On an island in the sun

If I have ever learned anything from Hugh Grant it is that I am not an island. In the 2002 adaptation of Nick Hornby’s About A Boy, Grant, portraying boytoy Will Freeman, famously uttered, “All men are islands,” and then proceeded to explain how this is the foundation of his life—of his bachelorhood. He believed that with all of the conveniences of today’s society that you don’t need anyone or anything else beyond what you could obtain for yourself—and his character was filthy rich without needing to work so he had everything. Like an island, Will was isolated. He had no desire to settle down—didn’t care if he had a family and only had a small handful of friends. If it wasn’t on his island, then he didn’t need it.

I am not an island and deep down, no one is.

I don’t like to do things by myself. No matter how badly I want to see a film, I won’t go by myself. I hate even just eating by myself. And aside from when I lived in a shoebox dorm room, I don’t like being home by myself for extended periods of time. I need people in order to function. That is why I struggled a lot in college—I had friends, but mostly kept to myself in my dorm room writing yet another history or English paper or reading yet another dull academic writing. When I wasn’t doing that, I was writing for myself or working (side note: I somehow managed to finish writing a novel I had started a couple years earlier while simultaneously working on a massive semester-long research paper). There is a very small handful of people I met during my time at college who I still keep in touch with and as much I would often times like to blame someone else, there is no one to blame but myself.

When I graduated high school, none of my friends really left. The only one who really moved on had spent the last two years living in Japan where her dad was working, so it wasn’t much of an adjustment to not having her around or being able to talk to her often. This was when cell phones were just starting to become commonplace too and when unlimited text messaging was a status symbol, so it really wasn’t unusual to us to not see one another for a few weeks or even talk to each other for that matter. Without cell phones, the cost of long-distance phone calls was still a concern—something today’s generation will never understand no matter how many times you try to explain it.

My two best friends are both younger than me. One just graduated high school this year and the other will be graduating next spring. The first one went to school over an hour away and when he left, it was very strange for me because that was the first time I really had to deal with that. I wasn’t sure how to handle it. I know I did better than his little sister though who was already crying even a week before he left. I imagine she wrapped herself around his leg when it came time to leave.

The other, who was once introduced by a mutual friend of ours as my “bestest friend ever”, is 7 years, 3 months, and 4 days my junior. I’ve known him for several years now and have watched him grow up. We’re not just best friends, but also brothers. Last week he enlisted in the Marines.

I was heartbroken.

After 4 long, stressful months of unemployment and somehow not once having shed a tear, this was what finally did me in.

He made the decision without talking to me and told me in a less-than-tactful way. He said he was afraid to tell me, that he didn’t want me to try to talk him out of it. And I understood why. It wasn’t the first time he had said he was afraid to tell me something. But it still hurt.

For a long time he had always said that he was going to eventually leave Ohio, that he did not want to spend the rest of his life in the rural area he had called home for most of his life. I always hoped that day wouldn’t come, not wanting to lose my best friend. That maybe he would just end up at OSU or Wright State and maybe do a semester abroad. I definitely didn’t want him to move to Florida where he spent his childhood like he had said many times he wanted to. My real brother lives all the way in Seattle, so I was counting on my best friend being around to be the cool uncle to my kids when I eventually have some and to give me nieces and nephews that I didn’t have to get on a plane to see. I remember once we joked that we would force our kids to get married so we could finally be real family.

Now there is a date. There is a finite amount of time left until the day he is officially a Marine and is no longer up the street and around the corner. August 11, 2015—just 15 days before his 19^th birthday. I have a countdown on my phone for his 21^st birthday, but I’m not sure I can bring myself to set one up for that day. I’m not sure I want to know how many days are left.

My best friend has always lived within walking distance—even just across the driveway at one point. It’s not uncommon for him to just randomly show up at my back door, even at 11:30 at night when he has school the next morning. We have always done everything together—movies, bowling, concerts, baseball games, poetry readings, fundraisers, urban exploration through parts of Columbus where you had better have your car doors locked. I’ve taught him how to bowl, how to write, how to save money, introduced him to music he otherwise would have never heard. He taught me how to love baseball, how to dress nice and properly match my shoes to my outfit, and gave me the encouragement and confidence I hadn’t really felt from anyone else before to actually take my writing seriously and share it with a wider audience. We have made each other a better person.

The idea that all of that might be gone terrifies me.

He has said for a long time that wasn’t going to stay in Ohio, that he wanted to get out of this small town. I let myself believe that wasn’t ever going to happen, especially when he started talking about going to college in Ohio—OSU, Wright State, Kent State. I can’t let myself believe that anymore now because there is a contract on file with the United States Marine Corps that says otherwise. I have to allow myself to let go and to him grow into adulthood and become his own person. For a minimum of four years he will be in another state or even in another country; I think we’re both hoping for South Carolina. And for the first twelve weeks of that, we will have next-to-no communication beyond a pen and paper. 

I’m a very sociable person. I like to talk to my best friends daily, even if it’s just a single text. I know that many times I rely on my friends too much—something I’ve grown to learn over the years. A lot of it stems from some mild neurosis from having been betrayed friends in the past, but I’m learning how to trust again and that the friends I have do genuinely care about me and will be there when I need them. I’ve been around for a quarter of a century now, which doesn’t make me old by any means, but in that times I’ve seen a lot of friends come and go. I’m still friends with a lot of people I met in elementary school, kindergarten even. And I actually talk to them regularly and hang out with them, so it’s not like it’s just a friendship by name. But I’ve had people who have called me their best friend and I’ve called them my best friend who are no longer a part of my life or are barely a part of my life anymore—some for good reasons, some for simply just a matter of growing apart. I guess that is what scares me. 

There is nothing scarier than to feel like you’re not in control of a situation, but it is during that time when we will learn the most about ourselves.

About A Boy is one of my favorite books and movies. It follows a bachelor who thinks he has his entire life figured out until a young boy forces himself and his mother into it. By the end, Will Freeman discovers that he was missing a family the entire time, that he wasn’t as happy as he thought he was all on his own. In the beginning he was an island, but he learns that no one is an island, but rather part of a chain of islands. The thing is, though, the Earth’s surface is always shifting—some islands move closer together while others drift further apart. As the neighboring islands drift, it’s all about what you do to keep in each other’s sights.