KL

My last post was technically posted at 1 AM Saturday morning, so my streak is intact, regardless of what the blog says. :-)

Another Sunday...just dropped the boy off, and saw a car that reminded me of someone. This isn't really a happy story, but it is one that has stuck with me.

On one of the many 'breaks' I had with my long term girlfriend in high school, I started dating this very sweet girl. We had actually hung out together as little kids because our parents went to the same church. We didn't know that until later, though. We got along very well, playing pool, listening to Wham! (yeah, I still like 'em...screw you for judging me), going to movies, hanging out. The relationship started off kind of rough...her last boyfriend had killed himself about a week after she broke up with him. I'm not going to say that she broke up with him for me...I don't know. But it was a rough way to start a relationship.

Regardless, we dated for a while. One night, we went and saw a movie down at the Dayton Mall ('Ghost', I believe.) It had started raining on the way home, and as I'm getting on the highway, I almost lost it and hit a pole. It was a bit scary. When we got back to my house, we were both a little amped...both from the movie and the 'almost' crash. She told me that she was 'ready.' We had sex in the living room, while my parents slept in their room 30 feet away. She was a virgin, and is the reason I swore off virgins forever. It was horrible. She cried, but didn't want to stop. I hated it. Regardless, we got through it.

We dated for a few months after that. If I remember correctly, we broke up when my "long term" girlfriend and I got back together. I didn't have a whole lot of contact with her, and we kind of lost touch for a few years. One night, she came up to the theater I worked at, and we started talking. Neither of us were seeing anyone, so we made plans to get together that weekend. I agreed to pick her up at her parents house. When I got there, she answered the door in a robe. Long story short, we didn't leave the house that night.

Things went down hill quickly, though. She'd follow me everywhere, even down to the other theaters I worked at in downtown Dayton. I'd see her sitting in her car in the parking lot. Sometimes, she would come in and just sit in the lobby. I'd see her drive by house. By this time, I had a room behind the garage at my parents house...it had a door to the outside, and was off the house a bit. She'd come and knock on my window at 2 or 3 in the morning, wanting to come in. It got to be a little too much.

The final straw came one night when she knocked on my window on a Monday night. She looked like hell. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me that she was on a bad acid trip. Now, I've made clear my feelings on certain drugs. If it weren't for the fact that I have a son and random drug tests at work, I would no doubt be a stoner. But I drew the line at certain things. Acid and crack were two of them, and she was messed up with both. I tried to talk her into getting help, and she told me to go fuck myself. At that point, I told her we were done.

She told me that she would kill me. And I think she was serious. She went to the Moose and asked my father where to find me. She'd call my work over and over again, for hours at a time. One time, I passed her on the road, and she did a U-turn and started following me. I finally confronted her, we had a HUGE blowup, and that was that. I started dating the woman who would become my wife shortly after, and I didn't hear or see her again.

Until I got on FB, that is. I found her best friend, and we started talking. She let me know that my ex-girlfriend, the sweet girl who I listened to Wham! with, had a heart-attack and had died a few years before. She had kept up the drugs, and left behind a son.

This absolutely shook me to my core. First, one of my ex-girlfriends was DEAD? How could that possibly have happened? More than that, I felt terrible guilt. I didn't get her into drugs, but I had smoked pot with her. And I didn't do nearly enough to get her off the hard drugs. No, instead I had left. Even when it was clear that she had some major problems and needed some professional help, help that I knew where to find, I had instead just walked away and moved on with my life. And her choices, that I did nothing to stop, cost her her life, and left a little boy without a mother. I don't know that I could have saved her...but I do know I could have tried harder.

I hope she's resting in peace now. And I hope, wherever she is, she can forgive me.