I was trying to come up with a more fitting title to this post, but those three words, synonyms all, were the sum total of my feelings not quite three years ago. We’ll get to why I was feeling those things by the end of this post. You may choose to judge me, or claim I have no right to judge my friend. So be it. Let us proceed with the tale of my fraternity pledge brother Matt.
Matt was a bear of a man. Stocky and trending to a general thickness of limb and belly when I first met him. He was the youngest of three children. He had a sister roughly six years older, and a brother 3 or so years older. The sister was easily an HB8, the brother good looking and athletic. Matt grew up as something of an afterthought, always in the shadow of his older siblings. He developed a rapier sharp wit which he used in an understated way to get attention without appearing to be seeking it.
Matt had the potential to be a natural alpha except for his crippling insecurity. He had several hook ups, but only one long term relationships while he was in college. He easily pulled HB4-7s his freshman year. But Matt also had a bit of a dark side. There were times he would start drinking and just not stop until he passed out. He was looking for an escape from something, or maybe it was something driving him and he had no control. I’m don’t have an addictive personality so I can only surmise what his demons were.
Towards the end of our freshman year, Matty went on a bender and almost inadvertently killed himself through alcohol poisoning. His brother took him down to the emergency room to get his stomach pumped. While inebriated, he assaulted a nurse with a right cross to her chin, dropping her like a sack of potatoes. He didn’t even remember doing it the next day, but he was charged with the assault and given a date to show up at court. Matt skipped town and moved to Alaska.
For the next two years Matt cleaned himself up, joined AA and got some needed help. It looked like he was turning his life around. My senior year at the university he came back, plead out his assault case, got sentenced to community service and probation, and re-enrolled at the university. He kept going to his AA meetings and seemed to be more mature and grounded. He’d taken up cycling and got himself into shape, losing the fat. He was a fun guy to be around. A high school friend of his introduced him to a girl named Beth and they started dating.
While he eschewed alcohol, he started delving deeper into other drugs. He’d smoked a little weed in high school and college, but now it was LSD, ecstasy, mushrooms. There wasn’t a drug he would not partake of. On the one hand he’d tell me he was clean, on the other I’d see him tripping and think he’d just traded one addiction for another.
Beth was an interesting gal. She’d been a casual hookup for Matt’s friend prior to being introduced to Matt. When Matt’s friend was done with her, he passed her off. In my opinion, Beth was a UB2 at best. Add in her personality and she was a UB1. Here was a 22 year old woman with an old lady’s face. I thought the two of them together was evidence that Matt still had some limiting beliefs about the quality he could pull.
Matt and Beth seemed to need each other. Shortly after Matt finished college, he and Beth were married. I’m not really sure why they got married expect that maybe they thought that’s what they should do. Matt treated Beth like she was non-existent when he was around his friends, and Beth was a shrieking shrew. It was a train wreck in slow motion. A couple of years after the wedding there was a divorce. No kids and neither of them had any assets worth mentioning. The divorce seemed to be more amicable than the marriage. Strange.
Matt decided he needed a change of venue. I lost touch with him at this point. I only found out the details later. He chose to move down to Colorado for the skiing. He had worked hard to get certified as a ski instructor and he would trade teaching lessons for a season ski pass. It was a good deal for him. He had his day job and his winter job. He also met a beautiful blond young HB7 who moved in with him. Life was good until a skiing accident crushed a couple of vertebra in his back. He was lucky in that he wasn’t paralyzed. He was unlucky in that he had to live with chronic back pain.
Skiing was out of the question after that. He still liked to race around in his 300Z, and go to all night raves, using drugs, and hanging with his live in girlfriend. They called themselves husband and wife though they never did formalize the relationship. As far as I could tell she adored Matt, only Matt couldn’t see it. He was only thinking of himself.
So now we’ve reached that point in this story that elicits all my rage. Matt was the first of my friends to die. The bastard killed himself. What a fucking waste. His wake was attended by a couple hundred people who loved and/or cared about him. He thought no one cared about him. The common remembrance of him was his humor and how we all wished he hadn’t pushed us away in those final years. He left his woman a note. He told her he felt like he was ruining her life and he wanted her to move on while she was still young enough to find someone, get married, and have kids.
Just such a waste.
