Tears for yesteryears

I am a pack rat.

There. I said it. LOL.

So, since this is the beginning of spring break for me, I have a nice long list of things to do. Just about everything has to do with cleaning/unpacking. The majority of things that are "unpacked" are boxes of things that I lug around with me everywhere I go. Every item in these boxes, brings back a flood of memories.

Today, I have been trying to work on cleaning out the nursery (ie: getting rid of the boxes and boxes such as those described above). Just now, I went back in the room, and tried to attack a box of "files" and memorabilia. The first thing I picked up was an agenda book/planner. I have saved all of my planners since I started college...how weird is that.

In any case, this particular planner was from 1997/1998 (almost all of my planners are on a school calendar). This was a huge year for me. I was trying to figure out what to do about H who left Montreal just as I moved to Montreal, I met HC who I ended up dating for quite a while (the ex-bf mentioned in a few other posts), and I went to Africa for 6 months (the beginning of the end for HC and I).

As I flipped through the pages, I remembered the excitement when HC and I moved beyond friendship. It brought a lump to my throat as I reflected upon how we continued to be close for so long until this past year or so...and how very much I miss his friendship. One day, perhaps I will tell our story, but this one still hurts too much.

I continued flipping through pages, and read "A called". A was my first boyfriend ever, the one I thought I would die without for at least a year after our short relationship ended. I also miss his friendship, as bizarre as our relationship was. We had remained friends until I moved to the states...and then we lost touch completely.

But the one that really brought me to tears with a pit in my stomach, was "H called" and "H's birthday". I met H through IRC (an old chatroom) at the same time that I met A (1994). But I never "met" H until about 2 years later. For some reason, about three months before I "met" him, we really started becoming closer and closer through emails and phone calls. He invited me to come visit him during Thanksgiving weekend at Queens university where he was doing his Master's degree. I was way too nervous to fly across the country and stay with someone I had never met, so instead, I told him he could come visit me. He did. We had such an amazing weekend. I will forever remember dinner that first night at Periklis, and then walking along the breakwater in the dark of night. Talking and making out, all night long. Hay rides through the pumpkin patch, too much wine over a thanksgiving feast prepared by the two of us for all of my friends. And then, the grey, rainy ferry ride to send him back home from the Vancouver airport.

We continued to write and talk daily and as I finished my B.A. and was trying to decide what I should do, I decided, let me move to Montreal and see where this goes(by this time he had finished his degree and moved back home to Montreal). Just as it was becoming time to move, he got a job in Ontario, and he left a week or so before I arrived. But, he did find me an apartment beforehand, and even signed my lease for me. From May-September-ish, I went to visit him a few times, we talked and wrote, and slowly, somehow, we sort of died down. I thought about H a lot up until HC and I really got together, and slowly we moved apart.

I began to see H only once or twice a year (even after he moved back to Montreal). The last time I saw him was at a Christmas party at my apartment back in Montreal in December 1999. HC and I had broken up, and H came to my Christmas party. I felt like there was still some connection there, but I didn't act upon it. In the months ahead, I thought, I need to see H before I move (I was moving back across the country in July). In June, I thought, I am going to call H. I didn't, and then on July 1st, I got the fateful email. H had been killed in a car accident. I was devastated. Why hadn't I called him? Why did I keep putting it off for so long? Who could I turn to for comfort? To his credit, HC, generally the jealous type and always (it seemed) jealous of H, came to comfort me and even drove with me to the funeral home to say my good byes.

Anyway, all of this came flooding back to me as I opened that planner. I know that these memories will always be with me, with or without the planners, so why do I keep them? Do I really want to get this sad when I open up these boxes of memories? And most importantly, why, if I have had these men that I have loved so dearly in my life, why am I still alone?

ETA: I was so upset thinking about Habib, that I googled his name (as I always seem to do when I think about him). I don't know why I do that, I guess to make certain noone has forgotten him. I found a disturbing article in a French newspaper about his death. I had never seen it before. I also found that his parents have set up a scholarship in his name at McGill (where he did his Bachelor's degree)

Edited again to add: Will it never end? I finally, 3 hours later, got the courage to go back into the room. I decided I couldn't handle that box, so opened another, and what do I find? A binder full of printed out emails from H and A (as well as all my friends back in Victoria at the time) from that summer when I was living in Ottawa. I stood there reading H's emails about life growing up in Lebanon as a Christian, his professions of love, his poems, his swearing to keep my address in confidence when I gave it to him to send me a birthday card...I couldn't handle it. I dropped the book and ran out of there in tears, AGAIN. I am not sure I will ever be able to go back in that room...