When Your World is Flipped Upside Down....Walk on the Ceiling

Well it’s been a few months again since I wrote and a lot has been going on in that time. My weight has been bouncing around up and down along side my crazy schedule. In the last few months I have had some really great things happens – a vacation out to visit my parents, a cousin’s wedding, and starting a new job of sorts (well at least a new way to potentially make a little more money). I have also been dealing with some more negative things – emotions around dealing with death, work stress and the attempt at dating again. Both the good and the bad have pushed me and challenged me in ways I didn’t really think about. They have made it possible for me to learn a few lessons about myself.

First keeping really busy probably wasn’t the best thing I could have done for myself. I don’t think I’m unusual in the fact that instead of dealing with the grief of losing my best friend that I just created a world where I didn’t have to slow down. The busier I was the easier it was to sleep and to keep my brain from spinning out of control. Of course anyone else that has done the same thing knows that it actually doesn’t work and I learned this lesson the hard way. I found myself feeling like I was burning out and then I found the emotions I was trying to run from creeping back in at random moments making me more emotional that I normally am. It got the point where I was feeling horrible most of the time and I felt like everything was just overwhelming me. This of course was probably the biggest reason I ended up struggling with things like meal plans and exercising because I didn’t have the mental energy or desire to figure everything out. I knew that I had to stop this so I started to let myself actually feel whatever emotion presented itself in a given situation. If I felt like crying I would cry, if I felt like yelling I would yell, ect. I knew that putting on a happy face wasn’t going to actually help me deal with the emotions and to be able to move forward from it. I did discover that although there were a lot of emotional moments, they passed more quickly if I just let them happen. The biggest challenge that I am also working on is letting go of the guilt I feel for not getting to visit Will again and for not writing him as often as I used to. This is a bit more of challenge and the guilt still creeps back but I just remind myself that Will knew that I loved him. I always told him how much he meant to me and how much his friendship, guidance and love meat to me and that is the best anyone can ask for.

The second thing I have learned is that I’m stronger than I thought I was. There have been moments where I have doubted if I can keep going on now that I don’t have someone to go to for advice or to listen to me. Will always told me that I was strong and always knew how to make me feel better when everything was falling around me, but I always doubted if I would have gotten through some of the past stuff if he wasn’t around. In the last couple months though I have shown that I can keep moving forward and deal with a lot of the situations that I never thought I could. Two of the major things that I used Will’s help and guidance for in the past were family stress that always comes with their visits home or my visits out there, as well as the downsides of dating when things don’t go the way I want or expect them to go. It wasn’t easy and I’m not going to lie there have been moments where I really believed I couldn’t do it without Will but I did. I wrote in my journal a lot and worked through the issues and problems that came up. The cool thing was that in writing in my journal in some ways I was able to bring Will’s guidance back as I remembered things he had told me in the past. I know that there will be challenges in my future that will challenge me beyond what I think my limits are but at least I can know that at least one person has always thought I was capable of doing anything and that is something powerful to be able to hold on to and to be able to guide me through any challenge I may have to face, emotional or otherwise.

I’m slowly finding my way again. I didn’t realize how much I counted on Will to help keep me positive and to help remind me that I have a lot of good qualities. I do feel like my whole world has been flipped upside down but more and more I feel like I’m learning to walk on the ceiling  I’m excited to be making some money with scrapbooking. I’m feeling good about my new weight loss goals. I’m not so confident in the whole dating thing but I am still trying to be open to the idea that there may yet be someone out there who is a match for me. Life is too short to be lazy and not actually work toward my goals and if nothing else came out of losing my best friend it did cause me to really stop and look at my life and figure out what my priorities are and what they should be. It is time for me to live up to the faith Will always put in me and that is now what I strive to do. I have refocused on my weight loss goals as well as continuing to retrain myself to see the good qualities within myself even without someone to point them out to me.

Remembering Will

“To kiara kitten from William Gerber, greetings!” “Take good care and blessed be! I am now and always Very Truly Yours, Wm. Gerber.” These two sentences were the very first the very last thing my dear friend Will wrote to me. In between these two sentences was nearly 12 years of an amazing friendship that I will cherish forever. This blog entry is in memory of my ‘best online friend’ who became so much more.

Will found me online when he came across some stories I had written. In the introduction to the story I had included an email address for anyone that wished to share comments or offer feedback and Will took me up on the offer. He sent me a rather lengthy first email full of information and feedback. Since he took the time to write me I felt obligated to respond back thanking him for the information and the encouragement to write more. These first two email started a string of emails all around stories I had written. Within a month our emails started to shift more to real life happenings and to getting to know each other. I found Will fascinating, with a whole wealth of experience and stories to share, which of course came from the fact that he was 25 years older than me. In my early emails I shared stories about what I was doing at university, my first boyfriend and ideas I had for writing. The more we wrote the more I knew we were very similar and like-minded, even if I was still pretty careful what I revealed.

Like most young adults (I was only 20 when we first started talking) I had a lot of drama in my life and because I have always been able to work things out best in writing, Will started to hear about a lot of it. This is when I discovered the true value in having a cyber-friend in my life. I could tell him anything and I would never have to see him, so any embarssament I might have had disappeared, along with any fear of judgement. If he didn’t like what I wrote he could stop responding, like many before him had. The cool thing of course is that he didn’t, and that unlike my journal this random person at the end of my writing could respond and he always did. Whether it was just a friendly word of support or maybe some advice I could always count on a response from him. We continued this way strictly over email and the odd snail mail letter for over a year.

Then at the start of the summer in 2001 my very first boyfriend broke up with me and I was devastated. Again I opened my email and wrote long letters with the struggles as I tried to stay friends with a boy I was in love with but who no longer felt the same about me. I decided early in the summer that I needed to get away from the city before going back to school so I could sort everything out and enter university with a clear mind, so I asked if maybe Will had ever thought about meeting in person. I thought going down to meet him and his wife and all the friends he had long talked about in email seemed like a great idea, not to mention I could escape the city and in fact the country. Plans were made and after a more than day long trip on the greyhound (through a scary border crossing and some pretty seedy greyhound stations I might add) I arrived in the middle of nowhere at 5am in the middle of a nasty thunderstorm, tired, nervous and scared no one was actually going to be waiting for me. I couldn’t help but think that I was about to enter into my very own horror story, where an unsuspecting girl goes off to meet a man she met online and he turns out to be a crazy axe murder. So as I stepped off the bus my instinct was to turn around and run back on but Will was in fact standing at the base of the stairs holding an umbrella out and with a smile on his face. He didn’t look like an axe murder (although then again who really knows what they look like) so I left the safety of the bus to follow him to his car. I will admit that now looking back on that meeting I’m not sure it was probably the smartest idea but then again when we are young do we really think logically about things like that. Hehe It has created a great story and memory for me though, one that I have shared often especially with people who are about to meet their own online friends.

The week that I spent in Ames was great. I spent my days wandering around exploring and my evenings hanging out with Will and his wife. I met a lot of Will’s friends and got to see how Will really spends his time instead of just reading about it. I did spend some of the week worrying about the impression I was making and being self-conscious but Will worked hard to make me feel completely comfortable. He was warm, sweet and very caring. Both Will and his wife welcomed me into their home, kept me fed and entertained. I got really get to know Will on a different level. I got to see that his intelligence wasn’t just online but that he really was a brilliant man. He became more real and I knew after the week that he would forever have a part of my heart. Sadly all vacations have to come to an end and this was no different, I had to go back home to start a new year at university and begin to deal with reality again. Once I got home I sent off an email thanking him for a wonderful time and making sure he still wanted to be a friend for fear the visit hadn’t been as positive for him as it had been for me. I should say I have had a lot of bad luck with online people who judge me based on my appearance and I feared Will would do the same. Of course since that was 10 years ago you all know that I was foolish for worrying. This trip was supposed to be the first of many more. Regrettably I never got back down to visit him again. I’m kicking myself for that now but I guess it just serves as a reminder not to procrastinate on life because you never know when it will disappear.

One thing that did come out of the trip though was the fact that Will forever became Will for me. Let me explain that a bit. Most of his friends and family call him Bill. When I came back from the trip I did ask him which he preferred I call him and he said I could use either and I decided that it would be Will. I guess since that is how I first met him and started addressing him it was engrained in my head. Bill never sounded right to me (of course I’m sure Will doesn’t sound right to all his friends and family either). Whenever I think of him it is always as Will and even when I see Bill written on something about him I still read it as Will. Funny how the mind works sometimes.

Over the years Will and I continued to trade emails, presents, cards and even some phone calls. He helped me deal with a couple more break ups with boyfriends and even what I should do when one friend proposed to me. He was there when my grandparents passed away and when my cousin Jamie was killed. I’m pretty sure he heard about every fight I had with my family and all the drama that came from my various work places. Will also got to hear about the good things in my life especially my various trips. He was the one that actually helped prepare me for the emotional wave that was going to hit when I visited Auschwitz. He was the first person I would tell when something really good happened or when I was excited about something. Will was also the only person I was every 100% honest to about my weight. I am pretty sure he knew me better than I knew myself, or at least he could see things in me that I didn’t always see. All the stuff you go through while growing up and finding yourself,f he was there for. He saw me go from a shy insecure girl to a more confidant and happy woman. I hope he realized how much of a role he played in my growth and how much I valued his opinions. I wouldn’t be the same person today had I not know him. I’m pretty sure I would still have been lost in my own head trying to sort things out. Will meant the world to me and he will be deeply missed. I will love him always and miss him forever, but I shall go on keeping him in my heart and memories.

My love goes out to his wife, family and friends. May you all find comfort in knowing how much he mattered to each of us.

“When a good bye is so unexpected and sudden, when the pain seems unbearable and the loss impossible it is the wise heart that knows that sometimes it has to look back and remember in order to look forward and hope.”

RIP Will

I found out today that one of my closest friends died of a heart attack. Will was someone I met online through my writing 12 years ago when I was 20. It was an unlikely friendship since he was 25 years my senior but somehow we became friends. He is the only person that knew me and all my layers. He knew me inside and out. Will was there when my first boyfriend broke up with me (and even let me visit him) and helped me deal with the loss of another close friend who walked away after I turned down his proposal. Anytime I was fighting with my family or just needed a little reassurance that I was on the right track he was there for me. He helped me decide that it was time to leave Walmart and has been the first person I ask advice from when it came to men. I'm don't remember a time when he wasn't just an email away. I don't know what I'm going to do without him. He has left an open hole in my soul that will never be filled but I will hold him in my heart forever. My email inbox will be empty without your messages.

Thank you Will for all you have given me and all you have taught me. Thank you for listening to me and cheering me on. Thank you for all your advice and your patience. Thank you most of all for always being my friend. It means the world to me to have had you in my life and I hope you knew how much I loved you. I will miss you and love you always.