J.A.M.
It cuts deep, deeper than any other wound I have endured before and trust me, there have been a lot of hurt in this existence, this life of mine. I tear myself away from the phone, the carrier of sorrow. I can feel my eyes start to water and am glad nobody is home. It wouldn’t do to have my brothers, my father or even my step-mom see me in this state. Anger flares within my chest and I slam my fist onto the counter. Pain shoots through my fingers, my palm, my wrist, and races up my arm. I stand there, in the kitchen, staring out the window as giant snowflakes fall lightly outside. I am at peace for a moment, the pain restraining me. Collapsing I grab onto the counter as the last feelings of fury transform to despair. The tears spill out, unwanted and unwelcome. Releasing my grasp on the counter I let myself slide down to the floor, one leg out in front of me, the other beneath me. This wasn’t right, nor was it fair. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
I sat there for an eternity. Jordan. He was my friend, our lives have been fused, intertwined since grade one. We’d been inseparable from then on until grade seven, when we had moved on up to middle school and been put into different classes. That small amount of isolation caused us to mature past childhood friends. Unintentionally, I was noticing things about Jordan that I had never seen before. He walked in a moderately nonchalant way, he was taller than most kids in our grade, and the rich tan colour of his skin that he never seemed to lose until far into the winter months. Jordan acquired a habit of plucking me out of the crowds and lifting me over his shoulder to continue on to his desired destination, usually the school playground at lunches and recess. Sometime around early November he began to discreetly insist that I hug him whenever we said goodbye, I candidly embraced this recent modus operandi.
Around Christmas time, grade seven year, we started dating. I hadn’t even been truly aware of my longing to be more than just friends with him until my mother had asked me if we were going out. Our relationship grew and deepened. ‘Puppy love,’ like most adults would call young people’s relationships, was not the right terminology for it. During the time I was with Jordan we knew everything about each other. We spent a lot of time on Waverly field just leaning on one another, or watching clouds. We didn’t have to talk a lot of the time because we were content without it. We didn’t need to verbalize our thoughts and feelings with such a cascade of silent communication between us. I reminisce gazing into his eyes at opportunities such as these, memorizing all the shades of vibrant, animated brown, however indescribable they are; they still manage to glorify my dreams.
Then, New Year’s day, 2006, I moved to Coquitlam, British Columbia and everything changed. Around Halloween, grade nine year, we broke it off. Long-distance relationships were hard to maintain, not to mention the fact that I could only visit three times a year: Summer, Christmas and March break. We called each other a lot and we still influenced each other, just not as much as we used to while we had been around each other everyday. Jordan’s good morals rubbed off on me. My hatred for smoking and drugs showed up in him. We both thought getting a driver’s license, partying late and becoming drunk would be some of the highlights of life. That was all different now. Parties, drinking and driving were all being mixed into one horrendous nightmare now.
I could remember my last visit to Guelph. Jordan was really excited; he had just gotten his G2 license. Another two years and he’d have his full one. He wanted to drive me everywhere. I was impatient with him; I wanted to go home, back to Coquitlam. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see him, I did, I just missed my friend from ‘Beautiful, gloomy, British Columbia.’ Jordan could tell I wasn’t in the mood to care much about his latest and final success. I would have given him the attention he had wanted if I had known that it was the last goal he would ever achieve. But I didn’t. I didn’t treat him how a friend should be treated in times of triumph. Recalling my foulness, the knot in my stomach tightened.
I was dragged back to reality by the stinging numbness being emitted from the leg trapped beneath me. Lifting my eyes I saw that snow had turned to rain in the period of time I was lost within my private realm. Typical BC. I stood, unsteady at first, my kitchen and living room spinning in and out of focus. Slowly, unbearably slowly, I made my way up the stairs and into my bedroom. I fell onto my bed, the last of my energy fleeing like a pathetic mutt. I didn’t feel like brushing my teeth or washing my face and I didn’t feel like eating anything either. I vaguely recall waking up at some point during the night to pull my blanket over top of me.
Lights off the car in front of me blinded my impaired vision. I was alone, two weeks after receiving my G2 license. I’d been partying. I’d been drinking. Now I was driving. It was okay though, I wasn’t drunk. I’d only had a few beers. Just a few colas loaded with vodka. Whoa! “Wrong side of the road, buddy.” I said to myself. Oh well, I wasn’t that far from home. My last surge of adrenaline exploded from my foot as the car I was stalking turned, opening up empty road ahead of me. I sped down the street, lights, buildings and late night explorers caught in my vision for mere milliseconds before being replaced by different, more blurred ones. A hundred and seven kilometers an hour. I forgot what street I was on, forgot it ended as a ‘T’. I forgot I was racing my invisible adversary straight towards a stone wall, and worst of all, I forgot I was drunk. Then it was there. I saw it a moment too late and realized, as I wrenched the steering wheel to the right that this was going to be the last mistake I ever made…
My eyes shot open. I was drenched in sweat, my breathing heavy. “Jordan.” I whispered, alone in darkness. “You stupid idiot.” It ended as a sob. I rolled over and lay there, silent tears adding to the wetness of my already soaked pillow.
The faintest hint of a smile cracked the solemn mask I had been wearing for days. It put the slightest dent to the bars of the cage I had imprisoned myself within. I remembered how Jordan used to hug me, spontaneously, out of the blue, while I had still been living in Guelph. It didn’t matter if we were alone or trudging through the hectic halls of Stone Road mall, he wanted me to know that I, that we were more important than any narrow-minded stranger’s hackneyed opinion. My mask shattered, leaving me exposed with my grief. They said he was going to live. Five crushed ribs and a punctured lung. He was supposed to live through that? I wanted with all of my being to hold onto that, to believe he would stay on in this world. But what I wanted didn’t matter. The world can be amazing and full of wonder, or cruel and occupied with anguish. February 8th 2008 the world chose to be the latter. Jordan had died, in the hospital, after three weeks of being hauled through intensive and non-intensive care, all for nothing. He wouldn’t have wanted to go that way. Once again I was reduced to the lowly state of weeping, my hated enemy. If there is a God, or gods, I deem them pitiless, malicious tyrants.
J.A.M. Jordan Anthony Maxwell. My friend. A rare soul mate. One of the most amazing people I have ever met. I suppose the popular cliché “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone” is very easily applied to my predicament. I knew I loved Jordan even after we broke up but frankly, what teenager is interested in a long-distance relationship? I believe he felt the same way about me. The thing that I was unaware of was how much he truly meant to me and how much of my life circulated around him. A phone call or two a week doesn’t seem like much but now that it is gone the silence is too intense, too unbearable at times. It’s strange to realize, now that he is gone, how much the sound of his voice, or just knowing that he was there, would always be there, could soothe me. His voice was my safety net to revive me from my utter and complete loneliness. This also made me realize how few people I actually trust. I had never noticed that I couldn’t talk to other people about my feelings, about how I blame myself, all the various plans and ideas I had conjured up in frivolous attempts to end my misery. I always went to Jordan because he was forever supportive, but now I do not have a Jordan that I can talk to about my lack of Jordan so it stays inside buried under homework, shoved away by busy schedules, and hidden with sheer will.
Things could have been different. There is something within me that knows, like two plus two equals four, that if I had never moved to Coquitlam Jordan would still be alive today. I know that if I had been with him on that night things would have been different. He wouldn’t have gone to that party, or maybe he would have, but I would have been there with him and then he would not have been driving afterwards. I also know, like two plus two equals four, that if I had never moved to Coquitlam I would not be the same person than I am now. Jordan’s death was extremely difficult for me to overcome but it has made me stronger in an immeasurable amount of ways even though at times all I can think of is how much I blame myself, and all I can do is curl up and try my best to fade away, or I just blatantly want to die. I have realized that I will never be able to replace Jordan, and that I will never be able to forget about him and that I will never want to or have to. I have learned a great deal more about self respect and gained a load of trustworthy friends. My genuine emotions are no longer forced to lay dead inside of me.
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