Last Message Ever Received Mindjob after Mindjob
I am the opposite of sentimental and trite. To a fault. I’m afraid of hugs. And I disdain sappy sentimentality. Like you wouldn’t believe. And yes, I understand that I have a problem. Please don’t let me know that counseling exists for people like myself. I am fully aware.
But I do adore heart rending and honest loss. I’m a sucker for Romeo & Juliet. Kills me every time. The movie, the House of Sand and Fog? Brutality. The Opera Don Giovanni. Gah. Othello. Les Miserables. Henry V. Message in a Bottle (shut it). Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor. Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14. Sad. Die. Gack. Cry. Adore them all. True heart rending chaos? Man. Really gets me.
Enter the Tumbler – The Last Message I Received. When I first found it, the first several posts I saw just absolutely repulsed me. But then… Man. The chaos and the heartache that is in the world is just truly crushing. Many were of the garden variety break up. But the honesty was really intense:
The comment attached, to explain the screen scrape: “I moved out of the country for a job and he couldn’t handle talking to me anymore.”
“When we were dating he said the only time we should use the word ‘sorry’ was if we were breaking up – this was when I knew I had to let him go.”
Two ships passing in the night…
“I asked you to marry me and you run away, you know what I would take you back in a sec, I will always love you darling”
My boyfriend of 4 years asked me to marry him, and I ran to Paris for nearly 5 months without telling him. I couldn’t face telling him I wasn’t ready. After returning home he texted me this. I didn’t reply and it still breaks my heart when I think I could be married to this amazing perfect guy who I adore.
Break up stories are sad. And there are a million of them with a million different circumstances and chaotic variabilities. I’ve had mine, you’ve had yours. I’m sure you could make us all sad with one of your particularly good (bad?) stories. Right?
And then, though… I started running into whole ‘nother level of chaos on the blog. They’d creep out from the shadows and the strike me down with Thor’s hammer out of absolutely nowhere. Yeah, enjoy.
“I had asked my brother for advice about a guy who I was dating. I was exhausted and passed out abruptly, woke up late to work my double for the Father’s Day rush. I never had the chance to check my phone. My brother was killed in his sleep thirty minutes after he had texted me. I found out when I was on my way to meet my family for Father’s Day dinner.”
My long-distance boyfriend and I talked on the phone every night before we went to sleep. We were in the middle of our nightly phone call when a friend stopped by his place. He asked if he could call me back in a few minutes. I fell asleep while waiting for him to call me back. His final phone call and text at 12:40am was the last message I received from him. He died of a seizure in the middle of the night. I never said goodnight or “I love you” for the final time. I still feel such guilt, anger and sadness about this, even after all these years.
And the comment that accompanied this one was a fullon napalm run on my heart… “Last text shared with my husband when he’d been moved from the hospital into the hospice. He passed a few days later. He was 21.”
The thing is – everyone has pain like this in their lives. A friend of mine gets the unpleasant opportunity to watch their mother die of Alzheimers Disease. Another acquaintance of mine, their husband is suffering with PTSD and they can’t afford their rent… they’re unsure where they’ll get the money to pay for their son’s winter coat, let alone Christmas. Divorce. Suicide. Chaos. Today I watched the processional of police officers honor Officer Garret who was killed after a rampage at a Planned Parenthood in town last week.
The world isn’t as it should be. This much is obvious. It is deeply, deeply broken.
Reminds me of this quote from Isaiah – ‘But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.’ We need so much to be reconciled – for the rift to be restored, and the distance gapped.