At Least We Have Good Weather: A Life of Love and Loss

Chapter 6

In 1997 my life was going surprisingly well.

I was co-running YT Tech with my cousin's longtime business partner Lance. I was spending time with friends. Things at home were rather peaceful, although never perfect.

I had even begun assistant coaching volleyball at my old high school twice a week (and by assistant coaching I mean just showing up and playing free games). I loved volleyball. Being a short guy doesn't exactly make you first team material, but in school I worked my butt off at volleyball to try and make an impression. In fact, in our final year, I had even made it to the finals of a two-man tournament with the most unlikely of partners. A very large rugby guy we all called Billy. Sure, the top two guys in the school hammered us in that final match, but even now, thinking back to that run we had to the final makes me smile with pride.

One of my best friends in 1997 was a guy named Gavin, with whom I went to school with, and it was he who convinced me to do the coaching thing, as he was helping out already. I was strange however, seeing as though he didn't actually play during our school days. But I'm glad he did convince me to come, as I loved playing, and certainly missed the social element of the games. Surprisingly, the teachers coaching at that time warmly welcomed us, and we got on well with the younger students.

During my coaching days I ended up falling quite hard for a girl named Claire, who was 2 years younger than me. Gavin happened to be friends with her and hung out with her and her dad quite often. As we all got closer we began to spend more and more time with each other socially, which is always difficult when one is still in school. Eventually, Claire and I became something of an item. It wasn't really publicly acknowledged, but we were as close to being a couple as I've ever been in my life. We went to movies together, we spent weekends together, and I even brought her to meet my mom one night! She had lost her mom a while back, and one night she was so sad that she had nobody to help her with her makeup. So I took her home with me so that my mom could help her. That's how much I cared about her. I let her into this world nobody had ever seen.

The best part about our relationship was having to leave her in the evenings. As odd as that sounds, the reason was because we got to say goodbye in her driveway every time I did leave...in the dark we would hold each other and kiss with an endless delivery of the line " I better go now".

This went on for a few weeks before I started to sense something was up. I convinced myself it was just my usual paranoia. Sadly, I am rarely wrong when it comes to instincts.

Inexplicably, the excuses started shortly after that and she kept turning down my invites, and eventually she told me she didn't want to see me anymore. I got quite angry about it and even asked Gavin if he knew what was going on, he kept encouraging me to just move on. Nobody would give me answers or explain what suddenly happened. It was like overnight she changed her mind.

Heartbreakingly and without much choice, I did move on, but things between Gavin and me also became weirdly tense. We used to play beach volleyball together at the local indoor club and were very close mates. Then one day he walked out on me on the volleyball court and left me standing there embarrassed at having to forfeit the match. An action I realize I still to this day have never forgiven him for.

I did however try phoning him to find out what the hell that was all about, but he got a family member to make an excuse for him as to why he couldn't come to the phone.

A few weeks later I won a prize of hair products on a radio station and I had to collect it at a local shopping center. I went, I collected, and then as though it was meant to be, I came out of the store with my prize, and who should come walking by...but Gavin and Claire holdings hands. They stared at me, equally surprised, but didn't say anything.

I was shattered, but nobody fakes being ok better than me. And I walked on trying not to let them see the pieces of my heart on the floor, but like Hansel and Gretel, I could feel my trail tears showing which direction I had been.

A few years later I saw Gavin in the same shopping center where I had last seen him with the first girl I was really in love with, and he stuck out his hand to shake mine in an attempt to greet me like nothing ever happened. I refused to take his hand and just walked on. That was the last time I saw him.

As for Claire, we are now Facebook friends, and she is happily married (not to Gavin thankfully). We never spoke about that summer we had together and I often wonder if it really happened. What I do remember, is that she loves her French toast with peanut butter on it...

Of course now in retrospect, I can't believe I became one of those guys who hung out at his old high school because he couldn't let go. I was Trip McNeely (Google it) that year...

Suddenly, in what felt like an overnight raid. I had lost my best friend, my "girlfriend" and my social life.

At least I still had my job.

Round about the same time as the disaster in my love life occurred, my ipso facto business partner, Lance, had brought in a massive order that was expected to make us a huge profit. The biggest sale in the short history of our little company. It was for 20 high-end computers that we would build up and sell at a great price. We pushed our collateral into getting these machines specked up, and I built them with pride.

When they were ready, I excitedly called the customer to say they were ready for collection.

The guy arrived and I helped him load the 20 boxes onto his truck. He paid me with a sizeable cheque and I had to hold myself back to not shout out the words "ka-Ching!"

He wasn't even out the driveway and I was already on the way to deposit the cheque at the bank. Finally this little business of ours had struck gold.

A few days Lance called me and asked if I'd managed to deposit the cheque yet. Slightly confused, I'd said: " Yes, of course."

A few more days passed and the cheque still hadn't cleared. Something was indeed wrong.

The bank contacted Lance about our bank account status, and then the sickening thud was felt when we found out the cheque was fraudulent. I immediately called the customer to find out what was going on. But the numbers they had given us no longer worked. Suddenly the reality of what was going on dawned on us.

We had been ripped off. This left us no choice but to get the police involved. I went down to the local station to open up a case of fraud, a long tedious procedure that felt like a waste of time. Lance went to the address the customer had given us, but it was an old building that was chained up, and probably never even belonged to them in the first place.

The police never got anywhere with the case. They had gotten away with it, and we were in trouble.

I was wracked with guilt. I felt completely responsible for what had happened, and worse yet, I had let my cousin and Lance down. The financial implications of this were devastating for the business, and it felt like that moment had really been the nail in the coffin for Yttrium.

It was my first real post-school depression. Everything sucked. Everything.

I still spent some time with my other friends, but I was growing more and more miserable. I had gone from so much hope, to nothing.

Because of what was happening with Gavin and Claire, I stopped coaching volleyball at the school too. Cold turkey.

Then came another one of those moments that would change my life forever...thanks to a little competition they had on tv...