Enjoy an audio recording of this piece, or scroll to keep reading. Don’t forget to smash that like button if you enjoy this post.
Sometimes I question whether I’m in the position to write my advice column. It’s senseless, really—self-critical against my own belief that we’re all hypocrites and no one’s “in the position” to give advice. Advice is a supply and demand thing, after all. People write in and I answer and so I think that system, by design, puts me “in the position.” But occasionally, experience grants me a flash of wisdom that can only be disseminated as unsolicited advice. When I’ve essentially written in to myself and thus, I must respond to me, to you. Stay with me.
The end of August marked one year since my friend Karl died of an overdose. As far as I know, no one knows the exact date because medics found him (what they believe could have been) days later, alone in his apartment, drugs abound. Drugs that crept back into his life as he spiraled out on vaccine conspiracy theories during the pandemic. It really stung hearing people talk all sanctimoniously about QAnon’ers and addicts slipping into irrevocable paranoia during COVID, like these people didn’t have lives and families and futures. My dear friend was a casualty. A worst case scenario come to life, only to lose his.
I didn’t post anything for the anniversary because it was around the same day as the anniversary of my sister’s passing. And though I appreciate the kindness, I couldn’t take the thought of extra pity. I spent those days mourning Karl quietly, and it seemed like everyone else did, too. I didn’t see a single post in his honor, which felt eery and wrong, like he’d been scrubbed from everyone’s memories, untagged from every Facebook photo.
Weeks passed, and I still felt weird. I still feel weird. Did his family at least receive some supportive texts and calls? Do people realize Karl literally doesn’t exist anymore? Amid the distress of questions unanswered, I realized I massively dropped the ball. I had been adamant about sending his parents a letter, and now a year had flown by, and I never even finished writing the thing. I fumbled the opportunity to show his family how much he was cherished. I failed to do the thing while it was top of mind and therefore it did not get done.
Karl was a fucked up motherfucker but he was a man of his word. If it was a nice day and he said he was going cliff jumping at some remote swimming hole with no cell phone service, I’d receive videos the next day of him back flipping into nature’s unknown. He lived from the top of his mind. And as the Karl-shaped hole in my life expands, I am inspired to do the same.
Maybe you will be, too.
People typically aren’t bragging when they describe themselves as impulsive. There’s an implied lack of self-control, shame proportionately harbored. But at what point does impulse become the ever-sexy and coveted spontaneity? Efficient, intuitive decisiveness, sprung from a place of passion? I’ve come to find that thinking through my every decision only welcomes inertia. Those moments when I allow myself to do things top of mind, to thwart my brain’s automatic search for order and justification and perfect timing, are when I feel the most alive.
As a culture obsessed with safety (both physical and psychological), we don’t let ourselves be surprised enough anymore. We’ll spend so much time considering everything that could go wrong that we lose the opportunity to fear, laziness, forgetfulness, etc. Surprise is one of those emotions that actually sticks around for the long haul. I feel amnesiac about so much of my life but the times when I’ve been truly surprised, especially when I’ve surprised myself, I hold onto them. (My ex once called me “nothing if not predictable” so I’m literally obliged to live every day in spite of that.) I think about the letter I’d planned to send Karl’s parents and I wonder what kind of surprises I may have missed—a tearful phone call with his mom, maybe lunch at the Towne Tavern where we swap Karl stories over turkey clubs and french fries. (I think I’m still holding out hope that this is possible, even a year plus later.)
It would be easy to sit here and share each recent, lovely instance of doing something top of mind and being rewarded accordingly. It might even establish trust, i.e., you feel compelled to live a little differently when you hear how it’s worked out for me. But I think the real juice is in forcing myself to recall things I’ve missed out on by overthinking into oblivion.
I didn’t go camping with my family this entire summer. My parents bought an RV a couple years ago and they camp every other weekend at various state parks in central and western PA. I succumbed to the imagined exhaustion of driving 10 hours to camp for less than 48, and therefore missed out on special moments in nature with my nephews.
I avoided communicating my feelings to a friend about the state of our relationship and now, so much time has passed that I’m reluctant to even call it a relationship. Maybe that’s evidence that it’s not meant to be. Or maybe I should say things while they’re still fresh to let people know I care.
I didn’t get bangs. I bought clip-in bangs off Amazon to see how they’d look, and they looked pretty good. But I thought about it so much that I couldn’t think about it anymore and eventually, I forgot I even wanted them in the first place. Of course, writing this is a reminder that bangs aren’t going anywhere, that they’re only a mental breakdown away.
I didn’t read. No, it’s really that simple. So many times when I told myself “I’m going to READ today,” I’d get anxious about not writing, or not being social, or not spending quality time with Andrew, that I just didn’t read. And now my stack of unread books is getting so intimidating that if I don’t start doing things as soon as I think of them, they will burst through the fucking ceiling.
I never took ski lessons. Last winter, I told myself my only goal for the whole cold, miserable season was to learn to ski. I’ve wanted to ski for as long as I can remember and when no one showed any interest in joining me, I let the whole plan go amiss. “You miss 100% of the bougie après-ski lewks you don’t turn.” - Wayne Gretzky (soooo true, Wayne)
Meditation. Wow, I barely knew her. I redid an entire room in my apartment to support my journey in transcendence and if I don’t go do it the second I’m thinking about it, it doesn’t happen. This is to say it never happens.
As of now, we are not getting engagement pictures in Italy like I’d “planned.” I reached out to a photographer who unfortunately won’t be in Rome that week, and just never reached out to anyone else. Now our trip is two weeks away. Guess I’ll be packing my tripod.
Ok I’m starting to feel bad about myself and I think you get it. A life of regret is just so unsexy to me. Routine is comforting and structure makes me a better person, but I have to leave space for impulse: to spill over the pages, grieving a colorless life without Karl. To tell people how much they mean to me before my brain convinces me it’s not reciprocal. To slide down a bunny slope on my ass, if only to tell the group chat “I went skiing this weekend.”
Bangs are only a mental breakdown away 😆 I hear you
Passionate and gracefully awkward. The beauti of life is every new day is open to new opportunities . I suggest no tripod. Seek people in Rome. There are people everywhere. Life sends us what we need when we need it. Take joy in private a d joyful celebration of love and marriage.
Contact Karl's mom and anyone else for that matter. It is unnatural to bury your children. Your family knows that so hard. Karl's mom needs a fresh set of ears to hear. Having lost friends alot of ways in this life, those nearest beco.e numb a d tired of alllll the words being said again and again. They are gone. Thay did something stupid. No more. Those whose grief is still raw and paralyzing must take steps to move forward not to escape it, grief in part of who you are now but to continue moving and learn the feel of that added weight of this new burden. To keep moving forward. Contact Karl's mom. She is sad but still has all those lovely memories to tell. Be that listening heart.