Chris

Recently we (Mr. Sparxs and I) had a friend of ours pass away due to what we think is a drug overdose.  Chris was a phenomenally creative loving beautiful person when he was not using.  He was the way I met my husband; him being my next door neighbor and my husband was his boss.  This was all before he cultivated his addiction.

He introduced me to some of the most intriguing and beautiful things that I love in my life now.  He was into art and the same music that I am.  He brought us to a Death Cab for Cutie concert, showed me Audrey Kawasaki’s art one late night while we were all hanging out at his apartment, countless little snippets of funny things on the internet or just in real life.  His outlook on life was truly unique.

I remember the late nights of playing Risk while Sarah and I had to keep him and my husband from killing each other over a board game.  How after an extremely intense evening the boys didn’t speak to each other for two weeks.  The countless cook outs, glasses of wine, and intense Mario Kart tournaments in the college apartments that we met at.

The first night I met Chris, I liked him.  I actually thought he was really cute and had a curiosity crush on him.  As the weeks waned by that morphed into a friendship and I shortly after met my to-be husband; but he continued to be an integral part of my life.  My husband and I spent almost every weekend hanging out with him and Sarah.  We had years filled with weekends looking at art, talking about vacations we could not afford, things we wanted to do with our life after school.  There are so many times that we shared our dreams with each other on the small porches of our apartments.  There were times when we all drank a little too much, stayed up way to late pasted the time of reason, but just enjoyed being alive and choosing to share that time with each other.  We shared years of our life with him.  Part of me feels responsible for his death.  I know my husband is riddled with guilt.  The question if he could have done more, stopped him, gotten him to really get help as appose to act as though he were going through the motions while continuing to fall into the spiral of addiction.  We knew that he were using when he were lying to Sarah about it.  We didn’t do anything.  We knew when he were lying to everyone else.  I know my husband more than myself babysat him to make he did not die in a sedated state some nights. 

I have only had very sparing conversations with my husband about this since his death.  They had a falling out, well really it was long drawn out point to where my husband just could not take being around the drug abuse anymore.  He feels guilty for not being there.  Feels like he was an anchor to Chris and that maybe if he was there it would have changed the eventual outcome.  I do not know if it would have changed anything, maybe make the heart ache of losing him more profound.

Atonement

I enjoy movies, any kind, even the scary ones that give me night terrors and I wake up in the middle of the night and think that said killer/monster is in our condo waiting to rip some piece of me off.  So usually I do not watch them but even though they cause me such grieve in my regular life; I still enjoy them.  The movie, 28 Days Later as stupid as it was, I look for them screaming down my street every morning when I go to get in my car.  But I wanted to make this blog to just keep a journal of sorts, and maybe confess things that I would not confess in regular life.  I am sure no one will read this as my thoughts can be a little off, not that I am nuts or unhappy, but regular ppl don't get me.  Especially my sense of humor.  (I still can not watch the flash video, "End of the World" as crappy as it is without giggling.)

So today I got off work early because I have an install at 4 am on Sunday and my awesome boss that she is lets me go since I have to get up before dawn on the weekend.  I get home to the usually screaming cat, Merlin, that for some reason has forgotten that I pet him everyday when I get home wants attention now.  Some days it annoys me to no end, especially when the traffic was bad, and I turn on the water in the kitchen and spray him with the detachable nozzle.  Some people would call that abuse but I turn the water on and look at him, he knows what is next... then he goes and walks around the corner in the hallway and proceeds to balk at me from there.  Every once in a while peeping in the kitchen to see if I am still listening.  As if screaming at me from another room is really going to make me want to cuddle with you.  I am convinced sometimes that he does it on purpose, just to see how far the nozzle can spray.

Got the food situation done, and I had the old Netflix envelope on the coffee table, Atonement, of which my sister in law, whom is a movie genius, said it was excellent.  So I watch this WWII love story, with the now purring quiet cat in my lap, expecting to see the two young people reunited and the movie fades out and everyone is happy and I can say woot, I love my husband and reflect my own life on how it is great and the movie has just enriched it. But no, the movie ends with him dying from malnutrition basically and her drowning to death, both due to bad circumstances of the war.  This really left me with an empty hole in my chest.  I know it is more realistic and had I been in a more sarcastic mood, I would have loved this movie.  But the story about how they never got to live their lives together, both died alone (I know we all do), it is sad.  The older I get and I am 32, the more I feel like I am lucky to have found and married my husband.  I see so many people unhappy, married and stuck.  For what ever reason they are unhappy scares me.  I wonder how easy is it to slip into that?  I have heard that it is easy to slide into a loveless marriage over the years.  I have also heard that being in a happy marriage is something that you have to constantly work at; it does not just happen magically.  Even though when I was 8 I really wanted to believe in Peter Pan, Tinkerbell and Nevernever Land.

I guess what really upset me about the movie was that it was misleading from the normal plot formula for a romantic movie that we as american consumers are used to.  Boy and girl discover they love each other, something/someone/time separates them, they go through horrible things, then they come back together again, and everyone is happy and there is about a 3-5 minute kissing scene.  We smile, look at our loved one and imprint how the movie has made us feel on them.  My husband is usually thinking, thank god it is over and I can have the TV back again.