Nine Lives

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I’ve known Kelly for about 6 years now. We went to college together (Jaspers, what?!). Honestly, I can’t remember the first time I met her, nor the times we hung out. If someone were to remind me, it’d probably ring a bell…either way, I won’t be telling any tale about that. However, there ARE countless things I could say about this girl. In short, she’s about the most hilarious, honest, talented, and courageous people I know. She’s survived cancer, lives with lupus daily…and can go beer for beer with me at the pub. She’s the shit.

I have read her blog countless times before…the content being heartbreakingly genius. There is a recent post, though, about her brother. In it, she describes her brother’s feelings in the recent two weeks, when two of his friends passed away. There is a reason I was drawn to this, and likely it is the same reason Kelly and I are friends (at least, from my perspective).

Jimmy Campise died on December 23, 2001. Though I do not have a full understanding of his condition, I believe it was something like this: Jimmy was born with 3 heart valves, one valve short; after multiple procedures in his infancy (and I believe a heart transplant), Jimmy was heathy (sort of). Tons of medical problems later, he needs another heart transplant at the age of 16. He gets this in December. Though the heart took well, Jimmy died from complications from the surgery (I guess).

Jimmy Campise was my best friend. I was there when he died.

This is something I don’t tell many people (and since I believe my followers of this blog is in the single digits, this trend will likely continue). My heart has the desire to yell the story and my feelings during it to everyone, but my brain stops it. In doing so, I contain my emotion of that event; but through this, I tend to trap much of my emotion. Bursting at the seams with want and expression and emotion and feeling, many times I I feel I cannot handle it. But in the end, the bottle cap remains tight. I sacrifice conversation and sociality and relationships, but I gain confidentiality and independence. Jimmy is just the beginning of this waterfall of trapped thought. Just as every emotion and thought is suppressed, they are part of the potential deluge of pent up truth and opinion. The damn that holds this flow back, though, is fear. Fear of how my truth and my opinion will be perceived. More silent truths revealed only provide more neuroses for my never ceasing, self analyzing brain.

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This feels a bit narcissistic and silly to reblog and I’ve never known Mike to give me a compliment in real life. (EVER, MICHAEL).

This piece is commendable for the part I excerpted above. I recommend giving Mike a follow, even though he was All-American lacrosse player in college and STILL beat me on every single English paper.

Bastard.