Loss of a Friend

Years ago I was crazy about this guy he was fun, hilarious, talented and cute, so cute. I still remember the night we met my friend had a crush on his roommate and she brought me along to hang. We were still in high school and these guys were in their early 20’s so we felt so cool. He had a personality that drew me to him instantly and like magic he was drawn to me too. We wound up spending a year and a half ripping and running all over the streets of Los Angeles. He had dreams and passion that even surpassed my own and made me want to be amazing even though he made me feel like I already was. He was the first guy beside my dad to tell me I was beautiful, and I believed him. I still remember the day in 2006 when he told me he had to moved away. I remember him telling me it was temporary. I remember him telling me he would be back, “3 months tops”. I remember the way it felt when he hugged and kissed me for the last time.

Thursday night, nine years later. April 30th 2015 sitting on my couch watching tele: I think about him. I thought, “I haven’t seen anything from him on Facebook for a bit.”

Friday 3:00 pm May 1st 2015 scrolling Facebook on my phone: I see Clinton posted, “Today is a good day”. I think “awesome, Clinton’s good. I should hit him up soon.”

Saturday 2:00 am May 2nd 2015 just getting home from the movies: I check Facebook and the first thing in my News Feeds says Clinton was tagged in a post, “So I just found out I’ve lost another childhood friend R.I.P. Clinton Dunckel”.

My heart sank. My heart sank! I sat in shock and disbelief. I am still sitting in shock and disbelief. I call my little sis, she always liked him and I knew she’d want to know. I looked at the time somehow I must have sat in shock for an hour, an hour that felt like a millisecond. “It’s 3” but I called anyway. I called 4 times no answer, “I’ll let her sleep.” I called my mom, “Thank goodness, she answered.” We talked for about 5 minutes and I let her go back to sleep.

Saturday morning 3:30 am May 2nd 2015: I turned my computer off and walked up fourteen stairs to my bedroom and cried myself to sleep.

Saturday morning 8:15 am May 2nd 2015: I wake up to two missed calls from my sister.

Saturday morning 8:17 am May 2nd 2015: I call my sister. I tell her. Silence…….silence! Loud silence. Then a broken WHAT!? comes from the other end of the phone followed by sobs of hers joined by sobs mine.

Saturday morning 9:12 am May 2nd 2015: I message his sister.

Saturday morning 10:42 am May 2nd 2015: I get a message back.

Saturday morning 10:43 am May 2nd 2015: I cried some more.

I’ve experienced loss in my life, more than most my age. I have lost people that were very close to me and every time its a little different and a little harder to take. In the pain I find a strange and strangled beauty lies deep below the surface, so deep you have to quarry to find it. The beauty is, that the pain means something, it means we have an extraordinary capacity to love and we loved, we still love and that’s what hurts. But it also means we felt a feeling that some people search their whole lives and never find.

I can’t say much more now, I don’t really know what else there is to say. It’s Monday morning 1:53 am May 3rd 2015: I have to be up at 6 so thanks for letting me vent. I didn’t plan for this to be my first post, I even had a few others queued just waiting for that perfect moment. This just feels right though, it may not be what I planned but life has a funny way of changing our plans.

xoxoMo