A Prelude to One of the Craziest Years of My Life (December 2015)
Towards the end of 2015, there were a lot of changes . RN was moving out of his parents’ house and into an apartment in Charlotte with his brother and his brother’s husband, we were gearing up for the opening of the new restaurant location for Toast in Indian Land, and in the midst of all the stress and fighting with RN, I decided I needed to escape. To Florida.
I did something so crazy that I still can’t believe it actually happened because so many people told me to never do it.
Back in April of 2015, SW had broken up with his girlfriend. He did everything he could to get into contact with me after that and send me the longest apology he had ever written. He apologized for how he acted like he wouldn’t like me and explained that it was because he was trying to protect himself from actually falling for me. He also told me that I was the reason he broke up with his girlfriend. He said that after I had messaged him, he tried staying with her for a while, but eventually she found all the letters and the notebooks and the book and pretty much everything I ever sent to him, and she started reading them and crying “How am I ever supposed to love you as much as this girl did? How can I possibly compete with this stuff?”
I couldn’t believe that he had kept all of that stuff. I thought he would have thrown it way.
At the time, I felt like it wasn’t appropriate to still be talking to him, so I told him that I didn’t want to jeopardize my relationship even more by continuing contact. But then he even went out of his way to message me through other people’s facebook accounts to tell me that he really needed me in his life. He was struggling so hard because his parents moved to Florida, he was living alone in Illinois at their house that was going to foreclose, moved into his grandmother’s house who hated him, left her house, and was couch-surfing and on the verge of homelessness until he could find his way back into his parents’ tiny apartment in Florida.
After the breakup with his girlfriend, he’d realized that he missed painting so much and never made time for it when he was acting in plays and hanging out with her all the time. He got into this manic painting mode where he’d never leave his room, and just paint all day for months. It worried his family because he wouldn’t even come out of the room to eat, and his mom thought he was possessed by the devil, so she threw holy water on him. They didn’t like that he’d rather paint than socialize with them even after not being around him for the months that he was in Europe or the months that he was living without them. I was there to listen to him and to support him and tell him to stay alive so that I could meet him. I couldn’t believe he was going through all of this, and then the incident after Halloween happened, and I was sure that I needed to meet him before something else.
What happened before leading up to this was a huge blur. I don’t even remember what happened because the actual meeting has taken up more of my memory. All I can remember is that RN and I were not in the greatest place for our relationship, and it was approaching New Year’s Eve.
My friend Naomi was on her college winter break. She needed a ride back home to Charleston, since she didn’t have her car with her at the time. I volunteered to drive her back home to Charleston because I was about to have a week off from work because of delays with the opening. We were supposed to open the new restaurant at the end of the month, but the kitchen staff still needed some fine-tuning, so when I heard my coworker Jenee get excited and call her friends in Florida, it lit a bulb for me. “I’m gonna call my friend in Florida too,” I thought.
The opportunity presented itself to me in the most unexpected way possible. My friend Naomi needed a ride down south, I needed a friend to talk to about the crazy shit I was about to do, and I was going to be off of work just long enough for me to finally meet this mysterious person who I’d committed so much of my life to.
I didn’t tell anyone where my final destination was except for my friend, Naomi. I knew she would understand my need to meet this person and that she wasn’t going to tell everybody my secret. I told everyone that I was going to Charleston, and that was it. I lied.
I knew it was going to be now or never, and I didn’t want to risk never meeting this person in the possibility that maybe I’ve been fixated on him for so long because he was the love of my life or something.
As I was driving to Charleston, I can remember confessing to my friend that I was going to only stay one night there, and that in the morning I’d be driving to Panama City Beach. “Dude, really? Well, honestly it’s about time you meet this guy. Just be safe,” she said.
The night that I was in Charleston, we pre-gamed for this event by getting stoned and watching Sword Art Online. I thought it was the most hilarious thing ever invented, but it was mostly because I was high and wasn’t like that very often at all. While it lasted, we walked to a drag show, and I can remember how nervous and excited I was at the same time. I felt butterflies through my whole body. I couldn’t believe I was going through with this. I even considered not doing it at all and just staying another day in Charleston, but I couldn’t waste the momentum. I was already just a little bit closer. I needed to keep going.
I got up just before sunrise to leave for my 6-7 hour drive to Florida. I think I finally arrived around 3 or 4 pm. I remember crying on the way over there wondering if I was doing the right thing, wondering if there was any going back after this, and also because I was proud of myself for finally taking the risk and making it a reality. The tears swelled more when I’d drive by familiar names of places that he had mentioned before in our conversations, and then my heart dropped when I finally made it into the parking lot of his apartment complex. I parked my car, sent him the message that I was there, and the next thing I saw was his curly hair running towards me with his gangly arms flapping in the wind.
“KIKIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!” He shouted across the parking lot.
Wow. He was so much taller in real life. I could not believe he was real and hugging me. I felt so awkward at first because I was in such disbelief that I was there. It felt so surreal. I couldn’t believe I drove like 9 hours to see him for a day. I’d never driven that far by myself ever. I couldn’t believe I didn’t tell anyone. It sucked that I felt like I still couldn’t because I wanted to shout it from the rooftops and say that I finally met this person whom I’d been wanting to meet for years, and I made it.
We got into SW’s car which smelled heavily of the cardboard he had in the backseat that he’d obtained from Target for free canvases. He was even wearing the infamous red pants that I’d always seen him painting in on pictures from the internet and on skype. His car still had an Illinois license plate. It was all real.
He took me to grab some tea at this coffeeshop/gallery downtown which neighbored a pizza place across the hall. The first thing I had to do was take a picture of us bumping mugs, so we asked a stranger to take the picture for us, and she said “You guys are really cute together. You’re even matching.”
We had to explain that we weren’t a couple to a lot of people, which to me only meant that our chemistry together showed all around us. I ordered Pu-erh tea with honey, and SW who normally only drinks coffee, ordered the same tea as me so that he could see what I liked. After I took a picture of the polaroid that I’d just snapped of us, I sent it to my mom to tell her where I actually was. She flipped, and she called me within two seconds.
“You’re in Florida right now? Are you kidding me? Why would you think that was a good idea? Did you tell RN?” She asked.
“Yes, I’m in Florida. I had to do it. There was no other time when I’d have a chance like this. I haven’t told RN yet, but I will when I come home” I said.
The feeling of guilt returned, but I was still so happy for being there in the same room with SW. Despite everything that I’d been through to get there, I was still there. I felt like I was in control.
After getting off the phone with my mom, SW could see that I was a little down, so we went next-door for some ping-pong, darts, and pizza. We ordered a gigantic pizza for some reason, but the extra pieces never went to waste because they were devoured by his 6′9″ father before I could wake up the next morning.
It was so much fun to play with SW. He was so energetic about everything. He had me convinced that he pretty much could do anything and be good at it. He spoke foreign languages fluently with ease, could do any accent you wanted him to, could pick up any instrument and play it, could play any song on piano, could dance, could sing, could act, could paint, and he could run. I didn’t understand how he could be so lucky.
We went back to his apartment complex, and we waited in his car during the downpour of rain. I was planning on just sleeping in my car or finding a hotel, but it was too late already. He said that even though he said I couldn’t stay at his apartment before, he was going to find a way to convince his parents to let me. We had to come up with a false story on how we knew each other because he didn’t want to say I was just a girl he met from the internet and needed a place to sleep, so we said that we’d met at a festival for punk music in Indiana a couple years back and had been writing back and forth since then.
He called his mom before heading inside.
“Hey, mom, so I’m with my friend right now, and she lives really far away. She lives in South Carolina. Well, she was taking a road trip and decided to meet me here, but now she needs a place to stay. Do you think she could stay the night?” He nervously asked.
His mom could be heard arguing on the other end of the conversation.
“Well, no. I know she isn’t going to be very impressed. I’m not trying to impress her. She has a boyfriend. She just needs a place to sleep!” He explained.
This time it sounded like she was agreeing to it, but still skeptical.
“Okay, thanks mom. See you soon” he said.
I was in. We ran through the pouring rain into his apartment. It was just as small as he had ever described. Before, they were living in a two bedroom apartment, but had downsized to a one-bedroom because neither of their kids were living with them anymore. The apartment seemed to be a temporary place for all of them, but mostly for SW. When his parents first moved to Florida, it was just his mom who had moved for her job. His dad missed being with his mom, so he eventually found a job in Florida for himself too so that he could be with her. Then Gabby graduated from her university and made the move down to Florida herself. SW stayed behind. He lived at his house in Illinois that was never sold, and then moved in with his grandmother, then moved down to Florida to get away from her. Then the whole family was living in a two-bedroom apartment.
Gabby went to teach English in South Korea for a summer, and SW found a girlfriend to live with him in that apartment in her place. When SW broke up with that girlfriend, he moved back to Illinois to live in his best friend’s parents’ house, but they eventually kicked him out because of a joint they found. They gave him a car for $500, and he was living in that car and sleeping on people’s couches for a while until he moved down to Florida again. When he moved back, his parents had downsized to a one-bedroom, and his sister was living there too. I was there to meet that whole family.
When I walked inside, I could see the door to his parents’ bedroom, the hallway to the bathroom had a bunkbed with all of SW’s art supplies on the top bunk, a blanket draped over the bottom bunk for privacy, and there were two twin mattresses on the floor next to the couch which faced the television. It was a small apartment, indeed, which you could see the whole space ahead of you. The floors were white tile, and there were still boxes everywhere since everyone was always moving in or moving out of there. The first person I saw was his mom, Colleen, who was hurriedly sweeping the floor and apologizing for the mess.
His dad and sister were on the couch and eating dinner. Gabby was on her laptop, and his dad, Sonny was watching a movie. They all turned to look and see who was going to stay the night in their cramped apartment. I introduced myself to every one of them, and couldn’t help but smile because I already knew so much about them from what Seamus had told me on the internet. It was weird because I was a stranger to them, but they weren’t to me.
SW decided to show me all of his paintings and his sketches, and I couldn’t believe how big they were in real life. Seeing his art in the flesh was so unreal, and it made me happy to see him so excited to share it with me and talk about each painting. I could tell that a lot of care went into his paintings. I love to see people talk about what they love doing.
After he showed me his paintings, we decided to make some paintings of our own, so we headed to the patio about 10 steps away. He showed me his techniques with oil painting, and we were inspired by all the bugs eating us alive, so we decided to paint them. I painted a fly while he painted an abstract moth for me that I still possess in my room. It’s not hanging up or anything, but I still have it because I don’t know what to do with it anymore. I thought about giving it away, but I can’t really bring myself to throwing away something that someone painted for me and put a lot of care into.
While we were painting, I felt my phone vibrating about 10 times. I finally checked my phone to see that they were all messages from RN. He was drunk and apparently very sad and worried about me. He sent me all these messages saying how sorry he was for fighting with me and that he couldn’t wait until I was back home. I felt terrible guilt. I wanted to tell him the truth about where I was, but I knew if I told him then, he might implode.
I remember looking at SW after checking my phone and saying, “I’m really glad I finally did this and that we’re finally hanging out, but I wish the situation was different. I wish I didn’t feel like I was betraying someone by being here and that we could all be happy.”
He told me he didn’t understand how I could be betraying someone when I wasn’t even cheating, but I was hanging out with a guy as friends, and that RN was the one who cheated me. I still felt wrong, but at the same time I wanted to be happy.
We went inside and let our paintings dry as much as oil paints could, and we felt the need to prolong our time together as much as possible, so we watched a Bollywood movie on Netflix and ironically fell asleep. He was on a mattress on the couch, and I slept on a mattress on the floor.
The next morning, I was excited to eat pizza for breakfast, but looked inside the box to see that it was empty. SW said his dad probably ate them. I had brought food of my own on the trip anyways, so I opted for some instant oatmeal instead and offered SW’s dad a granola bar on his way out to work that morning.
It was sad that this was possibly the only time I’d ever meet Seamus, and that I had such a short time to spend, and that it had to be a secret. I wanted it to be longer, but I knew I could never forgive myself if I did that then. I was sad to go home, but also excited to tell people and to see RN again.
Before I left, I had to get one last picture with SW. I thought it would be my last one ever. I said we needed to be holding things, so I picked up some honey, and he picked up a jar of peanut butter. It was supposed to be peanut butter and jelly, but we both agreed that peanut butter and honey sandwiches were way better. He looks so much more sad in that picture in comparison to the picture we took saying goodbye.
He felt sad when I hugged him.
The last seconds we had together when I hugged him before getting into my car for a long drive back home seemed to last forever. It was raining again. The rain was probably the only factor that made me finally get into the car because it was coming down so hard. If it weren’t raining so much, I would have held him longer.
“So, I guess this is goodbye. . .” he said.
“For now, yes. But I think we’ll meet again. I don’t know when, but I’ll make sure of it,” I pulled him for one last squeeze.
The same energetic SW from yesterday was gone. I watched him stand there in the rain, downtrodden, and still waving before he became a blur in the distance and the soaked windshield. It seemed to be a much longer drive back home.
When I got back home, it was New Year’s Eve. That saying of “New Year, New Me,” was a huge understatement for what was to come.
