As is true of most anyone, I would imagine, there is a short list of people who have saved my life. Here are a few words about a couple of them.
I was limping toward the finish line at the tail end of 14 when I met my friend Aaron. 14 was, for me, a daily punch in the gut, and in this I realize I am not so unique. Like the man says, they’re quite aware of what they’re going through, and I was intensely aware of every second of every oppressively sunny Southern California day. Not a hopeless case, by any means, not donning a trenchcoat and stealing an uncle’s gun, but in hindsight that may have been more a happy accident of biology and conditioning than anything else. Suffice it to say I had never before and have not since been in a position where I more deeply and immediately needed…friends. And right before I gave up I found them. God only knows what I’d be if I hadn’t.
Aaron brought warmth, laughter, fun and spontaneity back into my life in one fell swoop. He reminded me that I was a kid, and that kids are stupid, but adults are even more stupid, and that it was possible to wink at the stupidity in the world instead of hissing and spitting at it. Most importantly he helped me build a world I could bear that saved me from the one I could not, and in so doing I learned the survival skills that keep me afloat to this day. Your friends are the family you choose--we chose each other, and for that I am eternally grateful.
Jessica came later, in the middle of a different but no less severe bout of my own self-pitying malaise. She was a bright, beautiful presence who wafted into my social circle on the arm of a no-good lying sack of shit I still, at that point, considered a friend in need. Jessica brought an open heart, an undefeatable spirit, and an infectious joy and kindness into the self-imposed darkness of my insular world. In so doing she taught me, among many other things, the power of will, optimism, self-confidence and, not inconsequentially, the difference between a no-good lying sack of shit and a friend in need. She became my friend quickly, naturally and deeply, and when I had only known her 3 months it already felt like we had been connected for a lifetime.
To my great delight, Aaron and Jessica discovered the beauty in each other, fell in love, got married and remain two of my wife and my closest friends. We lived blocks away from each other for much of the past 7 years and spent countless nights laughing, drinking, fighting, commiserating and sharing the perils of creeping adulthood. We moved about an hour away few years ago and began to see them less frequently, but that only made the times we did get together all the more enjoyable and precious.
It fucking feels like everything is changing lately, as everything is wont to do, and on Sunday morning my friends are packing up and moving 1700 miles away. I am 32 years old and I have never had better friends than Aaron and Jessica, and I know I never will. We’ll stay in touch, of course, and those bonds will never break, but godamn I’m going to fucking miss them, and before they go I need to thank them for saving my life. I’m not sure I ever have.
