotions that you feel, no matter how intense they are in proportion to what triggered them. Ultimately though, you have to be willing to speak the truth of your emotions and your experiences, and others have to be willing to listen.

In doing so, we learn to love each other and ourselves.

We learn to accept and be at peace with even the worst parts of ourselves.

We learn to forgive and heal.

Easier said then done, of course.

~Kevin Michael Chan March 28, 2017

Photography Credits: Page 3 - Skeleton Hell: Evan Kent Page 11 - View from the train to Budapest: Kevin Chan Page 12 - Bitch, please: Dan Vatnick Page 12 - A toast in Budapest: Kevin Chan Page 12 – THE IMPACT, 2069: Colton Fordyce Page 19 - Apartment 4 view from the stoop: Evan Kent Page 24 - Blurry tunnel in Edinburgh: Kevin Chan Page 35 - “All Wash Out”: Matt Morgan Page 36 - Comforters, philosophers, and life-long shits: Emily Ozer(?)

Page 44 - Surprise: Kevin Chan