To Stephen, the Friendship That Never Was

Earlier today a person I never met or heard of friended me on facebook. Being the social (at least virtually so) type, I accepted his invitation. All seemed well. Not only a new soul but a new light had entered my life, and his name was Stephen...something...not sure. He might have spelled it Steven. Or Scott. But such details are minor compared to the friendship, the relationship, the mutual harmony that would soon be.

But then, just as the clouds had parted in my otherwise grey life and a ray of sun had pierced the darkness of my existence, a thunderbolt came crashing through my new blue heaven. For no more than an hour latter, Stephen/Scott/Lou reached out to me on facebook chat, I figured no doubt to cement a relationship that had already become a solid foundation in my otherwise ramshackle life. But instead, to my utter stupefaction, Lou/Charles/Fred asked me to defriend him (well, initially to "de him" in that playfully typo way I had already come to call our own private dialogue, such as twins or asylum bunkmates might have). This was then followed by an explanation--one unprovoked since clearly I was was too mute with ceaseless sorrow to query--in which he called me a "poser."

My now cleaved mind reeled with questions my dry mouth and horrified gasps would not permit me to utter: What did I do to offend my new best lifelong friend so? How could not only I win him back but make sure to keep him as a constant in my life? Why did he not simply defriend me himself, unless it was so that I would know he was displeased, like a little kid who doesn't say why he's angry but simply wanders around the house knocking fragile things over so at least you are aware of the depths of his infantile rage.

It's been two hours now and while the tears have ebbed they have not dried. They are my translucent scars, my badge of honor for having endured such a heart-wrenching journey. But said journey is not complete, will never be complete, for now I am a man without direction, without an emotional home, simply...without. The pain I feel must be not unlike the one women feel when they give birth to a semi truck in a bath of sulfuric acid.

And yet, despite all the distress, all the despair I suffer as I wander my own Via Dolorosa, the cross of a lost kinship resting heavily on my back and shoulders, I know the brief time I spent with Jim/Bill/Guiseppi will change me in ways I cannot even fathom. How so I do not know. But my old life is no more. Of that I cannot be more assured.

And so in honor of everything that Nick/Harvey/Babbit meant to me and will forever mean to me, I dedicate the following song. If only it could play to a bittersweet, endearing montage of my dear "unfriend" as he suffers yet another severe borderline episode like only he can.

Goodbye, sweet prince. Goodbye but never, ever good riddance.