Everybody Hurts

A Tribute To Nicholas

We all grieve in different ways when we experience the reality of loss. Myself, I become consumed with introspection. I think about the beauty that is gone, the talent that is wasted, the intelligence that is cut short. I will find myself sitting and staring into space with no obvious focus, just looking in silence. My head is heavy, it continually wants to drop off and sleep because sleep is the ultimate escape from thinking, but only if you can manage to stop the thinking long enough to finally get there.

For this writing, I chose “Everybody Hurts” by Athens, Georgia’s REM for a specific reason. It may have been more appropriate to select a sound suited or connected in some way to the young man I am grieving, but instead, it felt more Universal to represent how I feel with a song that speaks to how we all likely react in these situations. The loss of young life is tragic. The questions of why, or what if, and what (more) could I have done to help this soul move through what he was experiencing are all normal.  The comparisons we will make when we wonder how it is we have had the chance to achieve the peace and fulfillment I have known, or the magic I have seen occur within others is inevitable.

The message in “Everybody Hurts” is to remind us that this hurt is a part of the human experience. Without the pain of loss, we are never really provided the necessary perspective to remember gratitude and the opportunity to love without strings and conditions. The losses in my life have helped me to become more tolerant and aware of the pieces of human nature that cause the rifts, the damage, and the costs to our relationships, and livelihood. How many times have you heard about someone’s passing and regretted the lost opportunity to have spoken one last time, to have healed an issue, mended a misunderstanding or amended harm done? The loss can then be compounded by guilt and sometimes a moment where we take on the responsibility for what has occurred. But it is not our fault.

Nicholas was a force. When we first met some 4 or 5 years ago, he was relatively new in Los Angeles having recently arrived from New York, and was unsure whether his life was ever going to work here amongst us. When we connected in my program I was introduced to and began to understand the tornado of ideas swirling through his mind at all times day or night. The thoughts and feelings alone would not have been anything but opportunities for conversation, experimentation, and growth were it not for the elevating moods of despair where loneliness took over his mindset. There is a hard and twisted way loneliness can blanket a soul’s rational thinking and as he saw it, Nicholas's time spent in Los Angeles was proving that right. It would not be loneliness directly that would eventually remove Nicholas from the world we all live in, but a hideous killer tied (but not exclusive) to the gay community. Crystal Meth-amphetamine or ‘Crystal meth’ is highly addictive. It is a drug that affects the central nervous system. It’s a party drug, it is a sex drug, it is an escape from the current mood drug, but most of all it is a drug that can change the user’s personality, create paranoia, cause psychosis, and take a perfectly beautiful human being and steal away all of their best qualities.

To know Nicholas was to be in the presence of creativity and thoughtfulness. His mind was always looking for a way to provide gifts of words, flowers, food, or cards to those who were special to him in his life. This is the character who picked flowers to present on the way to meet you. He created a hand-made card for every little event or holiday, and many non-holidays, and would deliver or send them to you to make sure you knew that you were being thought about. He was an organizer and an artist. Wherever he was he would set the most magnificent table for a meal he was preparing for you and plan an evening’s worth of events, including theater, spoken word, picnics, artists’ shows, opera, poetry, and any number of imaginative, memorable ways to show others he cared.

Talking to Nicholas was also almost always an adventure. There was all manner of highs and lows. He could hold a conversation with the best of us, displaying an intelligence for facts, words, and interests that spanned civilizations, and centuries. In him were an artist, a writer, a marketer, a musician, an event planner, a florist, a greeting card creator, a chef, a companion, and any number of things that his constantly working mind could drum up to fill in any entertainment gap. He had the capacity for infinite love with a fear-filled head that constantly told him he was either not worth it or not enough to receive the love back. Time, support, and love might have been able to convince him otherwise, but Crystal Meth took over control and stole this potential giant away from us far too soon.

We all grieve in different ways when we experience the reality of loss. This weekend all I could do is reflect, remember, try and understand, and be of service where the perspective of this shock might actually help any other addict to find another way and live when in the grips of a destroyer.

I love you, Nicholas. I know you are at peace. I am devastated that this is real, I am angry as hell that this is real. Thank you for what you brought into my life. I will find a way to turn this into something positive because that is what matters in the end for those of us left behind. But today I am reminded steadfastly that “Everybody Hurts” sometimes.

When your day is long

And the night, the night is yours alone

When you’re sure you’ve had enough

Of this life, well hang on

Don’t let yourself go

‘Cause everybody cries

Everybody hurts sometimes.