Dear Stile,

I'm writing this from work. It is my last week here. I can barely think straight anymore, and I have grown so accustomed to the numbness that any slight sensation of emotion is overwhelming. I write this simply because I can. I have to express it and get it out.

It all started back in May. I had just finished college and landed a job interview because my dad knew a co-worker whose wife needed a replacement for an employee who was leaving. I got the job. It was data entry and background checks for a very small company. I hated it and wanted to leave the first week. Despite my reservations, I ended up staying for the rest of the year. I was moved up to website work and tech support. The job became more interesting and yet more demanding. However, I stopped complaining because the pay was good for me.

When I began there, the company was nothing but two guys and four women. One guy was leaving and the other guy, co-owner, was gone most of the time, so it was interesting to be the only guy surrounded by older women aged 30. This group was a bunch of partiers. I was even offered alcohol a few times, despite my being a year under the legal age. I much appreciated the loose atmosphere because, in all honesty, I feared the rigid real world and its phony professionalism. Here, I could behave as myself and be left alone.

As time progressed, I eventually reimplemented their entire network, set up a network faxing system, redesigned their entire website, and more. I worked horrendous overtime and skipped lunch hours. Many Saturday nights were spent up at the office. I even helped them finish moving from their previous office by driving a moving truck out of town, loading it with furniture, and driving all the way back to unload it all at three in the morning, even when I had to work later that day. I never got a raise or bonus for any of it. I was disappointed, but I took heart in the fact that my salary would likely increase once the company moved out of state. Apparently, the whole company was setting up shop in Houston, and I was offered a chance to go along. Because I didn't know how my life plans would pan out at that moment, I was purposely indecisive and told them I would know at the end of the year, and they were fine with that.

About the time I was told of the company move, I was beginning to feel attracted to one of my co-workers. She was 30, married with two small children, and had a life of her own away from me. If you could meet her, you would instantly know why I fell for this woman. How rare it is that one randomly comes across the person that you literally want to be with every moment. Her voice, her face, her mannerisms--everything about her attracted me. As we worked together more and more, I began to care for this person. It was a true mental and physical attraction. For someone as cold and aloof as me, I wanted to feel her warmth constantly, addicted to her.

She said she needed a running buddy, so we began to go running together in October and became closer as friends. I told her things I have never told anyone. I would invent reasons to go into her office just to see her again. I would chat with her during the day on my computer. It was never outright, but I sensed something from her end...she still viewed me as a friend, but there was something there. I could never place it. She seemed unhappy. Certain things she would say, and the way she said them. Her eyes.

Unfortunately, the stresses of life began to get to me. Due to issues of my own, I was unable to continue coping with my life. I knew I had nothing to complain about, but I still felt very bad and guilty for feeling depressed. For months, I had been throwing up in the mornings for no known reason. I thought through many theories, such as lactose intolerance, ulcers, and so forth. In the end, I chalked it up to the enormous stress of the job. However, more and more, it was becoming difficult for me to connect with people. It was as though I was thinking differently than everyone else. For instance, natural conversation felt forced and awkward. My timing seemed to feel "off." I had a lack of energy I had never felt before. Everyone gets depressed, and it always comes and goes, but one week in November was particularly bad. So bad, in fact, that I planned to die that Friday.

Looking back, I have no idea what I was thinking. I remember my mindset, but I can't understand it. I could not sleep that week. Every day, my body felt strangely sluggish, and it was hard to concentrate on what people were saying. Something was definitely wrong that week, and I have never been able to place a finger on it. It felt as though a switch had been turned off. I even wrote a suicide note explaining my reasoning. When you are thinking of someone who is suicidal, it is easy to dismiss them as cowardly and selfish. But when you are in that state of mind, it doesn't matter to you because your suffering is so great. Critics of suicide be damned.

I told her earlier in the week that I was leaving my job. She begged for me to stay. She even said "if you care one iota for me, you'll stay." Look back, that hurts. And yet, I pressed on. Friday came. I told my boss I was leaving my job, "to try something new." She said she understood. She was almost too unsurprised.

I went home that day looking for sleeping pills. I did not want a gun. I wanted to spare my discoverer the horror of such a gory scene. Sleeping to death seemed so natural and peaceful. My parents were away that weekend. I got home and saw my little brother. And the switch was turned back on. I thought of how his life would be after that night. The effects of my suicide on others never bothered me before, but at that moment, they suddenly did. For the second time in my life, I almost committed suicide but didn't in the last minute.

I wanted to run screaming back to the office to tell my boss that I could stay after all. Suddenly, I realized I had no future if I didn't go with the company. I live in a small town with no future, and I had big dreams. Houston, I realized, was the opportunity of a lifetime for me to leave my station in life and finally find something greater. That next week, I told her I could stay. And came to find out that when I couldn't commit, they had asked one of the temps to come along.

That night, I drove around, crying. I had turned away my own future. The more I thought about it, the more it hurt me that I had done it myself. It's so easy to feel self-pity when something happens to you out of your control, but the amount of hatred I had for myself was indescribable. I had effectively killed myself already. That was the darkest Thanksgiving of my life.

The next week, no amount of convincing seemed to work. My boss kept blaming it on the other co-owner. He was the one who didn't see a need for another employee. She said she would "talk about things" with him the following week. I began to suspect she didn't want me coming along after all, and my two week notice was a convenient out for her. Something about how she behaved around me gave me the impression I annoyed her. My fears were compounded by the fact that I absolutely knew they needed me over there and were not hiring a replacement. Nobody there could do my job. I was experiencing a flood of anxiousness that kept me awake more nights.

Suddenly, I decided--I would tell my co-worker that I loved her. And suddenly, everything was okay. I felt I would at least be able to live with myself if I let her know that. I anxiously looked at her calendar and realized I only had one week left with her. After that, she was leaving town to attend database classes and would be in Houston shortly after.

I knew I was crazy. She's 30 and married. But I had to do it. I had nothing to lose, and that sort of fear and desperation can instill a lot of courage. And so I told her. And she was understanding and even somewhat receptive.

That was last week. It was the most intense week of my life. We talked, and she revealed many things to me. The unhappiness she was having with her marriage. The despair she was feeling about not wanting to move but being in a situation in which she had to. She cried everyday. It made me glad to know that I had comforted her during those times. I even began to call her at home, just to talk. I asked her about us, and about what chance I had. She said she did not know. She had to move to Houston as a last resort to make the marriage work. And yet she knew it wouldn't work, though she wouldn't admit it. She said she was married to the "wrong person." But her very young children needed their father. The fact that she was 10 years older to me didn't matter. She was someone I cared for and wanted to make happy again. This person was the one; I could feel it. I had gone into Monday treating it as a conclusion. But it had become a beginning. There was potential I will never be able to explore.

Last Tuesday was the day the two bosses were supposed to discuss my leaving with them. I have heard nothing back, so I must assume nothing has changed. I also have to admit I had gotten my hopes up. But those hopes were crushed again. She is gone this week. I will only see her for an hour next Monday, and then she will leave my life forever. I have no job, and no future. Imagine being offered both. Imagine meeting the person who made you feel whole and who was the one you wanted to experience the rest of life with. Whose voice alone was enough to soothe you, and whose face you desperately wanted to touch. I know now I have lost that forever. I will instead be trapped in this small town, working a dead-end job, hungry for the rest of the world, and I will always feel her. I will never see it or feel that love again. I will never be able to hold her. And I cry for that.

I guess the moral of the story is to never turn anything away.

- bonch
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