Morgan

I could write about the trip to Tacoma. It was fun, exhausting, and spine-wrenching, though I'm sure moreso for Morgan and Shea than for me. I could write about the anxieties I had moving in and how bad I felt about Morgan's pirate trashcan getting squashed and scratched. There's a lot I could write about, but I will write about it later, because this post is about Morgan. I doubt she will like it, or believe it, or care, but she can't deny it, because if she believes in subjective truth, then there is no doubt that this is the truth for me.

I remember the first time I really met Morgan. I'd seen her before, but the first time I really met her was in my school. I remember that the first thing I noticed was her suitcoat. She always seemed too old to be in high school from the moment I met her. She seemed too smart to be subjected to such constant indoctrination. I have a very distinct memory of talking to her in the parking lot at my school in the dark on the friday night of a tournament. I don't know what we talked about, but I remember thinking that I would have to try to pretend I was smart or I could never be good enough for her to like me. There was always some essence so attractive about her, and it screamed transcendence. She had transcended the world to me. She seemed like some impossibly strong substance. She was so much better than human. I think that I gave up a lot of my hope then of knowing her. I simply wasn't good enough. Most of the debate season I watched her from afar in a constant fascination. I was too afraid of breaking some fragile connection to really try to talk to her.

There are a lot of people at my school that try to be hippies and to belong to the counterculture and to be vegan and to plaster liberal bumperstickers all over the back of their car and smoke pot and work at the real food store and talk about how the government should just get out of Iraq. They seem to be opinionated about everything, but it is an entirely hollow form of opinion because it is just an adopted mask they have glued to themselves to be cool. They fit the form too carefully. Their calculated movements give them away. They are fake. They are just like I was in middle school, adopting any identity to fit into a group of people. They have no self, really; they only act according to their stereotype. They are completely intolerant of intolerance. They squash themselves into the mold.

Morgan is like the consummation of this fakeness. She really is the mold. She's not doing it to be cool, or to fit in, or anything. She's doing it because it's who she really is. She really does care about the environment and the government and being a vegetarian. She's not trying to fit into a stereotype; she is the authentic being that created the stereotype. There is no aura of fakeness about her. Her only aura is raw honesty. Like I said, she totally transcended the idiotic social politics of high school that I was still somewhat prey to. She existed in a complete way that I had not ever found before in my insecure peers. It made me want so badly to know her, but I was too scared that I just wasn't transcended enough to belong to her sphere. I worried about annoying her.

In our poetry workshop I was fascinated with another aspect of Morgan: her poetry. Any kind of good poetry is, in my opinion, rather self-revealing. I sensed my own emotions in Morgan's poetry. I tried to talk to her but I didn't want to be bothersome. I mostly listened to her poetry and the passion she put into it. If I had to describe Morgan with two words I would say passionate and loving. The loving is enhanced by the passion. I loved her poetry. I loved the emotion in it. I loved the way it made me feel. I loved the way it was the kind of poetry I wanted to write but couldn't write. Most of all I was struck by her honesty. I wrote poems that were highly symbolic. They were extremely self-revealing, but nobody in that workshop except Siobhan knew me anywhere near well enough to decipher the symbolism. Morgan didn't try to hide anything in her poetry. She was honest in a way I couldn't be. She's always been honest in a way that I can't be, ever since I met her. Everything she did that I did too we did very similarly in our minds, but my mental processes state in the safe confines of her mind while she wasn't afraid to express hers. It was never to get attention or anything either; it was just that she is honest.

I got to know her better my second year in debate. I watched her debate against the devil (aka Malaina) and win because she actually knew what Locke was talking about while Malaina was running on quick scans of Wikipedia. The passion in Morgan's debating surprised me too. There was nothing fake about it. Usually I can be passionate about something that I don't believe in in order to win a debate round, but when Morgan debated she really believed in what she was saying for both sides of the issue. None of the other people I debated had that passion.

Morgan always made me feel better when I talked to her. No matter how much I sucked in a debate round, she validated me. She told me what I needed to hear to keep debating. She agreed with me when I placed blame on my opponant rather than myself. Sometimes the only way to continue surviving in a tournament is to momentarily discard some amount of accountability. You have to be confident. You cannot doubt in yourself. Morgan gave me that confidence. She also had dread-locks, which was awesome, because the other people I knew that had dreadlocks had just done it to fit into the liberal hippie stereotype, but Morgan's weren't for that reason. She looks beautiful with them. She just is beautiful in general.

When I found out she was having a hard time from Kristin (and later when I found out she OD'd) I was in a sort of shock. I had never really conceived Morgan as human before that. She seemed so much more to me. Even when I knew that she had OD'd thought it didn't seem like a weakness, but rather some side effect of genius. Even so, it was hard for me to look at her after that and imagine her in pain. I began to see the more tender side of her, the side easily deceived by ridiculous notions about herself. I began to feel more careful in my conversation. It began to hurt to look at her. I knew from Kristin that she wasn't doing well, but I could never really confront her on it. Even in her intense depression she just seemed so strong to me. She was always so willing to help me. I was angry with the world for hurting her because she was so pure and honest in everything she did. It is like when teenage boys throw rocks to kill squirrels. How can they do that? How can they injure something that really doesn't belong to their world of hate?

Meanwhile, I still wasn't really her friend. She was an amazing mentor to me, but we mostly talked about philosophy and debate. I didn't know much about her. Just what I'd heard from other people that knew her, mostly about how amazing she was.

When she quit debate I knew something was really wrong. I remember at the Powell tournament when I was looking at her poetry how I could know vague bits about her and not know her when I wanted so badly to be a part of her life somehow. Amanda had told me a few things that made me really want to know her rather than just her carona.

Much later when I found out she had been in the hospital I felt sick. I remember that hospital. I remember the beds. I cried myself to sleep every night. I remember the game therapy and the group therapy and the movies and the breakfastlunchdinner on those plastic trays and that idiotic psychologist named Karl whom I hated. I remembered the bolts on the windows and all of the contraband and the precautions to keep things like pencils outside of the room and the nightly fifteen-minute checks with the flashlights and the way all of my journal entries from that week are written in terribly disjointed and emotional poetry. I remembered all of that and I tried to imagine her there and I couldn't. It was the beginnings of me realizing that even if she was way too smart and way too good for high school, even if she was made out of this strong substance I couldn't fathom, she was human, and she was terribly much like me. It seemed so wrong that the world could somehow accost her. It made me angry at everything. I wanted to protect her somehow. I wanted to make her see how important she was to me and how amazing she was, but I couldn't. I still didn't really know her. I knew the rumors, the bits, the pieces. I wrote about her a lot in my journal. When I saw her she told me that she'd moved out of her house and that made me know something was wrong too, but I was always too afraid to ask what. I didn't want to shatter her somehow. Even in her strength there was something so tense in her.

When she found my blog I didn't know what to think. It was at the height of my concern for her but she knew nothing of my concerns. She had no idea that I thought about her all of the time. I was finally beginning to understand that her mind worked like mine, and her depression and lack of self-esteem worked like mine, even if her intellect was above anyone her age. I didn't want her to realize how messed up I was and to quit talking to me or something. But it was exhilerating, in a way, because it forced the honesty that Morgan has that I don't. I can't tell people about my life; I can't live honestly; I can't act how I feel; I can't wear my pain on my sleeves; I can't tell people 'I'm not okay.' I can write it all in this blog that's hidden away from most people in my life on this lovely internet, but I can't live it the way Morgan can. I have been taught my entire life to hide things. If something was wrong it got swept into me; I had the more important job of being the glue that tried desperately to hold my broken family together. Morgan had done the thing that I couldn't do- she had allowed herself to break. I don't know why I can't do that. The closest I've ever gotten was when I got sent to the hospital. But in the end, I still feel like I have to take care of everyone and not talk about myself and not be real. I feel like I can't be myself or everyone will leave me because I'm too messed up. I know they need me, and I can't bother them with all of this from my blog. They can't know it. So really, it would have been impossible for me to ever find the courage to try to tell Morgan anything I write on here. When she found this, I was alleviated from that pressure I could never fulfill. She did it for me.

In a letter that she wrote me she furthur proved that we are a lot alike in our views of the world and ourselves (although I am a bit ahead on realizing my good qualities) and that- this can be attributed, I think, to the empathetic, humanistic characteristics that we share- she really did care about me, even though she hadn't really known me until that point. It was refreshing, to read a letter like that, to read a letter that I could have easily written to someone. It made me feel cared about and noticed the way my friends in real life never do.

In these past few months as I've put together all of the pieces of Morgan I have realized that all of these wonderful qualities she has really are genuine, and they are motivated by such an amazing passion for love. It makes me cringe to imagine her OD-ing or cutting herself or doing anything I do because I know that her life will be amazing because she is amazing. It is so hard for me to hear the things she thinks about herself because I know they are not true and I know that I cannot convince her of that ever.

I believe in Morgan's potential more than I believe in my hands, or in this computer, or in this world, or in anything right now. I know that if she somehow comes around the bend, there is absolutely nothing in this world that can stop her. She's the only one that can stop her. I believe in her as she is now more than all of those things as well. I believe in her love and her empathy and her brilliance and her transcendence and in that strong substance that she is made of. I believe in her strength. I believe in her hope. I believe in her future and her life and her passion. Her passion makes her my hero. I want to have her honesty someday. I want to be that authentic. I want to be that smart. I want to care that much about everything. I want to be that kind. I want to have that kind of love.

I think that when I read that she is happy, that she is hopeful of her future, that she has bought the shoes, computer, or backpack of dhoom, that she wants to be a philosophy professor and really believes it's possible, that she's d**ned amazing for being everything that she is and she's started to realize a tiny bit of that, it makes me happier than anything else in the world. I'm not exaggerating either. Nothing can make my day like Morgan's happiness. Nobody deserves happiness and love and comfort quite as much as she does. Nobody. And like I said, this is no exaggeration.

The day Morgan realizes how special she is, the day she throws away the razors forever and doesn't have to OD or go to the hospital or be depressed or anxious or self-doubting or anything, will be one of the select few happiest days of my life. It will be such an amazing triumph. Even the thought of it will motivate me to try to be like that, to try to do similar amazing things.

I am sad for everyone in the world that doesn't know Morgan and will never know Morgan because they are missing out on a major essence of life and love. She is the most authentic person I have ever met. She is the most caring person I have ever met. She is an awesome friend. She is brilliant and she won't see it. But she will. I know that someday she will. I pray with all my heart to any God, any collection of substance that transcends and molds like Morgan's substance does, that college will be good to her, and that she will see herself the way everyone else in her life sees her. I want her to be happy so badly.

When I walked away from her yesterday it was very difficult. I had to continually remind myself that I wasn't really letting go. I know true friendships can withstand distances, especially in this day of the internet. I saw her walk away across the field with her bag as we walked towards the car and I felt like I couldn't do it. I felt like she was so small and I couldn't leave her, I had to help her somehow, I couldn't just leave her. But I think Morgan was walking into a sunrise. I think she can help herself. I think that even though she is small she is stronger than anyone else I know in very many ways.

I hope, please, God, I'm hoping, that she will walk into a better life. Nothing could make me happier than to hear about the Puget Sound experience of Dhoom. Absolutely nothing.

Morgan, I love you. I really do.