Lately, a friend of mine has been heavy on my mind. I don’t know why that is. I haven’t talked to this friend in awhile or seen him or anything of the sort. About a decade ago, he took his own life. I’ll never forget that, the pain of losing somebody to suicide.

Just to respect his privacy, let’s simply call him Ben. That’s not his real name, but I don’t want to cause any problems by using his real name. I was honored to have known his real name. You see, Ben was the guy in high school who had it all: the ladies, the popularity, the good looks. Ben wasn’t a jock, no. He was able to get along with most people and, on the side, he had his dealings with some drugs and alcohol. But what can I say? His charisma was alluring and, to be fair, my closeted ass may have had a crush on him.

I remember we talked a little during high school, but we really developed a friendship a year out of high school. I ran into him at a video store, an ancient place where one would rent their movies. We connected, exchanged numbers, and we would talk on the phone about life and all it had to offer. I remember he asked me to go with him to a AA meeting and I agreed.

I was stood up while listening to the All American Rejects hit song “Move Along.” After waiting for Ben for a half hour, I decided to do just that–move along. Though, we connected later. He wanted to hang out and considering my need to forgive people and, well, move along, I agreed. He came over to watch movies and we had sleepover because that was still fairly acceptable. Because I only had one bed, we ended up sleeping in the same bed together. Nothing scandalous happened, but we did give each other back massages at his insistence.

What? I wasn’t going to say no. It was his idea!

Our friendship developed from there. We would chat on instant messenger, he’d come over a few more times, and then there was the last time we would hang out. He asked me to pick him up and for me to take him downtown so he could drop something off to his cousin. Being a good friend, I agreed. I remember he had me park on the side of the street in some unfamiliar neighborhood. He said he’d be back, got out of my car, and climbed into a tinted vehicle. He was there for a solid ten or so minutes before he came back.

Yes, in hindsight I realize I was too innocent to realize that he had asked me to drive him to a drug deal. It must’ve been successful for him; he was pretty happy.

Anyway, we went back to my place and watched some movies. Then it was time for bed because at that time he had agreed to go to church with me the next day. Brace yourself for the irony about to follow.

We slept in the same bed, but we didn’t sleep. It was massage time again but this time while he was laying on his stomach, he asked me to massage his butt and proceeded to pull down his pants. I was too stunned to decline and my closeted gay ass was not about to complain. We proceeded to have conversation while this went on. I remember thinking it was probably not typical for a heterosexual guy to be okay with another guy massaging his bare butt. It almost became something else but he was tired and we went to sleep. After all, we had church in the morning.

Months would go by after that. Within that time, Ben would lose his father. I remember we chatted online about how much he missed his dad. He was broken. I told him I’d always be there for him, he just needed to call. Sadly, at that time I didn’t realize that the cult I was in at the local church would discipline me for admitting to a church friend I watched porn. (Joke is on them! I wasn’t watching straight porn!) However, my punishment via the cult I was in was for them to take away my phone. It was messed up, I know. Even more messed up is that I agreed to this lunacy.

Months later, Ben took a shotgun to his head. I found out about it while I was at a church service, and I was devastated. Absolutely broken.

And I couldn’t help but wonder if in his last moments he had tried to reach out to me, to ask for help, but couldn’t get ahold of me because some cultists thought it necessary to keep my cell phone because I’d looked at porn.

To top it off, I had to ask permission to attend Ben’s funeral because the cult program I was in said I couldn’t be trusted to go anywhere alone. Luckily, another friend of mine in the church knew Ben and went with me. Trust me. I now look back and wish I could tell the fools at that church how messed up they were to make me ask permission to go to a funeral of a friend of mine. I have lots of messed up church/cult stories. But that’s not the focus here.

I miss Ben.

Deeply.

I think about him every so often, wondering where he would be today. Successful? Family? Wife? Or maybe it would be a husband? I feel like he was curious, so maybe he was bisexual. Maybe he was gay. Maybe he wasn’t either of those things. We’ll never know, but I wonder if he was a prisoner of his own mind in that realm. Afraid to be his true self. I know he was in pain. He felt alone and was hurting. His circle of friends, to him, was shrinking (though a lot attended his funeral). I often wonder if he and I still would still be friends? Or would we have a fallout?

I don’t know. I like to think that there is a universe out there in the great multiverse where Ben is still alive and well, where he never pulled that trigger.

You may ask, “Josh, why is Ben on your mind so heavily lately?”

I really don’t know. It’s been intense. Last night, I couldn’t fall asleep because I could only think of Ben which made me thing of the younger version of myself. And I wish I could go back in time. While I was hiding my sexuality from everybody, I feel like some of those moments where easier than the ones I find myself in now. And in some ways, not.

I’d like to think Ben and I would still be friends today.

I wish I could have an hour to talk to him one last time. To ask him why he did it and how he made the decision and whether or not he tired to reach out for help. I wish I could reverse it so it never happened.

Again, I don’t know why he’s on my mind so much. Maybe it’s because I feel alone and hurt with some of my current situations and it’s causing me to long for nostalgia because then I don’t have to worry about the here-and-now. Instead, I can romanticize a life prior to all this current shit. A time with less complications and a dash of more innocence.

And no, don’t panic. I’m not taking a Ben route. That’s not what my blog posts indicate. I’m just finding it helpful to write down what I’m feeling and everything, to throw it out into the cyber-world and see what happens. I’m shouting into an echo chamber, I’m sure. This blog is just a way for me to understand and cope an try to make sense of what doesn’t make sense now. It’s a way for me to write down my pain and explore it. And for some reason my pain is time-traveling.

The pain of Ben’s death is gnawing away inside my chest as I type.

I wish I could go back.

I wish Ben were still here.

I wish things were better.