Interlude 8

Interlude 8

She’d only been at Piedmont College a day or two. It still felt like she was at a summer camp that would eventually end instead. There she was, all of 18, 120 pounds, blonde, cute and short and in her freshman year of college. The horrible summer before had finally faded and she was ready to get the party started. After having been drunk all of twice before, she was ready to see one of the parties her brother always used to talk about. She was ready to get sloshed.

The dorm was lame and she was unpacked and bored. She called one her brother’s friends, Sasha, to see if anything was going on.

“Hey, Sasha. What you doing?”

“I’m hanging about to go over to Merry’s, why? whats up?”

“I am so bored.”

“Yea, alright I’ll come get you.” She arrived in just a few minutes. Demorest is a pretty small town. She drove up in a cool two door black cavalier. Sasha was, in her eyes, the epitome of cool. Confident, wild, and she dropped F-bombs like they were going out of style. Yea, Sasha was fucking cool.

She hopped in and they drove down the strip, less than a mile, to Merry’s apartment at the corner of Central and Georgia. They walked up stairs, Sasha announced their presence with some remark, and she did not knock. The apartment was awesome, trendy and as she looked around she thought it was amazing. I want this she thought, how do I get this?

Sasha walked in like she owned the place, explaining how Merry worked her ass off in Helen so she didn’t have to live on campus. They both had a lot of money because they waited tables at restaurants there during October Fest. They made a LOT of money. As she looked in awe of the apartment she thought, I really fucking want this.

Merry and Sasha were chatting back and forth about their summer and their expectations for the future year. They were talking about the guys they were dating or screwing and how that was working out. Sasha and Ed were off again but she was going over there later anyway to try and make up while Alex had stopped taking Merry’s phone calls. It all seemed normal to them. It was just men and men came and went and apparently came back again without any real pain or fear in the matter. They both seemed fine with it.

Merry looked over at her, “Well, how about you Miss Hannah?” there was a pause.

“Well, you know, I don’t really do a lot of physical stuff… I mean, um.. I don’t know.” She had no idea how to participate in this conversation. It was completely foreign to her. She continued,

“I mean, I’m still pretty new in that department.. um.. the sex department.. you know? I’m taking it slow. I don’t have a boyfriend or anything… but I’m pretty excited about the parties this weekend, though. That should be fun.” There was pause as Merry looked over at Sasha with a sly grin.

“You trying to get drunk, Miss Hannah?” She shrugged in response to Merry’s question.

“Sasha, pour Hannah a drink before we get going. Might as well get her warmed up, huh?” Sasha laughed and walked into the kitchen and pulled the goldschlager out of the freezer.

“Wait, liquor doesn’t freeze?” She said and Sasha laughed in response. “No, it’s not like water. Its gotta get a LOT colder before it begins to freeze.” She giggled again and saw her embarrassment, “It’s okay, you’re a preacher’s kid like me… you’ve got some catching up to do.” She pulled out a shot glass and poured one.

“That shit tastes horrible” Sasha said, “but if you’re not used to drinking, one shot will definitely get you moving in the right direction.” She looked at the clear liquid in front of her and saw the gold flecks floating in the liquor. She’d never seen anything like it. She looked at Sasha who nodded in encouragement and then she picked up the shot glass and tilted it back like she’d seen in the movies. She threw it back trying to act like a pro.

It burned all the way down. It WAS horrible. She coughed and thought for a moment she might vomit right there in the middle of the kitchen. Sasha laughed at her.

“I told you it was horrible.” Her face began to warm and her belly glowed. As the three girls headed out the door and down the steps all she could think of was that she wished she could have another.

Chapter 8: Ashley

Chapter 8

Ashley

I met her at my very first meeting out of rehab.  I’m not even sure if we spoke at that first meeting but, she was there with her boyfriend, Christian. She had long stringy, thin, brown hair and was incredibly skinny.  She seemed happy but, her expression and her presence was one that had a muted emotional pain. I suppose no one walks into a 12-step meeting feeling whole and complete.  She seemed especially fragile but bouncy and happy.  I remember wondering if she was really happy. I remember that night being so very cold.  I remember wanting her to be my friend.  

Ashley and I ran into each other over and over at meetings those first few months clean. We began to talk and we began to form a friendship of sorts.  I was jealous over her relationship with Christian.  

I do not know when I began to think of Ashley as a friend.  I do not remember when I began to really trust her.  As I look back, I know that in several moves, she entered my heart and changed my perspective. In a few beautiful steps, she entered my heart and continued to hold a place there.  

One night at a meeting, I had gone in deciding that I wasn’t going to share.  I don’t know now what I needed or wanted to share but whatever it was I didn’t want to share it though I know I needed to.  I know that anxiety and overwhelming feelings were more than I wanted to deal with so, I pretended all was well and everything was ok.  As the meeting neared its end, my emotions began to take over and I realized, if I didn’t share, I’d want to use.  All I could think about was wanting to make the pain go away and the only way I knew how to do that was to use.

But I didn’t want to use.

So instead, I raised my hand. There were so many people at the meeting that I wasn’t called on. Tears began to spill over and I feared if I left there, I wouldn’t make it.  I wouldn’t be able to stay clean. Desperation and panic set in. The person who chaired the meeting was about to close and I remember Ashley speaking up “There’s someone else in pain who needs to share!”

There was a pregnant pause in the room. I realized she was talking about me.  The chairperson repeated that we were out of time and that I could share with someone after the meeting.  After it closed, I remember Ashley moving right next to me asking if I was ok and petting my hair.  I couldn’t speak and I didn’t even know exactly what was wrong.  She just held onto me until I got it all out. She voiced her annoyance of people following the rules so closely that people in pain couldn’t share.  She was annoyed for me.

To my known memory, it was the first time in my adult life another woman had stood up for me or tried to give me a voice when I had none.  She didn’t leave my side.  She wouldn’t go until all my tears were gone and I had talked it out. Afraid I might still use, she took me with her to eat—with no money really of her own and me, completely broke, she still insisted on getting me food and letting me eat.  I didn’t realize at the time how selfless and caring her act had been.  She was worried about me and cared enough to do something.  This act set the example for the rest of my recovery. I realized I could give voice to those who didn’t know how to speak for themselves.

Off and on, as time passed by, and we accumulated months, and even years, clean, our relationship often changed.  Ashley struggled on a fourth step and all the emotions that it brought about while I struggled with looking for a relationship and wanting to find one that would last. We were never best friends but I always felt safe enough to share my wants and needs with her and I liked that she shared her fear and frustrations with me.  It was a casual and intimate friendship that I adored.  

Once, just months into my recovery, I shared at a meeting how badly I wanted to use.  I shared how I wanted to run and how I was tired of feeling and I was tired of showing up for life and I was tired of everything. I was throwing a temper tantrum that could easily ruin my life. When I used, it was usually to hide from my emotions and, during times of great emotional outpouring or temper tantrum-throwing, I wanted to use again.  After the meeting, Ashley and Christian came up to me and promptly told me they would be kidnapping me for the night and I had no say in the matter. I told them I was really fine and just wanted to go home.  They said no.

They put me in their car, stopped by my house to pick up some things, and took me to their house.  First of all, for anyone to trust me in their house was a miracle (didn’t these people know what I was capable of?!). Secondly, that they knew me enough to know that, had I gone home, I would have been in intense emotional pain was huge.  They knew me, as a person, well enough to know that even if I didn’t use, I would be in pain so they did what they could to ease it. One addict helping another, in this case, was without parallel.

They opened their home to me, put me on the couch, put a feel good movie in the DVD player, and I fell asleep with Ashley in the room with me.  I was uncomfortable. I felt like a burden and was afraid that perhaps I should have insisted on going home.  Yet, despite all of that, I was fully cared for and loved and I knew it.

As time went by, I often talked with Ashley about my fears with finding God again.  I loved God even in my addiction- something that had carried over since childhood.  Yet, I couldn’t believe in a God that would send someone like Ashley to hell.  Ashley does not believe in Jesus. Ashley resents the church for various reasons and I just couldn’t believe that this woman who had saved me from myself, not once but twice, could go to hell simply because she didn’t believe in a man that so many had twisted.  She had shown me selfless love.  She had shown me mercy and understanding and had asked for nothing in return.  What was I meant to do? Was I meant to believe in a Jesus that would condemn her simply because she didn’t accept the forgiveness of Jesus? I couldn’t.

She had accepted a program of spiritual principles and God-based ideas into her life.  She lived a life cleaner and full of more Godly acts than many Christians I knew.  She lived a way of selfless service and gave of herself on many levels.  She had made a moral inventory of herself and had made a confession to God as she understood God.  How could that not be enough? How could God be so small not to see who Ashley was just because she didn’t like the idea of Jesus?  How could that be? She, this tiny, skinny, little, recovering-addict, vegan girl, had pulled me up from the depths of emotional hell, for heaven’s sake!

One night, after a meeting, Ashley described her God as a little girl who wanted to be held and loved and to give love.  She said that God was the most beautiful, innocent, little girl who just longed to be with her.  She said that God was what she thought being a little girl should have been like.  In a sense, looking back on it, her God was the sense that innocence could be restored.  Her God was the ability to be wrapped up in that loving innocence and peace again despite all that was wrong with the world and despite all that she had done in her past.  

In that moment, I knew.  I knew that my God would never send someone like Ashley to hell.  I knew that Ashley could never and would never be destined to hellish eternity.  She had envisioned in God what I had been looking for my entire time clean up until that point: restoration to innocence.  That is what my God is capable of doing.  That is what my God does and Ashley had created a mental and spiritual image for that action that I had so desperately been trying to find.  She had visualized the process that I had wanted to grab hold to for years.

My God, from that point forward, was bigger than Jesus.  Or, at least, God was bigger than the concept of Jesus that I had been raised with in my young life.  My God was capable of understanding the heart of the person and not just the physical act. Perhaps Ashley had not had some pivotal moment of salvation or public profession of faith, but she did have a process of change that led her to a power so much greater than herself.  It was the first time I’d realized that salvation didn’t have to come as an event but could take place as a process instead.  Her presence in my life allowed me the courage to point at the universe and scream “NO! I will not believe that way! I cannot believe that way and I don’t care what anyone says!”  I rebelled against the cultural concepts of my own faith background on a spiritual level for the first time.

There were many more experiences with her and friends.  We went to recovery conventions and swam in rock quarries in the summer.  I jammed out with Christian and sat next to Ashley on the sidelines while the guys played basketball.  We went to meetings and smoked cigarettes and had birthday parties and cakes and anniversary celebrations.  We did step work together and talked about life’s mysteries.  The summers are especially ingrained in my head—sitting outside the Tuesday night meeting in Perkasie, PA. We would sit on the low stoned wall in front of the church smoking and talking about our lives.

It was on one of those hot muggy Pennsylvania nights sitting on that wall, smoking, that Ashley and I talked about men and my lack of luck in that department.  I told her how easily I could love people.  I talked about how much I wanted someone to love me back and to stick with me.  I wanted a partner to walk through life with.  I wanted a man who understood me and still wanted me. After spilling it all out she simply asked me what love was.

I paused.  

I was left speechless.  I didn’t know what the definition of love was, but I came up with some idea that love was God and God was love and blah blah blah blah. I rambled on about it for a few minutes before she began to look bored.

When I was done with my verbose explanation of what I thought love was, she calmly replied, “Hannah, love is not a feeling.  Love is a commitment to making someone else’s life better.”  This statement wasn’t an opinion for her; it was a matter of fact. That moment, like many others with her, changed my life.  That definition changed my concept on relationships and what I expected from them.  In the way that she explained it, love wasn’t about how I felt any longer. Instead, it was about what I decided.  Love was about taking action and making a decision.  Someone once told me “you don’t choose who you fall in love with” and I knew, from that conversation forward, that they were absolutely wrong.  Lust wasn’t always a choice but Love always constituted making a decision. Always.

As I really began searching for a mate I began asking myself, “is this someone I want to make a commitment to making their life better?”  It’s a loaded question. Making that commitment is not a decision I make lightly. More than anything, it became the understanding that how much they turned me on or how handsome they were or how much money they had, did not influence my love. My love came down to my own decision and my own commitment. The realization was empowering and it changed how I perceived my relationships from that point forward.

Like many things that change my life, the change came into fruition slowly. It was a process. I went through an addiction to men later and it was having this viewpoint that made me realize it for what it was. I was often acting against my own will and my own belief system to feel something different. This perspective was the foundation for how I wanted to live my life but it took years of practice before I began to implement it fully.

Since then, I have used that definition over and over and over again. I used it when I told my story for the first time to a room full of people and I used it again when I was walking my first sponsee through a first step. Even now, it rings as true as it did on that balmy Pennsylvania night.

Love is the decision to commit myself to making someone else’s life better. Sometimes that person is me.

This idea permeated the next few years of my life as I moved to Bryn Athyn for college and later when I went to Thailand several times. If I truly loved myself, I must MUST make a commitment to make my own life better. It was those words that built a foundation of trust and understanding, development of faith and peace that I truly needed. Had anyone else said such things I might have brushed it off with little concern.

But Ashley spoke them, and I was able to hear them.

Interlude 7

Interlude 7

She had just returned home from a mission trip to Japan. The plan was that her family would go on to vacation in Canada and she would have the house to herself for a few, wonderful, quiet days. But when she returned, the church her father preached for had asked him to resign. She was angry. Her whole life had been the church and, then after returning from a trip that was meant for God, her church left her? Didn’t they know how much she needed them? Her heart sunk.

That night after she arrived, her mother told her that, because of what the church had done and not wanting her to be alone, they made plans for her to go with them to Canada. They don’t get it, she thought. All she wanted was to be alone. She had been surrounded by people for the last month and she just wanted some solitude, maybe a friend or two.

But noooo.

Now, she was off again.To Canada, of all places. Who cared about Canada, anyway? She marched off from the dinner table in all of her 17-year-old glory and moped. It was too late to change it now.

Two days later, they arrived. Her brother was still weak from cancer treatment and had trouble getting around, the whole family had to share one hotel room, and she was surrounded by the insurance agents her mother worked for. It was the epitome of awful.

Fuck this, she thought as she walked around the hotel. It was beautiful, but frustrating. She had to go walking around the resort just to get some alone time. She walked into an overpriced clothing store that was in the castle-like hotel and started looking around. An attractive guy who was working in the store saw her and walked over.

“Hey there, can I help you with something?” He smiled.

All of a sudden, the trip to Canada wasn’t looking so bad. She smiled back, started a conversation. He was flirting and she knew it. She enjoyed the distraction.  Before long, she found out his name was Scott and had made plans to meet him and his friends for bowling. She told him about her brother and would bring him along. He didn’t seem to mind.

They met up later. Her brother was in a wheelchair; she was in a cute, little outfit. Scott, and his friends, Rory and Megan, taught them the game. It wasn’t like American bowling. They hung out and chatted and bowled and decided to go out to eat after. Her brother got wine, she tried it, thought it tasted horrible, and then made plans to hang out with them later without her brother around.

She met up with the trio later that night at Rory & Scott’s apartment. She was fascinated by Rory. He was not as attractive as Scott, but he was artistic, a photographer, he was nice. He could hold a conversation. Scott was just pretty. Rory was sexy. They were drinking and, at that point, she’d only really drank once before and she wasn’t even sure if she’d been drunk. Rory poured her a white Russian. She didn’t like it, she drank it anyway. Then, she drank another.

Rory asked her about her life and she answered. He realized she was a virgin and still ultra-religious. He also realized her life wasn’t such a great one.  She adored that he felt bad for her. The other two were around and then they weren’t and her and Rory were alone. She was on her third or fourth drink and not knowing what it felt like to be drunk, she didn’t realize she was. Her face felt hot and she felt like she could melt into the couch.

That’s when he kissed her. She loved it. They kissed a lot. She loved it more. She was a thousand miles away in her own head. Foggy, turned on and numb she began giving him a blow job, he seemed to like it but she caught herself. Still a virgin, fresh from a mission trip to Japan, it didn’t feel right. She was trapped between two worlds and the world was spinning. Was she a good christian girl? Chaste and modest? Or a slut who got drunk and gave canadian boys blow jobs?

What the hell. She thought, then she stopped and mumbled something. She wasn’t even sure if it was understandable. He whispered, “You don’t even like being a virgin do you?”

She began to cry.

He sat up and told her it was alright. That he shouldn’t have let her drink so much. The hotel complex was massive and she wasn’t sure she could find her way back to the room so he grumpily got dressed and walked her back. He got her to the hotel elevator and watched her get on. As the doors closed, she said, “I’m sorry.” He gave her a reassuring grin and was gone.

It was late and her family was asleep in the room when she arrived. She lay down and cried for a long time, she didn’t even know why. But she knew it was their fault all this had happened. They were the ones that brought me here. I fucking hate everything and them and Rory and all of it. She fell asleep slowly with the taste of white russian and guilt in her mouth.

Chapter 7: Danny VanNote

Chapter 7

Danny VanNote

Danny was not a close friend of mine.  To state anything different would be a lie. Danny, however, was a good acquaintance and, in many ways, we had a lot in common.  In a lot of ways, we didn’t have much in common at all.

Danny and I had several classes together in college. We shared notes on classes and talked about tests.  We were both religion majors.  We were both very odd religion majors.  At the time, we both smoked and cursed ad nauseum.  We talked about our lurid pasts and about how odd our choice to major in religion must have looked to someone who didn’t know us very well.  Neither of us, at the time, were big on going to church, but we had a spirituality in our own way.  

After Rev. Cole’s Human Mind class we would hang out outside and smoke cigarettes and chat out the ridiculousness of the class.  I called it a waste of time.  Danny would routinely tell me that while Rev. Cole often went off topic that, if I listened to what he was talking about, I’d actually learn a lot.  Granted, it wouldn’t be about the subject that class was intended for but, regardless… I would learn.  He loved Cole’s classes and had taken many of them.  I, at the time, didn’t understand such things but accepted it anyway.

Our somewhat questionable pasts are what we reflected on the most.  Danny was still actively drinking and using drugs. A lot. He knew my story and I had talked to him about recovery.  We would have in depth conversations about the demons we had confronted in intoxicated states.  He told me how, sometimes, he would get fucked up and see himself doing things he didn’t want to do. On those days, especially after a weekend of hard drinking, he’d talk about how he hated himself.  More than once I invited him to a 12-step meeting.  I reminded him that while we weren’t especially close, I totally got what he talked about and he was welcome to come with me. No judgment.

He always walked away saying he’d think about it.  Then he’d crack some dirty joke and I’d roll my eyes and we’d part ways.  This was the extent of our relationship.  In the college, our classes together slowly dissipated and, though my school was small and I saw him around all the time, we didn’t talk much anymore.  Our common bond had been that class. I, for obvious reasons, stayed away from people who I saw as actively in addiction or participating in that type of behavior. In many ways, I still found it attractive and couldn’t be around it much.  Because Danny’s interests often lay in partying outside of school, we didn’t hang out in the same circles either.

One of the few times I made exceptions to going to a party was on Halloween.  I went to the party for several reasons but mostly in hopes of running into my ex.  He didn’t show and my cute purple firefly wings and stockings were wasted on guys I wasn’t interested in and others who weren’t interested in me.  Regardless, the party moved from my friend’s house down the road to a local establishment called the C & S Club.  There old and young alike partied the Halloween night away in an epic fashion.  

At some point, I ran into Danny.  He was highly intoxicated.  The crowd was having a good time and so was I.  But Danny’s persistence, while hilarious, unsettled me.

“Hannah I want to buy you a beer.”

“Danny, you know I don’t drink.”

“Oh yea. Oh yea. SO SOOOOO sorry Hannah. Lets just get you a light beer. Cause light beer isn’t even good so it’s cool.” He slurred and stood at a tilt that only a drunk could maintain.

“Um Danny, no that’s not how it works darlin’.”

“Oh ok how about half a beer”

I shook my head no.

“Alright, ok umm.. what about 20 8ths of a beer?”

“Danny, sweet heart… that doesn’t make any sense.”

At this point one of his friends started laughing and dragged him away, and I decided it was time for me to leave.  I’d had enough of the drunken revelry.

Run-ins with Danny were always like this. Sometimes he was drunk and sometimes he wasn’t.  Regardless, our acquaintanceship went from casual to non-existent by the end of my sophomore year into the beginning of my junior year.  In the last trimester of my junior year, we were once again in a Cole class together and I’d hoped maybe we’d start up our conversations again. I hadn’t seen him by the ashtrays lately and I occasionally wondered where he’d gone.  He seemed distracted and was never outside after class anymore. I saw him hanging out with a girl I faintly knew and realized why he seemed so distracted.

Danny found himself a girlfriend.  This surprised me slightly. The girl he was hanging out with was, in my perception, incredibly conservative.  This struck me as odd because neither Danny nor I was any type of conservative.  I also didn’t know her that well so maybe, she was an undercover liberal. Either way it was cute to see him fawn over a girl instead of chasing the next high.  He called me once during that time asking for some answers on one of our study guides for a test.  We weren’t friends but it was nice knowing he considered me when trying to get answers for class.

After lunch one day, I walked out to the school terrace. It was a big round patch of grass surrounded by a brick walkway that connected three of our school’s buildings together.  On one side, Danny was sitting with, what looked like his girlfriend, and he looked incredibly happy. It looked as if they were holding hands and they were chatting and the weather was splendid. Hints of cool from the winter lingered as the warmth of spring lingered in the air.  It was incredibly sunny.  I had to walk by them on the way to the library and I stopped to chat.

“Hey Danny, how are ya?” I paused to chat to get a closer look at him and his new girl. They were definitely holding hands.

“Hey Hannah, man I am so great!” he smiled and continued, “I stopped smoking and I stopped drinking and life is so awesome.”  Blunt. To the point, as always.

“Oh wow, Danny. That’s super awesome. I’m really glad for you.”

“Yea, yea most definitely. Have a great day man.”

“You too Danny” and looking over at his girlfriend “nice to see ya.”

And then I walked away. I’d seen it all before… probably a hundred times.  A guy meets a great girl and gives up his vices for said girl only to find that his need to act out on them outweighs the love he has for the girl.  It was addiction at its finest.  Him giving up the drugs only meant he would become obsessed with her and then she would run and he would turn back to the drugs and the alcohol again. It was inevitable.  I shook my head in frustration and walked off.  I went into the library and got to work.  The thought of Danny, his obsession, and his addiction faded as I began my homework.

A few weeks passed and I didn’t think about it at all.  Life was in full swing.  Between meetings, school work, and friends, my time was stretched thin.  I’d finally been able to go to a late meeting with Felicity but her car broke down a long the way.  A friend rescued me from the highway while Felicity waited for a tow truck.  I returned to school to see several friends congregating in the parking lot.  I went over to complain about my failed evening.  I walked over and started talking, said my spiel and realized a bit belatedly that my friends were rather stoic.  

“Um.. what’s going on?” Everyone was quiet for a minute. Silent. Looking at one another.

One of the girls finally answered in exacerbation, “Well, Hannah I’m sorry you had a shitty evening but Dan VanNote shot himself.” A pause. “He’s fucking dead.”

It was if I’d been punched in the stomach. My world reeled. It was just a few weeks ago when he seemed so happy.  What had happened? I knew he would crash but I had no idea it would end like this.  I looked around and realized that the people holding each other in the parking lot.  A ways away, I heard someone wailing.  The cool night air had turned frigid.  Slowly tears started falling and I looked around for something real to hang onto.  My friend Tungsten was in the group and I walked over and allowed him to hug me for a very long time.  We walked over to the dorm and sat out front and chain-smoked cigarettes.  

My heart cannot express the grief.  It was not grief because we were close necessarily.  It was grief because I knew the pain he must have been in to do such a thing.  How many times had I tried to kill myself and failed in my addiction?  I wondered if he had gotten high to do it or managed to stay sober.  I didn’t have the heart to ask. The rage I felt could not be expressed.  The disease of addiction and the web it weaves in the minds of those who are corrupted by it is so pervasive at times.  

I must state here that Danny never admitted or told me he was an addict or an alcoholic.  He did tell me he had problems with it. The reason I say that Danny was an addict was because when we had talked in the past and we connected because of our thought process around drugs and alcohol.  We had both had major traumas in our past and used alcohol as a buffer to stop the pain.  He was too much like me to assume differently but that doesn’t mean my assumption is correct.  

Within a few days, the school held a memorial service for him.  The funeral happened.  The air around Bryn Athyn was thick and full of sadness.  Just a year prior another student (one who had just graduated) had overdosed on heroine.  The place was deep in grief for two of its own.  The college only had 200 students.  And two were dead in less than a year as a direct result, as far as I could see, of addiction.  How had they fallen through the cracks of such a small place? How had noone seen it coming? How? HOW?

My rage, in the past, has often been turned inward and pressed into depression or self-destructive old patterns of behavior.  For the first time since I had gotten clean, I did not allow my grief to send me into a depression or into old patterns.  For the first time I allowed it to push me into action.  My school was in the middle of a huge building project, spending millions of dollars and yet the information on how to get therapy or emotional support was nowhere to be found. I saw my alma mater building buildings and yet their children were dying.  It was in that time between Danny’s funeral and the end of school that I came to a decision.  If no one else would step up and attempt to ensure the emotional safety of the school then I would do it.  On my own, if I had to.

In the next few days and weeks, news began to filter in about what happened.  Danny had quit drinking, doing drugs and smoking.  He had not entered into any therapy or 12-step programs.  His relationship floundered and they broke up.  Danny, for the first time, was faced with real emotions he had not felt in years.  He had a choice he could use again to stop the pain or he could end the pain, permanently.  Danny did not want to use, but he did not want to feel.  He chose the only way he knew to end the pain without ever realizing that the pain would pass. It was a sensation that I had felt many times my first year clean but the support system I had kept those feelings at bay.

Danny’s death created the first opportunity for me to look grief and destructive behaviors in the face and tell them to go fuck themselves.  It enabled me to realize I didn’t have to go down that path.  That path was a choice.  It was new territory for me and I took off with all the energy I could muster.  It was about a month into my summer and I had stopped smoking, the relationship with Jimmy and Felicity had fallen apart and my life was in chaos.  And then another suicide in Bryn Athyn happened.  

He was not a friend of mine. I had only met the man once.  But my friends from school and my church community knew him extremely well.  He had three children and a wife and his struggle with mental illness was known in the community. I was in the position of not being in grief but understanding and feeling the pain of all the people around me.  My life was in chaos but my purpose in my life was solidified. It was the grief that forged my newfound purpose.

Never again, I thought at the funeral, never again will a friend of mine die without knowing there was help for them if they wanted it. Never never again.

On that platform, I began my senior year in college.  I needed a senior project in order to graduate and I decided on a project that focused on the research and implementation of creating emotionally safe schools.  The research was painstaking but there were awesome amounts of material to work with and I began amassing enough research to write a small book. I realized that my initial plan of creating a peer-mentoring group wouldn’t suffice.  Most of the research suggested that you needed a spiritual component, a peer component, and the help of staff and administration for it to be truly effective.  

After three months of research and writing I submitted 30 pages of research and began a second trimester on implementing the ideas that I had researched.  There were a few things in my life at this point that kept me motivated so that I didn’t stop moving forward with the project.  My school chaplain, who had been with the students throughout the grieving process, fully believed in me and pushed me constantly throughout the year.  There were several friends in school with me that believed in my mission.  They supported me by being apart of every project I implemented and stood with me as I had moments of doubt and frustration. And lastly, I became incredibly close with Danny’s girlfriend.   

She and I began a friendship at the end of the previous school year. We all three had shared Cole’s religion class.  We had a paper due at the end of the year and her finishing it determined if she would graduate or not. One night, as I worked at the library she came up to me tearfully and asked if she turned in half of it if Rev Cole would pass her.  It was in her willingness to be vulnerable with me that I decided to support her the best I could.  In two hours sitting with her in the library she gave me all the information she could on the subject and together we finished her paper.  Our closeness kept me close the pain and loss of Danny throughout the next school year.  It was her raw grief that compelled me onward.

By the second term, the Peer Listeners and the Peer Listening Program was launched on campus. The program involved the administration, mental health awareness, and the chaplaincy department.  Within the first year the Peer Listeners had listened to over 15 students on campus who needed to talk through emotional issues.  The program worked hand in hand with the administration to protect the anonymity of the students while providing a sturdy support network.  Without the first four Peer Listeners who dedicated their free time and services, it would have never happened.   

Active Minds served to de-stigmatize concepts of mental health and provided mental health awareness. Within a few weeks of the Peer Listening program taking off a chapter of Active Minds began on campus as well.  The kids who took that program sprinted with it and we had one of the largest clubs on campus by the end of the year.  These people, many of which never had met Danny, knew the need was real and identified with the need through the services provided.  It was a glorious experience working with people who had the same drive and goal as I did. My life was incredibly changed.

None of this would have happened without Danny.  There is a 12-step saying that goes “Some of us must die so that many of us will live”.  For me, this was incredibly true at the time.  Danny’s death enabled me to see what I was fully capable of for the first time since I had been clean. For the first time I saw myself as truly living.