I promised myself I would write this. For a long time this date has been marked on my calendar as some sort of beacon across a sea of passing numbers, but now that it's here I find only a loss for words. October 27th was the day I would finally be honest with myself and admit my failures. It was the day I would evaluate my life and plot a course through the twelve paged maps that have not been printed yet. It was also the day I would pardon the last fifteen years and open a new chapter. To say I expected a lot may be an understatement, but to say I expected little may be equally as true. I've made these ultimatums before and they have yet to persist into anything of value. But October 27th was supposed to be different. October 27th was special.
Several months ago I wrote of the butterfly, and the age old saying that its wings can spread a destruction seeded from the smallest if forces. I described items that I have held on to with the utmost secrecy and intimacy, but I only did so in the most vague of terms. In truth I never intended to draw that veil as far as I did that day, and after doing so I never expected to fill in the cracks. But today is October 27th. Today is different.
Many years ago I met a girl online. From the instant I first spoke with her I did not deem her to be someone to whom I had any affinity towards, and certainly we had little in common. She was the type that casts the world an ambivalent eye and proceeds to ignore its rules, quite the opposite of who I was and am. Despite this disregard for authority, she was quiet, shy, never seemed to have a voice of her own. When she did voice herself, she always did so from behind a mask of hardened feelings. Somehow I think I always knew she was hiding something, but whether I could not decipher her secrets or whether I did not care... I cannot remember. Its funny how life erases the details but never takes the image entirely. Sometimes I wish it could.
Her name was Melinda. Months passed and still we knew very little of each other, even though we were associated, vaguely yet closely, by mutual acquaintances. I began to sense that she liked something about me, but in the end I never pursued it. She was still oil and I still water; she was rash and I much too conservative. To be honest I never really thought long on her and she was always just a face in our crowd. Then she exploded. Not literally, but figuratively she poured from every crack in her mask that she could muster. On a night no different from any other, Melinda told me things that I assume she had never said aloud. Behind that bitter facade I saw innocence... I saw beauty... I saw desperation... and I looked right past it.
I want to say I didn't understand the gravity of what happened that night, but I cannot make that lie to myself. Today is October 27th... today the truth knows no bounds. I knew what she was doing, and I knew why she was doing it, but for some reason I didn't care. I have always considered one of my largest flaws to be the tendency to resort to feigned indifference when confronted with the emotions of others. I wall up behind sarcasm and write off things that I know cannot be ignored. On that night I played the same hand that I always do, responding to pure emotions with ambivalence and cheap humor. If I could describe the response I gave her in a single word, that word may very well be cruel. And all the while, a state away there was a girl with a keyboard begging me for some semblance of emotional support, some metaphorical shoulder to embrace, while I did nothing but make light of her darkest and deepest secrets. She went out on an enormous limb that night. I should have helped her down. I threw stones instead.
The next day Melinda did not get on her computer. The following day she was also absent. This was not an impossibly strange event, but nonetheless it was somewhat odd. On the third day a friend of Melinda told me what had happened. On that night, or perhaps it was the following day, Melinda has swallowed a bottle of pills. Unknown to myself, Melinda had liked me for some time. She had expressed herself that night because she thought I was someone who could look past the mask and tell her she was beautiful. Maybe she thought I could save her. I can only imagine how the words I spoke that night must have felt like daggers thrust upon an open heart, each one tearing open wounds she had hoped to close. I bear the burden of hundreds of mistakes I've made in my life, but none are as heavy as the girl I failed that night.
But however badly I may have hurt her, and she doubly to herself, a bottle of pills could not steal her away that night. She overcame them and was left to pick up the pieces. A week or so later I spoke to her, but at that point everything had changed. The feeble bridge she had extended to me that night had been wrecked in a violent storm, and in the aftermath we were left to speak only from across a great crevasse. She was behind her mask again, and I was behind mine as well... still making light of dark things. To a lesser extent, but to an extent nonetheless. Shortly afterward I lost touch with her completely, hiding that night away in the depths of my memory and feeding its intricacies to the hungry beast we call time. Years passed without a thought of Melinda.
Then on a boring day several years later, I began to think of old friends and acquaintances and wonder what hands life had dealt unto them. Like an old yearbook recovered from a dusty shelf, I began entering names into search engines and flipping through pages of false results, searching desperately for that golden link of truth. It was not terribly long before Melinda came to mind. I casually cast her name over satellites in the hope that they might return some iota of relevance. Nothing. Strange, I thought, that someone like her would fail to yield a vein of information. Several hours passed and nothing crossed my path. In frustrated defeat, I gave up, despite the nagging feeling I was missing something.
Another year passed, and I found myself again at this same old habit. Melinda's name naturally came very quickly to mind, as I had not unearthed anything in my prior attempt. An hour or so brought on similar results, and I almost had conceited my search again when I finally found something. A new string of words through a search engine had led me to a MySpace profile, which I quickly noted was not Melinda's. Instead, I found only one reference hidden at the end of the profile. It read "R.I.P.", with a name and a date underneath. The name was Melinda's. The date was October 27th, 2004. My heart sank.
An exhausting and thorough search led me to later uncover the entire story, in its cruel and tragic entirety. From various pieces scattered across the internet, I pieced together the sad tale of a girl who had taken her own life. I read about a girl who was lost. I read about a girl who was depressed. I read about a girl who had friends but still felt she was alone. I found descriptions of the mask I had known, and not the girl I had seen underneath... I wonder if anyone had seen her so clearly. Something tells me they had, but I do not know why they did not succeed where I failed.
Finally, I read about a tragic night in 2004 that I can only hope brought her peace. Every detail cemented itself in my mind and every perspective cast a new light. And though I know what happened, I can only imagine what she went through on that last night... in those final minutes. I have stood on that cliff. I too have looked down and envisioned those last steps. Melinda took them. And though a handful of pills had failed to steal her away so many years ago, on that night a gun had little trouble.
I'm sorry.
Always remember, never forgot,
M. D. R.
October 27 2004.
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