Terrible Day

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the new turn of events in the continuing sage of L. As I’ve mentioned in the past, she’s bounced back and forth between B, the ex-husband, and S, the on-again, off-again boyfriend. She’s currently with B, and things seem to be okay between them, though I know she still gets irritated (or downright pissed) at him. In the back of my mind, I’ve known that at some point she’d start mooning over S, missing him, and completely forgetting all the reasons she keeps running away from him.

L running to S is no longer a concern, though. She found out Monday morning that S killed himself the prior Thursday.

I know, right?!

From what she was told by a mutual friend of theirs who they used to work with, S shot himself outside his house in his field. L and S had an aol account that they used to communicate with when they were talking, and he’d written three messages to her over the past three weeks (that she didn’t see until after she heard.) Nothing unusual, the same kinds of things he’d write to her whenever they were split up to tweak her heart strings. Even the last message, which he wrote around 2 p.m. Thursday, didn’t sound overly dramatic. Of course, now that we know what happened, it’s a little easier to see the meaning behind it.

We’ve been emailing back and forth since she found out. Because her cell is fucked up, she can’t get to her contacts info to get word to a few people she wanted to talk to, so I’ve been relaying messages from her via email to those others via Facebook. Needless to say, I’ve gotten very little done at work today.

I didn’t know S well, but he was mostly a decent sort. I don’t know if there was anything he could have done different to keep L around or not; so much of their problems were tangled up in timing, emotions, and their own life-long, cultivated hang-ups. L said in one of her messages this morning that she feels guilty, like she’s responsible. I told her that it’s natural to feel that way, but this is NOT her fault. She said she feels like it is, but she also thinks about what if she had been there, or her daughter, and how much worse it could have been.

I told her I don’t think S would have hurt either of them, but the truth is I have always had more than a little worry about that. Several times when L has run from S, she’s told me that he has “crazy eyes.” Like he’d get mad about something and some look would just come over him and it scared her. Some posts back I wrote about “Crazy Eddie’s Last Hurrah” and how the final verse made me uneasy. It’s because I could easily see S in the roll of Crazy Eddie.

I feel bad for S, and wish he could have gotten help of some kind to get him through his problems. Maybe L was a big one for him, but he had plenty of other issues going on too, and I think L is starting to remember those as well (based on the conversation we had at lunch.) And I feel really bad for L, because I think regardless of where she was mentally with being with B and trying to put their lives back together, in the back of her mind she always assumed S would be there when the time was right. And whether that ever happened or not, she had real, deep feelings for S, so she’s going to go through mourning process that I wish I could help with more than just someone to email and text with.

Monday night we got on Facebook (again, her phone is fucked up) and she spent most of the night venting about her feelings. Of course right now in her mind everything about S was perfect, and everything about B is wrong. There wasn’t a lot I could say in text, and the only thing I could offer was a virtual shoulder to cry on. What she needs is physical arms around her, holding her and comforting her, but I’m too far away. It’s a safe bet that B isn’t going to be able to offer that support because of the circumstances.

She’s starting to come to grips with it now, though, and I think she’ll be alright. Near the end of Monday night’s conversation, she acknowledged that for all the good things she was saying about S, he did scare her sometimes. And for all the bad things she said about B, he was there helping her raise her daughter. Her emotions are all over the place, and will be for a while, but the pain will diminish over time. It will probably never disappear, but it will be bearable.