Who cares if one more light goes out? I do.

I had a best friend once, the male version of me.  He came into my life at a very trying time for me, and he made me laugh so hard my sides hurt.

And then we crossed that line one night.  Lonely, bored, deprived.  We decided our friendship was strong enough to handle all of that, but we ended up falling into a relationship.  And fall we did.  Fast.

We both worked nights, and lived half an hour away from each other, but we made it work somehow.  We really did nothing except spend time together. We didn’t need to go anywhere.  Do anything special.  We just loved being together.

All of the sentimental things between us.  Neither one of us were very romantic, much less sappy, but for some reason, we were with each other.

He was general a hardass who was totally against relationships, and after the last relationship I’d had, I had  no desire to be in another.

But put us together, and we were just gross.  I hated country music, but one day, he text me and said he heard a song that reminded him of me.  He knew I hated country music, but listen to it anyway.  It was Heaven, by Kane Brown.  Heaven, Found you, What if, and What’s mine is yours, became our theme songs.

All of our inside jokes, all of our Family Guy and Music references falling into the punchline somewhere.  God, I’d never laughed so hard in my life.

I had a youtube account and gave him the info so we could listen to playlists at his house.  One night while at work, I saw that a new playlist had been made called ”Love you, Josh” and were a bunch of Kane Brown and Brett somebody.  Very sappy sentimental shit that he had taken the time to put together for me.  This will be important later.

 

The sex? We referred to it as porn star sex.  It was amazing.  When I say it was amazing, it’s not because I loved him that I say that, it’s because it was really fucking amazing.  We would go for hours.  HOURS.  With intervals here and there, but my God.  I haven’t had sex that great since then.

He would send me flowers while I was at work, but always left a card that made me laugh out loud so everyone would look at me crazy.  Like one beautiful arrangements of roses came with a card that said ”This is more of an apology for what I did to your hair last night” (Literal knots he had to brush out with leave in conditioner and a tangle free brush.  I remember that night lol) or the one that said ”When a Tornado meets a Volcano- Deep thoughts of Marshall Mathers”

We would talk for hours, and laugh, and laugh.  I think I got abs just from all of the laughing.

The last note he left on my counter said “You’re mind now! So forget the past. Lets build a new future full of laughs, love, and porn sex!! Love you- Josh”

Everything came so easily, in such a relaxing way, I was shocked when things started to go south.  The crazy thing was, they  just didn’t make sense.

But then they did.

Josh was a radiologist, and I knew that his marriage had ended because of a severe opiate addiction, but he had been clean so long, I didn’t think it was an issue.

He had a hard honesty about him at all times.  He was always open with me about everything.  And then…… he just disappeared.  He would disappear for days and then show back up like nothing had happened.  Like I just hadn’t gone days without a WORD from him.

Then I found other things that just didn’t make sense.  Nothing was adding up, and oh man, did we go to war over it.  He would tell me I was crazy, I accused him of seeing other people, there was name calling, there was screaming at each other, and in between there would be nights where I was off work, and in the middle of the night I would wake up and he would be there.

There would be war, I would cry myself to sleep, and then I would wake up at 2am to see him next to me.

There would be crazy porn star sex, then falling asleep tangled up in each other.. and then.. more war.

We ended on a bad note.  A really bad note.

I finally knew what it was the day he told me they were preparing for a new room at the hospital and he found a bottle of hydromorphine and wanted to know if I would split it with him.

Then.. Then I knew what the problem was.  I wasn’t crazy.  I wasn’t losing my mind.  It finally all fell into place and made sense.

And then it ended

And oh man was I heartbroken.  I started drinking just to fall asleep.  I lost not only the man I loved, but my very best friend.  The love was gone, but more importantly, the laughing was gone.  My sense of security was gone.

I  missed him something terrible.. for months.  But I never mentioned his name after that first week he was gone.

People would ask me what happened, I would say something to the effect of ”I think he had a problem” and they would turn their nose up at me.. because everyone knew and loved him.  And no one knew about his previous problem, or why his marriage had REALLY ended.

So for months, I drank myself to sleep.  I cried a lot.  I found a buddy to ease my pain, but my God I missed him.

I was so angry, and so hurt, and so disappointed.

He became someone I didn’t know, and so I let him go, but I missed him so much.

I moved on and started dating someone else, and we eventually moved in together.

I once got a message a couple of Christmas’s ago from him that said ”I miss you.  I know you don’t want to hear from me, but I want you to know that I’m sorry for everything.  That’s on me.  I miss you most days”

And so I got drunk that day and cried in private.

One day while changing around my playlists on Youtube, I noticed that there was a new playlist that said “I miss you-Love, Josh”

And in it were sappy love songs about losing love, and missing a woman, or losing a good woman. The one that stuck with me was ”I used to love you sober” and ”she got the best of me”  for some reason.

And so I  pretended I never saw it, and I cried in private again.

I would look him up on social media every now and then, and saw he was dating a fellow drug addict who’d lost her  kids to the system, and couldn’t string a coherent sentence together on facebook.  That kind of shocked me, because he was always so smart and witty, and she just.. wasn’t.

So I knew then, he was still using… and I prayed for the day that he would stop.  I wanted him to stop so I could tell him I missed my best friend.

I still loved him, but I was so ANGRY, and the hurt couldn’t even compare to the anger I held… but beyond all that was still love.

Because the ending was bad, but I still remembered the beginning.

So I continued to wait for the day he got sober.

And then I hear he was put in county jail on drug charges, and I was actually thankful, because I thought perhaps sobering up while in jail might have him seeking help to end the problem.

There was so much I wanted to tell him when he got sober.

End the problem he did.  He hung himself in a jail cell September 13th 2020.

I always thought there would be time for us to sort out our issues and find our friendship again.

I hope we meet again in the next life Josh.  I have missed you in this one.

And I hope it works out better then.

I didn’t say anything when he died.  I didn’t go to his funeral.  I was stunned.  I was sad.  I was heartbroken again.  But I said nothing.

Until the other day……

Apparently I have some sort of Samsung version of Icloud that holds all of my pictures.  I had never signed up for it, and didn’t realize it sucked up my pictures, but a notification popped up that said ”On this day”

So I clicked on it.. and there it was.  The folder.  The screenshots of all of our best conversations.. and our worst.

I spent the entire day going through them.

My mother had been good friends with him (and his ex wife.. who is pure gold btw) since before they were radiologists, and she loved Josh.. until Josh was no longer Josh.

We had talked about him briefly at one point, and  I told her I had forgave him, because the Josh I left wasn’t the Josh I had started with.

But the other day, drowning in memories, I told her I had found the screenshots, and I was incredibly sad.

I said ”Had the drug thing not happened, we probably would have moved forward, got married, and would be low key roasting each other at the breakfast table every morning.  I miss him something awful”

That was the first time I admitted that I missed him out loud since we parted ways.

And today, I’m there again.. because I clicked on a Kane Brown song and got lost in the memories.

And here we are, hiding in my office, listening to the playlist he made for me.. both times, going through the good conversations and pictures, and thinking maybe I need a drink.

I doubt anyone will read this, but I can’t say all of this out loud, and I really needed to get it off of my chest.

You always think there’s going to be time, there’s going to be a day, there’s going to be a moment, where you can sit down and talk.  Fix things. Sort it out.

And then death takes that day you were waiting on and leaves you devastated.

But you can’t say it out loud.  You can’t talk about it.  So you just remember.