Friday, June 22, 2007

oh my god, Dylan

I have a Firefox add-on called GMail Manager which sits in the corner of my status bar and lets me know about new messages in my inbox. If you hover your mouse over it, a small window pops up and shows you the first couple lines of the new messages. Pretty nifty.

Last night, I saw a message from one C****** * when I looked at the mail manager, a woman's name. At first, I thought some spam had slipped through the filter, as it does sometimes, because if I don't recognize the name it is almost certainly spam from some chick who says that she had a great time during our last IM chat and is making good on her promise of nude pics, and oh they're posted at this website please click HERE. But the last name struck me, and then I read the subject: " ... regarding Dylan". I clicked frantically to read the entire message, already knowing what it was about, but not really wanting to, not then. This entire paragraph contains about 3 seconds worth of thought, though.

The mail was actually from his dad, and he explained that he found Dylan in bed on Monday morning. Passed away, he said. And all I could think was "Wow, that's a really nice way of saying 'dead'" and then "oh my god" and then "that motherfucker" and so on. Lots of jumbly stuff of surprise and rage. Then I was able to read some more after 2 or 3 seconds... basically, his dad was trying to get in touch with friends of his son's, those that he didn't know. His family is hurting but managing. This was a big surprise, no warning, a possible aneurysm, but he had been having migraines and had even been to the hospital the day before.

I hope they're okay.

But I'm still trying to get over the fact that, a little more than a month ago, he invited me to some social networking site and while I signed up, I thought, "agggghh I'll write him tomorrow too lazy right now". Of course, a week later I realized "oh yeah, Dylan invited me to this place and I should write him aggggh maybe tomorrow". The fucker was probably just trying to get in contact with me because we hadn't really spoken in a great while.

I do work with a group of people, but I spend most of my time in isolation because I'm constantly moving from floor to floor. This allowed plenty of time for me to dwell on how I blew him off. Suddenly, I remembered talking to him for hours at a time, how I could tell him that this certain part of this one song sounded like the world was crumpling like paper and he'd totally get it, he'd listen to my stupid problems. Some of the music he talked to me about, the way he opened some songs up for me, got me to look at them in a certain way. And god, then there was his writing. Imagine getting punched in the face every time you read a paragraph... well, without the pain, but the intensity and IN YOUR FACEness was always there. Sometimes he'd write shit so personal, and so vague, no one had any clue what the fuck he was talking about, but I always moved, if only for the clever wording. You knew he meant it.

And how could I forget all these things?

He was so fucking smart. Yet he floundered. At least as far as I knew him, which was close to a year ago, to be honest. For a time, we were losers in arms. Of course, we had different reasons for our loserdom... he had real things holding him back, which led to awful mood swings and just a general depression, and then there was me with my "oops fucked things up again k now im depressed" (and he still cared about me!). Anyway, even with his brains, it brought him down to his knees sometimes. It always pissed me off when he'd have a good day and then relapse. Then he was into some metaphysical stuff for a while. God, all he wanted was peace.

And now that I've thought about it for some time, the long talks and stuff, all he (either of us) wanted was peace. Just some peace. And as much as it pains me, and I just shuddered now, to think this, at least now he can finally be at peace. I will miss him so fucking much, mostly because of how we did connect and how he helped me through some of my hardest times, even if I brought them on myself. And no one, NO ONE, talked music like he and I did. He was a good guy, even if he was just some guy. I think he'd like what I just did in that sentence.

Dylan, Webby, fucker, I'm sorry I didn't give you more. You were a true friend to me, and I'm sorry it took you leaving forever for me to fully realize it. I hope I'll see you again.

It's really hard to let go right now, though.