"Hi, I'm Kevin"

Hi, Kevin, I'm really glad to have met you.

Goodbye, Kevin.

I didn't know you that well. Only spent one day with you, to be honest. You were my boyfriend's friend - he met you at a meeting - and since that's his private battle that I can't begin to understand, I try to let him have a place that is his own, which includes his own friends, those friends who can understand the SHIT of the battle that you were facing, friends who don't need him to spell out all the details like he has to do with me because I just don't get it.

Friends like you, Kevin. Who got it.

You got that the disease is hell. You got the twisted humor of genetics that came together to both create us and destroy us. You got the insanity of screaming "no, no, no" and MEANING it, while reaching for more.


You were young, handsome, intelligent, and beautiful like so many of your peers. Yet, all the good in your life was not enough to stop the path of destruction carved by your sickness.

Sometimes there is no wall high enough, or thick enough, or tough enough, with enough endurance, with enough of an army standing by - to fight this ugly, ugly, deathly disease.

And I am really sorry we can't hang out ever again.

Because I liked you. And you were a big doofus who made me laugh. And that is a good thing.

I send my love to your fiance, who found you. I send my love to your parents, who just lost a 30 year old son to an invisible demon foe. I send my love to my boyfriend who got your text that night, "Hey, when you get a chance, call me tomorrow." I send my love to your other brother-in-arms, who called to let us know what happened and who is still reeling.

I send my love to ALL of you with this stupid Effing disease!!! This frustrating, maddening, pull my hair out, effed up journey through hell with a promise of - not even bliss - just a promise of "less hell" if you can manage to stay clean. It sucks. It makes me pissed off to even try to put it into words because there aren't words to paint an accurate picture.

So hey, Kevin. I hope you are feeling no more pain. While you were here, you reached out and placed a little more beauty and laughter in the world. There was a time when you were the only friend my boyfriend had, and he needed you like you had no idea. Thanks for laughing at his f'd up stories of his own freakish journey, and for helping him find calm on some days when nothing, and no one, not even me, could do it. I owe you. I am grateful to you. I am glad there was you.