Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat, shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away

Alone between the sheets
Only brings exasperation
It's time to walk the streets
Smell the desperation
-- Men at Work, "Overkill"

I cried tonight. I can hardly believe how overdone and cliché this sounds, but I left the concert building after Kelsey Wild had finished. I walked through the parking lot. I hid next to a Dumpster. I slid down the side until I was sitting in dirt oddly scattered on the gravel. I put my face in my hands. And then I cried, for lack of a better word. It was crying in everything but the tears. The tears stayed in my eyes. But everything else--the ragged gasping, the involuntary facial contortions--it all happened. In my personal case, this was a big deal.

Everything tonight reminded me that I couldn't be with her, that the obstacles were too big for her to live with, that I would throw all caution and rationality and cares about other people to the winds at just the suggestion of holding her hand but that she couldn't do it. Even the upbeat parts of the Imaginary Heroes set only helped remind me of how happy I could be if we had the relationship that I've been dreaming about lately. It all only hammered into me how much I wanted to just grab her and dance and go nuts and not care about anything but her and us and we and together and forever in an instant. I felt a blow to the gut when I saw JohnBrown and Val being mildly dorky but still cute while dancing together, knowing that I couldn't have that something so simple but joyful. It killed me so terribly that she wasn't next to me when I was all alone on that relatively crowded gym floor. It hurt when she scoffed during Kelsey Wild after I told her I was lonely sitting down while she stood up, even though she sat for the rest of the songs after that. I felt my ribs being squeezed when my leg incidentally touched her foot and she shifted her position so that we weren't touching at all anymore. I felt the dark pull of despair and depression when I saw that even the slightest, most innocent contact--the kind that would be nothing special among friends, especially good ones, but took on monumental, epic proportions with her--could not happen.

I want to finish my cry. I want to feel the hot tears stain my cheeks and feel the salty dryness of emotional pressure released. I want to feel drained and dead-tired, if for nothing else than to stop me from my own personal overkill. I keep on thinking that I wish my life were less complicated, that I could go back to only having to worry about my next homework assignment or how soon I could watch the newest episode of "Heroes" online. But then I think of her, and of the ridiculous intensity and confusing mix of emotions I feel when I'm around her most of the time, and I really can't make that trade. Even though I know I might be technically happier on average by not really caring that much about anything as compared to driving myself insane and replaying scenarios over and over again, the vaguest possibility of a near future for her and me always persists. It doesn't just survive like a cockroach, it explodes into ecstatic hope at the slightest misconstrued "hint" that she might choose me now. We get along so swimmingly during the times that I am confident that I'll eventually be able to be with her for real, probably because those are the only times that I can be around her and not be beaten in the face with the cruel knowledge of our impossibility.

She says I'm being melodramatic, that I take everything too personally. What she doesn't realize is that because she is SHE, things that would normally not matter much either way to me with other people become all-important. I can't help over-analyzing every move she makes or every time she speaks, because I am always desperately searching for clues that my dream is coming true. It's scary how much of my emotional happiness she carries in her soft hands, but for some reason, that's not anything close to enough to get me to jump out.

Somehow, those blissful hours and days of playful pure comfort have been enough to keep me going this long, but tonight...tonight I felt broken. I felt abandoned, discarded, unworthy. See, no matter how much the rest of me realizes the situation is anything but black and white, there's this little part of that keeps saying, "If she really cared about you, she would put you and your happiness above the other girl and everybody else." Of course, the rest of me couldn't stand to force her to be my girlfriend using a guilt tactic like that, and I don't even think that what the little part of me says all the time is really true.

Is this my punishment for ambition and hope? Am I doomed to live a life right now of unfulfilled, impossible promise? I can't even think straight anymore. Maybe it'll be clearer in the morning, but I somehow doubt it. I'm trapped.

This may never start
We could fall apart
And I'd be your memory
Lost your sense of fear
Feelings insincere
Can I be your memory?

So get back, back, back to where we lasted
Just like I imagine
I could never feel this way
So get back, back, back to the disaster
My heart's beating faster
Holding on to feel the same.
-- Sugarcult, "Memory"

I feel like I'm too good at forgetting now. Every time I go to sleep and wake up, I feel like I'm a part of washing machine cycle. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Things I'm thinking about the night before suddenly don't really trouble me much in the morning, with a few exceptions. I can never remember what I'm supposed to do or when to do it. I seem fine at remembering information from my classes, even though I sometimes don't remember the homework assignments. Sometimes, the more I try to recapture a thought, a feeling, an idea, the more I feel it slip and fade away until it seems like it never happened. How can I ever truly know that something happened if I can't reexperience it through memory? Am I doing something essentially unhealthy every time my mind unconsciously lets something painful or difficult slide away? There is so much uncertainty in my life right now, so many decisions to make, so many options to weigh. And my best source of solace is also yet another source of uncertainty. I think that my odd memory problems are probably an effect of my slow coast through this part of my life, my expectancy of a more important future, and an unwillingness to make decisions. I'm floating in a stream down a mountain, and problems slough off of me like dissolving dirt, but they're never really going to be gone. I'm slowly heading for the waterfall, and I have to be awake for it. I only hope I can snap out of it in time.

The only times I feel totally comfortable or "right" now seem to be when I'm doing academic things, be it tedious analytic geometry or having too much fun playing a Jeopardy! review game in U.S. History. In the past several weeks, I've stepped so much out of my comfort zone that I think I'm starting to crave simplicity and constancy. As much as I care most of the time that people see me as more than a walking brain, I can't deny that I still take comfort in those things that are stereotypically "me." At times like these, when I feel pulled in so many different directions at once, even in past, present, and future, it feels good to take refuge in the first part of my personality, probably one of the first things people know about me. I have been discovering so many new parts of me, both good and bad, that I feel like a deck of cards that badly needs shuffling, some evening out, some integration. How can I even begin investigating the broader reaches of the all-important question "Who am I?" if I can't even figure out which fragment of me is going to show up in any given situation? Maybe that's it. I'm so busy juggling all the fragile shards of myself that I almost can't be bothered by any external problems.

But on top of all that, there have been times recently that I've felt happier than I can remember in years. It seems that the cycle of hope and letdown is the one immutable law of teenage life. I need some sleep.

Never in my life can I remember feeling so trapped, so helpless. A baby may cry, but his loving mother will eventually return, to send back all fear and pain into oblivion. If I cry, I will only push her away even farther.

I don't know how public or private I can or should go here. I'm lost in an ocean of uncertain quicksand. I don't know where I can step, which way will lead me out, but I feel myself sinking all the time.

I can feel anger rising up inside of me now, but I don't even know exactly what I am angry about. I've never been the kind of person who can't stand not having absolute control over any situation, but now the words "nothing I can do" haunt me day and night, beating against my skull. I dream that one day, those words will finally escape the cage of my mind. But when they finally crash through the wall into the world, I fear they will leave their silhouettes in the wall behind like Looney Tunes characters fleeing in frenzied panic as a reminder of their horrible power.

I rarely cry now. It's been that way for several years, but before that, I cried much more than most other boys my age. I would cry when I got in trouble at school and felt that leaden weight in my stomach, the disappointment and anger I might face pulling down on my throat, my Adam's apple, bringing the tears out through sheer weight and gravity. I cried sometimes when I experienced physical pain, but those times were never as bad; the pain was nothing compared to the hot mix of shame, self-loathing, and anger that plagued me. I don't know whether this happened by conscious effort or the natural effects of aging, but I find myself physically unable to cry in most situations. I remember when Rory died in eighth grade, I wanted to cry so badly, partially for reasons that I am not proud of today. Part of me wanted that sympathy, that sense of belonging that comes with grieving as a part of a group. I think (and I hope) that the major reason I wanted to cry was to prove to myself that I was indeed human, not stone indifference. But taking another critical look at myself, I see that I thought that situation was the first test: death, if nothing else, would separate those who were sensitive and caring from those who were merely loud and abrasive (as I often was) without anything underneath. I was supposed to cry; why couldn't I? As much as I hate to admit, as I sat aimlessly in school that day, the day we found out (February 22nd), I am not sure whether I grieved more for Rory or for myself. Then there was a memorial a few weeks later, in a big auditorium of a church/school combo. I sat through much of it feeling like a passive observer. I mainly learned how little I knew about him, but also how utterly worthy of knowing he was. I witnessed the photographic version of his life, speeding up as he grew older. (It's odd: as a society, we seem to value innocence and purity so much that we capture these moments in children's lives almost to exclusion, but most of our behavior as a whole totally contradicts that sentiment.)

The memorial finally reached the point where audience members were invited to come up and share their memories and messages about and to Rory. I still felt like I was an outsider in Rory's life, so I was planning to sit it out. After some of Rory's family got up and spoke, Derek Dwyer came up and talked about how Rory sat with him and his friends at lunch. At first, I was compelled to think of this with some small amount of scorn: how could merely eating lunch mean anything when compared to the people that had literally stood by Rory's side throughout the entire ordeal? But then I realized that Derek was making tribute in his own way, celebrating Rory, and life, in its simplicity, its everyday-ness. After Derek sat down, my mom (who sometimes acts like she's my personal promoter) continued to tell me to go up and speak. I think she told me I might regret not doing so later, but even if she didn't, I thank her. I went up to the microphone, and every bit of eloquence left me. I said something about how intimidating Rory's outlandish haircuts were to opposing Scholastic Bowl teams. All I remember about my speech after that was some stammering and finishing with "Rory, we love you." By the time I got half-way back to my seat, I had broken down crying. I wept then as I had not in years. I made up for every time that I had felt invisible law telling me this is when you should cry; every heart-rending movie, every book that settled its fog of abject depression over me for a day, or a week, without sudden release. I wept then for Rory. I wept for his nobility, his ambition, his brilliance. I wept for the time he proclaimed to his dad after reading about Gandhi: "One day, I will change the world." I wept for how he reminded me of myself, or how I would like to think of myself. I wept for how when you unraveled all the little pretensions and fabricated dramas of middle school, Rory was a tender, fragile little boy who died in his father's arms, who dreamt big and touched more lives that he could possibly imagine.

After the program inside the auditorium, we approached his dad. As I put forth my hand to shake his, he wrapped his arms around me and told me, "Rory wanted to be you. He so admired what you do, what you achieved. You were his role model, Siva." I don't think anything could have prepared me for that. I don't remember the exact words, but somehow I don't think they mattered. For the first (and about the last) time, I felt like a member of that inner circle of Rory's truly loved ones. When I got home, I cried two more times in the shower. I felt inspired to live up to Rory's image of me, and I imagined myself receiving an award for curing cancer and dedicating it to Rory. That feeling ended up not lasting forever, but I am not too sad about it. I do not feel horribly guilty that February 22nd passed by this year with little to none recognition, including from me. Rory's legacy is not of guilt and sorrow. Rory will always remind me to fight for love, for happiness, for life itself. Rory will prevent me from living as in a padded hallway, protecting myself against pain at the cost of living a hazy travesty of real life. Rory tells me to leap, to understand and accept pain and consequences, to never stop straining and reaching for what is important to me, to be proud of my hope and not dismiss it as naïveté. Every now and then, I will hear Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's achingly beautiful medley of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "What A Wonderful World," and I will go back to that darkened auditorium where I confronted despair and found Rory instead.