Flatlining

I thought I’d share the body of an email I sent out today to Andy, my former best friend from High School.  I stopped talking to Andy shortly after Amanda and I moved to Willimantic (about twelve years ago), but he found me through this very blog.  Andy was one of the many E.P.I.C kids who suffered from high IQs burdened with intellectual bullying and arrogance that attempted to cover for zero motivation (Hey, if you try and fail, that disproves your I’m-so-smart-that-I-can-do-anything bullshit, doesn’t it?).  For the sake of full disclosure, I was also one of these kids, and I suffered from the same shit, though as you’ll see below I cleaned up the majority of it (and not just with Graydon, but with Steve Egan as well, which I’ll talk about another time).

In our recent correspondence, the topic turned to uncomfortable memories of High School, about which Andy said, “I am grateful for my ability to let things like that "sleep in my mind."  I think this is the biggest reason why I am so forgiving by nature, because I forget slights easily.  Or perhaps I just forgive easily because I require so much forgiveness myself.  In any event, it's an attribute I like about myself.  If the price for this is fuzziness about who said what when, it is a price I happily pay.”

Here's my reply:


Andy,

Sorry I didn't reply sooner but I've been busy.

I don't buy that you've got a poor memory when it comes to potentially uncomfortable memories.  You've always been known for having an excellent memory (you and I were on the High School Bowl team, remember), making the much more plausible reason for your "fuzziness" your unwillingness to face the shit that you dished out to others.  Fuzziness might work for you, but the rest of us don't share your selective memory.  You can't escape your past, and you can't blur it away.

Allow me to share an anecdote.  Before we met, I went through a period of meanness, and I made Graydon Smith, who lived a couple of houses down from me, its focus.  I became cruel to him, and one day I even made him cry.  He wisely avoided me after that.  A few weeks passed, and then I saw a movie, not a great movie as movies go but appropriate to my situation, called "Flatliners."  In this film, the main characters become haunted by visions of the children they harassed and bullied in their past.  One character finds redemption by seeking out a little girl he tormented.  Now a grown woman, she's married and moved on, but as the scene unfolds the audience sees that the memories of what he did and said to her still ache and bleed as he starts recalling what he did, in detail.  He digs deep and it hurts him to do it, and he ends with an apology.  The next day I went to Graydon's house and I dug deep, and it hurt to remember what a bastard I had been but I did it, and I apologized ... and he forgave me.  I think he even respected me.  We were good friends from that point onward.

Until you can do the same, no one will be willing to reconnect with you, including me.