Ripples

A pond makes a perfect reflection. Then suddenly, a rock drops and creates ripples on its surface.

That's what Mr X's suicide feels like.

It's funny that I mentionned them in a previous post, Mr X and Cat. Prolly cause I thought when they'd be back from Vegas, I'd have anecdotes to post here. But X won't be back. And I don't think Cat will ever be the same.

Cat's a friend from college. Mr X was a friend of BF. They got together after they met at my moving party (moving into the disaster appartment).

Cat had recently divorced her French boyfriend of 7 years, husband of 7 months. France didn't live up to expectations and neither did married life.

Mr X was back on the grind of having no job (or close to losing a job he hated), taking too much dope, having broken up with a steady girlfriend who was probably one of the best things to have happened to him. But "She lived too far and had a kid." Things had gone downhill from there.

I guess they kinda felt the same way towards life when they met.

They tried to make it work. Cat had a job (when she felt like showing up) and he took up odd jobs here and there with Fat Mike. But they both seemed to hate it. And thus, drugs seemed to dull the pain.

They showed up on our doorstep one night with a tattoo of each other's initials behind their ear.

She moved in with Mr X after barely a few months, even after he had told BF he never wanted to live with a chick again.

We saw them less and less.

BF kept saying he didn't feel like meeting up with them. They had a habit of rarely being punctual, and of not being there when we needed them (or just when we would have liked to see them.) Everything was always too planned.

I asked them to come on vacation with me and BF, in Mexico, in April. We were in November. Cat asked me how could I live like this, planning things months in advanced when I didn't if I was gonna be alive tomorrow? I thought cuz the big picture needs to be planned, at least a bit. Otherwise, you're just lost.

We didn't see them often after summer. No time, but also no calls and blergh answers to our texts.

So we let them be.

Then, a fb message came. Cat and X were selling all their stuff. Everything they owned. An alarm bell sounded in my head. But I don't know why, it died out at some point.

They had no jobs, they needed money. Why not sell their stuff? Then came their announcement that they were going to Vegas. It all made sense.

I thought they'd come back married. Goes to show just how much of a different page I was on.

I got the call from Ava on Monday night. "V, Cat's gone to Vegas to kill herself with Mr X."

The end of the night was just a blur of tears, of that can't be, of maybe they just want attention. It's strange how at some point, the feeling of panic dies. There's nothing you can do, nothing to be done. You just sit with this feeling of SNAFU until you get more news. BF thought they were fucking with us. He sent a text to Mr X asking if they were getting to grab a beer anytime soon. To our astonishment he answered. " 'Course Bro. Xx" That was 8:50 Sunday.

At 5:23 on Monday, Ava called me to say he was dead. And Cat was in the hospital in LA. Alive. It was a most terrible joy.

"You know, it never even crossed my mind. To me, it was a two for one deal. Either we got them both back, or they were both gone. I never thought..."

We never stopped to think about the possibility. The idea was absurd in its atrocity. For one of them to live, with the knowledge that...

I cried on the drive back every night this week. Though the rest of the time feels incredibly fucked up in its normalcy, the drive back is always just me and BF, at the end of a tedious day, and the ipod singing my thoughts better than I can express them. And so I just stare out the window, I see the images of that pond in my head, all those pictures of what was, of all that won't be, of all that could've been.

Salut Pascal.