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

Chapter 30

With my anti-birthday policy well established, and the pain that I was feeling from Lori's birthday, I knew October was going to be a very difficult month for me to get through.

I had fallen hopelessly in love with her, and for the first time, thought about things I was normally 100% against. Things like marriage, children, sex in public restrooms etc, etc, but being with her opened my beliefs to it all. Then suddenly it was over. Without any sense of closure, I just couldn't let go of her. I was never sure if it was my heart, or my mind that was so stubborn, but one of them was destroying my soul from within.

I had spent most of the year trying to win her heart. I had given everything that was humanly possible. Everything was there for the perfect life...except, she didn't believe in it. She was never sure how she felt about me, she was scared to make a choice...or maybe, as with every other girl, I was just never a better choice. This was becoming the story of my life. When would the right girl come along who would just give us a chance?

They were the most intense, happiest, most painful months of my life, and ultimately, nothing ever happened between us. Not so much as even a kiss.

For months it was like being the boy in the plastic bubble.

I fell for her - hard, and truth is, no matter how bad things became, no matter how much it hurt, I still loved her. I hung onto the hope that she would wake up one day and realize what a horrible mistake she had made.

After making her birthday, by her own admission, one of the best ever, she, in turn, promised me that my birthday would be special too. I should have known by that point, that any time someone promised to make my birthday special, it was the kiss of death.

By September I was in the greatest depression since, well, since The Great Depression. I knew I had to get away from everything. With my birthday coming up in a month's time, I was spinning out of control mentally. I walked around the office like a zombie, I had developed a caffeine addiction to the point where if someone simply called my name, I would drop whatever I was holding. My fashion sense matched my mood perfectly, as I was in my edgy emo phase, including eyeliner...and hey, I made that eyeliner look good. I had also begun growing a beard over the last year, and by the time I met Lori, I was already looking somewhat like a rock 'n roll Satan. I joked with her, that I would shave it when she admitted we were in a relationship, to which she responded that if she liked it, it meant I wasn't allowed to shave it. After things ended, I promised myself I wouldn't shave it unless I was over it. It gave me something to do, and I continued to grow it for another 2 years.

Ironically, the more I pulled myself out of the world, the more it came looking for me, and during that time an old friend contacted me to be part of a short film he was doing, he asked me if I still had that beard I showed off at the movie premiere a few months back. I did, and I was cast in a cameo role in the film.

Filming commenced towards the end of September, and I was only needed for two days, but being on set and amongst creative minds helped to keep me distracted, if even for a while.

After I completed filming, for some strange reason I instinctively went back to set the next morning. The crew told me I was done and that I didn't need to be there. It didn't even register to me that I was finished. I realized my mind was still a mess with Lori. I got back into my car. I decided I wanted to clear her from my memories, metaphorically speaking, of course, and the best way I thought to do this was to write her name on a beach somewhere and let the waves wash it away.

It was a deep, existential idea, which would've worked brilliantly if I weren't sitting in Pretoria. About an 8-hour drive from any beach...

Then in a split second, I thought, what the hell. And I drove.