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I know I've been silent for a long time. I have no excuses. Only stories.


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Right before I stopped posting, I received a call regarding a friend of mine. This friend. We've known each other for years now. Nearly two decades. She's probably only one of three people who really get me. I haven't seen her in years though, as she now makes her home halfway around the world. We stay in touch as often as we can. But you know how it goes, right? Days pass. Then weeks. Then before you know it, it's been almost a year since you speak to someone. We all grow apart from each other in many different ways, and like the sand on the shore, we're constantly being pulled in by the undertow, tossed by the current that is our life.

"Things happen," I told myself. And while that may be true, it's also true that we have a choice in the first place, of whether or not we want to stay in someone's life, whether or not we want to be present and show up and do the work of making our relationships work. With my friend - and let's call her J by the way, so there's less confusion - I did try. In the beginning.

It was tough for me to see her leave. It's been what? My goodness. It's been over 10 years now since the last time I saw her. I still remember that last time. She'd shaved her head in protest because she really didn't want to leave. But what could she have done? Her entire family was leaving and there was no way in hell her father was ever going to let her stay behind. I remember how I rubbed my palm against her scalp, how the stubble beneath my skin felt like sand, how I wished I did have a bit of sand at that moment. I don't really know why. I also remember that it's the saddest I had ever felt at that point. Of course now, I've had more experiences, I've grown. Now I know how pain is like one of those annoying relatives we wish we would never visit, but they show up at our doorsteps time and time again. I've had my share of it, like everyone else. So yeah, I know.

J and I wrote to each other. Real letters, on paper, in envelopes - words that would spill out like water. I always had so much to tell her, and she always had volumes to tell me. In a way, that's how I came to fall in love with writing. I began to long for the waiting: the anticipation of the next letter, and of course I never knew when would it would come. And then after a year, I began to dread it. So I stopped writing. She called a few times, I made the usual excuses. I still promised I'd keep in touch. And so the years went by. We'd talk a couple of times a year, on Christmas and that kind of shit. I went on with my life, and she with hers. We exchanged email addresses. I updated her from time to time. Then all of a sudden, exactly 8 months ago she stopped replying. I wrote her a long email. You know, my attempt at making up for all the years I'd been lax in my correspondence, but she still didn't reply.

Then, a few weeks ago I get a call from her older brother (who never really liked me to begin with, who always saw me as the guy out to corrupt J with his disregard for "the norm"). He told me that for the past year, J has been (in his words) in limbo. I found out that for the past five years J has been seeing a shrink because she'd been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I was shocked, and that's putting it mildly. She never let on in the notes she wrote me. She never gave any sign that anything was wrong. Her brother told me that J had tried to overdose, that she had been in the hospital. He told me that when she came to, she was incoherent for the most part, that she would just let loose a rambling stream of syllables, but that when she became lucid the only person she asked for was me. I didn't know how to feel about that. I still don't. Actually, her brother didn't seem too happy about that. But there it was, he called me to let me know, to tell me that they'd taken her home already and to ask me if he could call me the next day when he was with her, because he thought it might help.

What else could I have said? I said yes, of course. So every day since I got that call, I've been staying up late, so I can be there when he calls. He passes the phone to her. Some days she talks, some days she just listens, mostly she just sobs and it breaks my heart. I've never had to deal with anyone in that kind of state before. I am used to dealing with anger, and violence, and hate. I am not used to the sadness that seems to have taken over her body. Some days I tell her about my work. Some days I read some of the stories I've been working on to her. Yesterday, I made her laugh, and I felt a little spark of hope. After I talk to J, I talk to her brother. He tells me what it's like, how terribly tiring it is to be around her sometimes. He tells me that she gets so violent sometimes that he has to hold her, pin her arms behind her back until he feels that she's calm. He tells me he's grateful to me for taking the time to talk to her. I don't know how to feel about that either. No, I do know, somewhat. I feel like a fraud. I feel that there's so much more I could have done for her if I had just kept in touch. They'll be calling later. I'll answer. A part of me dreads having to hear her empty voice on the other end of the line, but I won't put the phone down. I'll talk and talk, and I'll try as hard as I can to fill that empty space with words so that maybe she'll find enough strength to see that she has words of her own to hurl at the darkness.