Freshman Year @ MindSay 
It's weird that it was also a Sunday freshman year when Stacey called. I remember that weekend exactly. It was the weekend I really started to question myself, and what a homebody I was. I was 18 years old, living in New York City, but I was spending ANOTHER Saturday night in the dorm, doing work and watching a movie with friends (maybe, I might have just been doing work). I was mad at myself - I was also very self-involved with this thought process.
So Sunday morning Stacey calls. I'm excited to hear how life is in Rhode Island, since we haven't kept in touch nearly as well as we should have and I miss her greatly. I'm expecting loud, crazy Stacey with a loud, crazy story, but instead, her voice is quiet and not-unnoticeably shaking. I start to think of explanations; a fight with Jess, a fight with her overbearing mother, her crazy foreign roommate pissed her off again... anything.
Then she says, "Are you sitting down". I sat, knowing that it was a little more than a tif with someone.
So she asks me if I remember Ilan Schwartz. Of course I remember Ilan - he graduated a year before us, and he was to put it shortly, a jerk. Very cocky, full of himself, never wanted to talk to anyone who wasn't in his group of friends. Not someone I had missed for a minute since he left my life. I tell her that I remember him though. I half listen to her next few sentences - the ones about being out at a club while he was at school, the getting into a fight with some guys at the club, the part where he got stabbed during the ensuing fight, and the part where he was dead. And this might make me sound like the biggest bitch in the history of the world, but I have to be honest: I wasn't all that broken up that he had passed away. We'd been forced together for 3 years due to youth group functions, and never had a real reason to interact, so his death didn't really affect me that much. It struck me as a little weird, because people can tell me about a grandparent passing away I've never met, and I get very empathetic and I've cried, but Ilan passing... I wasn't happy or getting ready to do cartwheels, but I also was very apathetic to it, too. Again, judge me if you will and think I'm a bad person for not caring more about this boy's death, but that was how I felt.
Except, Stacey's still talking, talking about how she had heard the news from Ilan's sister, Hadar. I'm half-listening still, until I realize how weird that sounds to me. "his sister, Hadar". I start to think about Ilan, and realize, he had a little brother, but no sisters. So she wasn't talking about Ilan Schwartz. I think about it more, and my brain starts to make connections between 'Hadar' and 'Hadar's siblings". Moshe, Tali...and Elie.
Stacey was talking about Elie.
Elie the boy I knew and loved and looked up to. He was the one who was dead that November morning. Elie, a boy everybody loved and wanted to be friends with. The boy with the over-the-top personality who had an insatiable sense of humor and an even better laugh. The guy who was always nice to me, his little sister's friend. Elie was the one who had been the victim of a terrible act of violence as he enjoyed a night of his senior year at school. Who could hate or get mad at Elie enough to stab and kill him?
Over the next few days, more of the real story came out, a more painful story than any of us had initially realized. The fact that his death was self-inflicted, even if completely unintentional still haunts me. It's still the reason I get so upset when people I care about experiment with drugs that are harder than marijuana. The fact that one of his best friends was visiting him the weekend that he killed himself is something Craig has to live with the rest of his life. I don't know whose 'shrooms' they were; might have been Elie's, might have been his roommate's, might have been Craig's housewarming gift. Either way, Elie was on a 'bad trip', and went to the kitchen, and though his friends were trying to stop him, he stabbed himself repeatedly in the neck with a large knife. They tried to grab him and hold him down, but he jumped out of the window of the third or fourth-story apartment, breaking one or both of his legs, but living through it, screaming out in agony as he crawled around, begging for help. He survived all of this horror, but the doctor's in surgery couldn't save him.
I still miss him terribly. I think about him a lot. I still get mad at myself when I think about this. When I was a freshman, I pretty much worshiped Elie from the minute I met him. He was so inspirational to me; he had this passion for living and for our group that he got me excited. I had initially been very against the group, wanting to quit, but seeing how happy it made Elie and how much he got out of it, I decided to give it a second chance, and see what it could do for me. I had an amazing 4 years after that point, and I wouldn't have had he not inspired me to stick it out. I had these daydreams of running into him one day and telling him about it. About all he did for me unwittingly, but I never did. I always felt weird attempting it, but I figured one day I'd get to be a grown up and more comfortable with myself and be able to just say, "thank you".
I never got that chance. Even if knowing that he'd inspired me to stay would have been insignificant to him, it would have meant a lot to me, but I didn't do it when I had the chance, like when the 2 of us ran into each other at a dance my sophomore year, and I'll never get to, now. I've been writing a lot here about Sam, and how Sam has inspired me to write the people I care about letters letting them know how amazing they are, but Elie was my first wake up call. Both of their deaths came way too early (they were both 21 at the time, Elie having just turned, Sam being about 2 weeks away from 22), and both losses were profound and hit me pretty hard.
Take that minute to tell someone you love them, even if you think they know. You never know when you'll get the phone call that they're permanately out of your life and you'll never get to say those words to them. Have enough confidence that you and your feelings matter enough to the person you're addressing them to. I'm still working on that one. I'm working on picking up the phone and calling a long list of people who I've let slip out of my life and just reconnecting as much as I can. It might not work; but it's better than doing absolutely nothing. It's better than getting another phone call like the one that knocked me on my ass.
may angels lead you in
hear you me, my friend
on a sleepless road the sleepless go
may angels lead you in
I should just entitle this blog "My Annual Update" and be done with it, since I only add an entry once a year, it seems.
Well, here goes my list of things that have happened this past year:
- I completed my freshman year at the University of Georgia.
- I changed my major and then added a major; am now a Classics/ Elementary Education double major.
- I spent a semester in Air Force ROTC, merely on a whim, which involved:
6am PT workouts
uniforms
flag duty
paintball
marching in formation
inspection
gaining a tendency to add "Huah" randomly into conversation
flying a plane (no really... and it was frikkin awesome!)
- I spent a semester in Redcoats (UGA's Marching Band), which involved:
lots of wasted time (since I was in pit)
a uniform that was like an all-access-pass in the football stadium
airtime on national television
trips to Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, and Louisiana
performing in front of 92,000+ fans
using my improv skills to make up music for halftime when we were never given music for a song
learning how to live on zero sleep
-I become a part of PDTK (the UGA Drumline "fraternity"), which included lots of bonding experiences which are too numerous and innappropriate to write out. =oP
- I lived with my best friend and sis in a dorm [read: cell], which just proves how great of friends we are because we were able to deal with each other in such a small space.
- I started bellydancing classes with Sis and we both became pretty good and have decided to continue learning this ancient art next semester.
- I got a new horse named Luke, who is a 3yr old brown quarterhorse with a black mane and tail.
- My dad got a new job that lets him spend more time with us, we bought new land (25 acres), built a house on it, are almost moved out of our old house (we finish tomorrow), and are excited about living in such a calming and nature-y (I mean, we have our own forest! hehe) place that we can call our own.
- I still dont have a boyfriend. Damn it. *sighs* But not without trying to remedy it... I got some new experiences with rejection this year.
- I crashed my car over spring break; no one was hurt, but my car needs a new front end. Oops.
- I gained a new obsession (the Twilight series, by Stephanie Meyer) and became a new fan of a sport (Ice Dawg hockey!).
- I went to every UGA football game (except Vanderbuilt) for a year, including the 2008 Sugar Bowl, where I met some amazing people (Aloha to my Hawaiian drumline ppls!), got to party at Bourbon Street on New Years, and watched Georgia's defensive line pound Hawaii's quarterback into submission. Go Dawgs!
So there's an overview of my life for the past year... other experiences include having an awesome RA (a Croatian gangsta') who threw rave dance parties with German techno in his room for me and Kayla, dominating at the Auburn v Georgia BLACKOUT game, and roleplaying in a Roman Culture reaction game in which I (as Cicero) entirely rewrote history.
Hmmm... that's been my life. More news next year, yeah? Heh.
^^ That phrase didn't mean much to me freshman year of High School when I had to read Julius Caesar, but it sure does now. 3 years? How did that happen?
We miss you, Ace. I hope heaven is amazing. You deserve nothing short of it.
Highlights:
- NY Cares Day. Met up with a bunch of people at 830 in the morning on Saturday and we traveled to a public school in Brooklyn where we pained a giant black fence, re-did the lines/numbers on the playground, played a SICK game of Red Rover/Blob Tag, and then painted a very long fence completely yellow. I thought that was foolish, but they asked us to, and we did. Pretty fantastic. Met some really great, fun people: Lara, PANTHER (you can call him Patrick), Ramie, Nina...
- When we were signing IN to NYCD, I was talking to James, our IRHC rep/Community Service dude, and we were discussing how my residence hall really needs judges for the IRHC Talent Show. So he said, "I'm probably available" and I quipped, "Cool. Well, if you cant' come, why don't you send the kid I don't like?". To give back story, there's this boy named Brian who is the VP of IRHC (inter-residence hall council) at NYU. At the first meeting, when there was confusion about my role, Brian came over and was like 'no, you're wrong. you need to show up every time and do this, this, and this, or you're going to be in bad-standing'. Not even, 'Hi, I'm Brian, and no you're wrong bah bah bah'. Just the mean bitchy part. So I'm not a fan of Brian.
Anywhoo, James goes, "Who don't you like?" and I said "the VP".
And James says, "Oh, you mean MY BROTHER?"
Not just brother. His (fraternal) twin brother, apparently. Good times. Oh well. It's not even the worst faux pas I've ever done. But it WAS a nice source of entertainment. (I'm thinking at this moment of, "my mom's name is ellen!" even though that's not terrrrible).
- Saturday night, I decided to go to Felix's birthday party at Boss Tweed's. I figured he was friends with my old roommates, and he was also friends w/ my freshman year floormates, so I had a chance to not only see Felix, but to also see other amazing people.
I ended up getting to see J.D., Eric (Ellen's ex-boyfriend, but sadly, not Ellen b/c it was Derrick's party somewhere), some of their HS friends who were HILARIOUS, and then from the freshman year crowd, Darren, Steve, Joe, Suzi, and Betty...who is going to ANTARCTICA FOR A YEAR. wowowowowwow.
- The guys I didn't really know were playing beer pong for a while, and then suddenly EVERYONE I was with was like, freaking out, or whispering excitedly to one another. So my first thought is 'hot chick', and then when Steve was grabbing Darren's arm and making him lean in close, I thought 'hot Asian chick'. No. I wouldn't know him from a whole in the wall, but
The Kid from The Sopranos
apparently was what all the fuss was about. And it got to be an even bigger deal when he decided he wanted to play beer pong with a girl. I think he inadvertently made these ex-Stuy guys' lives. Especially when they beat him in 'overtime'. What is that?
- Sunday, the grad students had a picnic in Central Park. We didn't go too deeply in as planned, but still fun. I was on the sack-race team that won (Damian and Tati!! WOo!), and we played a fake version of Steal the Bacon, played some BIG BOOTY, and this fun game where we all had to do a move and then add one of our own. I think there were EASILY 30 moves before we got down to only one kid left (hey, his name was Felix, too! But not my Felix).
I can't really complain. Well, I can complain about this paper I'm NOT writing right now, but I can't complain about my weekend. Coming up this weekend is BON JOVI in concert, a sleep over with Erica, MAYBE going to Julie and Jonathan's Halloween party, and then going to LI to see Lisa and then TO AMY'S house for a party. Oh wow. I'm excited to see Amy. I have to miss both Roaine and Val's parties, but I haven't seen Amy in...more than a year?
oh and the other thing here. every year we buy at least two shirts. sometimes they make you buy the sweatshirt and this year they did that too. we only got this one shirt today though. it has got to be the ugliest fucking thing i've ever seen.
i liked the other ones better. in past years they've been maroon with just Elko at the top and then a Native guy running and below that there was CC with an arrow through it. then of course there's the really great quotes on the back. this year's quote is like, Champions are made when nobody's watching.
yeah i know. >.>
we should get our other shirt and sweatshirt at the meet or tomorrow morning before we leave.
but to the real point here. wish me luck? anyone?
Showing 1 - 5. [ Next ]
