syzygy part v

there was this beautiful moment. mike said he wouldn't find jeremy and hurt him. he told me to turn on nightswimming by REM. he mumbled along, and filling my heart with a joy i hadn't known for 2 years, whispered, "court. i have a hug ache..." silence falls as my computer's cd rom stalls in the middle of nightswimming. i can only hear him breath, and he says softly, "i love you." and then my rom kicks back in:

"And what if there were two
Side by side in orbit
Around the fairest sun?"

and with that, he was back in my life. he called almost daily, it was like nothing had happened, no time had passed. we would talk about endless silly shit until the later hours of the morning, all night without sleep and i'd drive to pick up my brother from school grinning like a jackass, eager and anxious to get back on the phone and tell mike how much smiling i'd done all day because of him. i felt foolish, i felt simple, i felt so fucking good. i started to think maybe my life was worth more than i'd believed before. i started to have dreams again. i watched shows on TLC about treasure hunters, marine archaeologists and i read endless mystical books by tom robbins. i found myself needing more out of life than to just get by. so i applied to college. the day i was accepted, it was about a week before mike's birthday and although this college accepts pretty much anyone, i was ecstatic. it represented so much good. it represented a complete 180 in my life and i was thrilled. i sent mike a necklace. they came in a pair, two chinese characters meaning friendship. i kept one and sent him the other for his birthday. i still have mine and have worn it in spite of so many broken chains. it's fucking cheesy but you find yourself at a loss when someone has done so much for you and all you want to do is say thank you.

i started to look for jobs so i could move out and eventually found one at the airport. i moved out with my cousin jessica and kept talking to mike on the phone all the time. he was getting hassled a lot by his mom because the phone bills were so huge but we didn't think it would be a big deal because he was getting an inheritance worth over a million fairly soon. so we kept talking. all night, every night, and when we weren't talking, we'd email each other, ridiculously goofy, happy-go-lucky stuff that served as my reason to wake up every morning, my reason to stay in every night instead of out drinking, my reason to stay off the drugs. mike was my drug. a powerful, positive, encouraging drug that made me do things i never thought i would ever be capable of doing.

a year passed like this and then i started to go to school. i couldn't talk to mike as much because i had classes at 8am somedays. he got his inheritance and with it came loads of new friends and a girlfriend. he bought a fleet of cars and rolled them all. mustangs with nitrous, SHOs, xterras, maximas. he wrecked them all and every time he'd call me and say there'd been an accident and he was fine. he was always fine.

but then his calls started to dwindle and so did his emails. he still called, he just didn't seem as eager to. and when he did call, i would answer and he would just go off on these ridiculous stories, all true, but ridiculous nonetheless. like the time he called me, audibly shaken, after having some guy shove a gun in his face. he would just ramble off about how all the cops in his town were out to get him because he was a young guy with so much money. he'd tell me endless stories about being drunk, stoned, fucked up and in trouble. getting in fights and car accidents.

then he disappeared.

i would email him and call him and page him endlessly. i was so worried. i was pissed off, too. there was nothing i could do. i tried to put it out of my mind and that's when i met john. john and i fell in love pretty quick and he moved in with me. he knew of mike, he knew how much mike meant to me, so when mike finally did call, john had no problem with it. but what mike had to say after being gone for almost another year was heartbreaking. i could barely keep myself from breaking down and crying while he told me about his heroin addiction and how when he'd tried to kick, he had a heart attack and had been in the hospital for some time. he wasn't even 20 yet and he'd had a heart attack. he was talking about all of this so calmly and i asked, "what about now mike, what are you doing now?" and he said he was on heroin again. i got so upset, i was so angry with him. everything he'd told me, all the help he'd given me to get through my addiction to over the counter drugs was all bullshit i thought. here he is, doing fucking heroin and talking about the fact that he'd already had a heart attack. i was so mad at him and i lost control and i told him to leave me alone. and he did. for 3 years.

to be continued...

Labels: mike

posted by Courtney at 6:04 p.m.

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