one last goodbye.

Hello,

So, blog, it's not that I've been avoiding you per se. I just didn't know what to write about. Well, I take that back. I did know what to write about. So many things have been happening, and any one of them are blog worthy. All of them, in fact. But by writing about them, I'm not writing about the thing that, well, I didn't know how to write about.

But it's gone on long enough. I can't keep avoiding this. Life is passing me by and none of it is getting recorded for posterity and friends' amusement. So let's do this thing. Let's do this.

I had a great dream the other night. And I woke up sad. I fell back to sleep and had another great dream. And again I woke up sad. The alarm was going off this time, and so I whispered to the world, "Goodbye, Duke," and I got out of bed and rejoined reality.

In reality, Duke killed himself last month. In my dream, he had faked his death. He was still intending to do himself in, but that time was faked. He came to Hawaii, just showed up in our lives, still alive, and said it wasn't for good, he was still going to kill himself, but he wanted to come say goodbye first. And so we got to say goodbye.

In my first dream, we talked, all of us. People from every part of my life were there, drifting in an out. I sat with Duke and we talked of childhood trauma that we have in common, him worseso than me, but I get it. And we talked about that. And he said he never knew, and he was glad to know there was someone else out there who got it.

In reality, Duke's villain was his dad. We had talked about it once. His dad had, apropos nothing, decided that he had done Duke a great favor by being a sick psychotic bastard asshole fuckface to Duke; had done well by his son by doing what he'd done. Because Duke suffered. And he understood life. And he became an artist.

In reality, one of my villains was Ed, my ex, who had also come to a similar conclusion that he had done well by me by doing what he'd done. Because I'm not so naive anymore. Because I came out of our relationship worse for wear, but became stronger eventually, and that was all because of him.

It's like that song by one of those blond girls (I get them all confused), where she thanks her abuser because now she's stronger, now she's a fighter.

But that's all bullshit, and I hate that song because it's all bullshit. Blond girl's abuser didn't make her a fighter. Ed didn't make me stronger. Duke's dad didn't make him an artist. They only made us hurt. We're the ones who made us who we are. We're the ones who took the shit others gave us and figured out a way not to be trampled entirely. Those bastards deserve no credit for doing what they've done. They shouldn't have done it.

I told Duke this, in reality, at the time of our conversation. But in my dream, we talked about the abuse. We didn't talk about prevailing, about become strong artist fighters. We talked about surviving. In my dream, we sat together and understood each other. In my dream, he and Michael walked off together to talk alone, and I sat there for a long time, wondering when they would come back, what they were talking about, and if Duke was still going to die.

And I woke up, and he was still dead. And I missed him entirely. And I never got to say goodbye.

Duke was our best man. He was there that night I swallowed my fear and called the green-haired boy at Taco Bell and asked him out. He was there with us as we fell in love. He and Michael went on that night, and Duke told Michael that I was the one who would save him. Duke was there at the Red Rose coffee shop that first night of early labor before Ian was born. He stood with us in the park where we got married. He stayed with us before we left Murfreesboro for Chicago, glad we were going but not really willing to let Michael go. He came to us in Chicago. I always thought he would appear in Hawaii one day, just show up on our doorstep and be here.

The day before our 8th anniversary, we found out. His friends held a memorial for him at the park where we got married. And we stood there and remembered.

So goodbye, Duke. I'm so sorry that life wasn't better to you. And I'm sorry if you needed someone to be there and I wasn't. And I'm sorry that I'm saying this to my blog, and not to you. We miss you a lot. So many of us do. Rest, now that the pain is over. Be well, my friend.