This is Tommie - Barium
This post I'm not sure where it fits on the timeline of Tommie. I know it was during my Junior year after I finished getting grounded. But, it happens after some of the other events in Junior year. This post just seem to "fit" here so I'm going to run with it.
I don't know if this is how you spell his name, I'm sure someone who went to high school with me can correct me if I was wrong. Barium was one of the coolest kids in school. I mean this guy was on another plane of existence cool. You know how you have levels of coolness it ranks from dork all the way up to Jock/Prom Princess well this guy was beyond that. He was on some Fonzie level shit. I mean this guy could part the hallways like Moses. He was that cool.
I remember being in Algebra II or Trig or something like that and they put the school on lockdown. Hell, when I was in school we didn't worry about school shootings and all that other crazy crap. I mean it was weird to see the teacher lock the door but that was about it. I just remember my teacher having this pale look on her face. Then we heard girls crying and people screaming all over the place. It was pandemonium.
Come to find out Barium put a gun to his head pulled the trigger and spread his noodles all over the weight room. I remember everyone waking around dazed. It was like everyone had been hit over the head with a cartoon mallot and has stars and birds floating around their heads. I saw the coach who tried to talk Barium out of killing himself. The coach was there when he pulled the trigger. I think he still had blood on him at the time. Two other people maybe teachers were trying to console him but at that stage I think he was inconsolable. He wasn't crying or anything but, I could tell that he was searching his mind to ask why Barium would do this and where he went wrong in preventing him from doing it. If I could describe his face in one word that word would be soulless.
Barium had a girlfriend named Tracy. Now then the word on the street was that she told him that she wouldn't go to the prom with him and that's why he killed himself. I remember his friends just laying into her calling her a bitch and telling her that she killed Barium. I think the Principle or vice-Principle or both I can't really remember had to protect her and put her in the office until her Mom came or something. It seemed like everyone wanted a piece of her. I felt so bad for her and that was the first time I had ever felt pity for another person. I knew it wasn't her fault; they were blaming her for something she had no control over. I don't think she was the same after that. How could she be?
Ludacris has a song on one of his albums talking about the situation. Someone that raps with him obviously went to school with me around at that time I think the name of the song is Growing Pains. I only mention it because whoever is rapping about it calls Tracy a bitch in the song and sort imortalizes the moment on wax. While I don't have a problem with the word bitch in my music usually I quite enjoy it. I find it unfair in this case because it is such a distortion of the truth.
She had done nothing more than be a 16 or 17 year old girl and the world, well the high school world blamed her for that. She was one of the cutest girls in school as well but the next year I could tell she changed. She too was part of that "Way cooler than I could have ever dreamed of being" crowd but, when she came back for senior year she was sullen and withdrawn. I would say half dead almost, she was still cute but not the same person. The weight of the world is hard on anyone but it's especially hard on a young girl being blamed for someone's death.
As I said, suicide is never that simple. I remember my Mom going to Barium's Mother's house with a pie because when people die you bake a pie. She came back and told us about what his mother knew. Barium was a fifth year Senior. Being a fifth year senior in college is cool, in high school, not so good. It appeared that he was on his way to being a sixth year senior. He had problems reading and she also had a bunch of emotional problems that are probably typical of someone with suicidal tendencies. It's just one of those things that you can never hope to understand. I mean this guy was 18 or 19 years old and decided to end it? I look back at 19 today and say there is so much more life that he missed out on, if only he would have tried.
At the time I didn't feel sorry for him. I was confused and a bit angry with him. I mean again I never knew him I knew of him just like all kids know of the most popular people in their school. Knowing them doesn't mean that you'll ever interact with them. I couldn't understand why this guy, the most popular guy in school would do that to himself. He had everything I ever wanted. If I could have had half his coolness I would have been in hog heaven. I would have given my right arm to be as cool as him. I mean he was just that cool and he blew it for nothing. I couldn't feel pity for him because he experienced NOTHING like I did and yet he chooses to end it when he had everything. I wondered why he took that route and it never occurred to me to take that route yet by my approximation I had much more of a reason too if you compared what he "had" and what I "had" but it was never a thought. The idea of killing myself I thought was abhorrant, alien in nature.
I think it was because of my military background. I knew and I know today that everything and everyone is temporary. It's all a phase from one stage to the next. You don't like the stage you are in now? Keep pushing, you'll move on and away from the problems. Of course for me that usually meant a physical relocation but it was also mental. When things got bad for me I moved away if not in body than in spirit. I just never could (can?) wrap myself up into someone to that level. I could never depend on someone for my existance like he did.
I didn't go to his funeral. I was like what was the point? I didn't really know him there was no reason to fake like he and I were best buddies as many in school were doing. EVERYONE had a Barium moment. Oh, Barium tied his shoe by my locker! Oh, Barium, folded my paper to turn into the teacher for me! Oh, Barium combed his hair right by my cousin and then he said, "Sup." We were such good friends.
I didn't have a Barium moment and I knew most of the people around me didn't either. Hyper-popular people travel in small popular clouds and 95% of the school didn't make that cut. I think I didn't go in protest. I refused to fake morun a person I didn't know.
His death however brought me clarity. I realized then that nothing is what it seems on it's face. Everyone has problems, everyone has trials and tribulations, our challenges may not be the same but we all have them and we can't let them beat us down to the point were want to take ourselves out of the puzzle. That's what I got from him; his death gave me life or at least inspired me to believe in my own abilites.
I knew from then on out that I would live my life to the fullest who cares what anyone else thinks because when it's over it's over and all you become is a someone's vague memory and their fate will become the same as yours so when its all said and done ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
In closing Tracy I don't know where you are or what you are doing but, I wanted to let you know that I'm sorry everyone called you those nasty names, and I'm sorry that I stood by and let them do that to you, I'm sorry that I never asked you if you were ok or if you needed anything, I surely thought it every time I saw you but, I never had the courage to say it to you. I'm sorry for that, I hope you can forgive me for not being there when I should and I hope you can forgive us for not treating you with kindness and compassion when you more than anyone else had the most reason to mourn.
Barium, I feel sad now that you are gone, I didn't then I didn't know how to feel sorrow. I wish that we could have seen your pain, I wish we could have seen past your coolness and saw that you were someone that wanted to go places and do things and that all you wanted to get over that insurmountable hump known as high school.
I wish I could have been there for you to tell you it's not that hard. I wish we wouldn't have idolized you so. If we didn't treat you as the Messiah then we would have seen you for the boy you were and somebody, anybody could have held out their hand and given you that help. We failed you, I failed you and I'm sorry.
God Bless you both.
posted by Unknown at 3:06 AM
3 Comments:
I hope Tracy reads this Tommie. You have no idea how much those words would mean to her, even after all this time.
After Mum was killed, people didn't quite know what to say to Ben and me, so if they saw us coming they would scuttle away as fast as they could, pretending not to have seen us. Some of these people we had known all our lives.
It felt really lonely when that happened.
There was this one guy who I had known since I was a kid, we used to hang out. He saw me in the local supermarket not long after she was killed. He looked at me in the eyes from a few meters away, turned around and walked strait out. He just left his groceries there and everything. He looked so frightened when he saw me.
I saw him some years later. He came up to me and told me he was so sorry for that. He just didn’t know what to say, and freaked out when he saw me. He thought about that and felt bad about it for years after, and just wanted me to know how sorry he was that he wasn’t there for me, even at such a simple moment, and he gave me that big hug he was too scared to give me at the time.
His bravery to say that to me meant the world to me. I will never forget it. I have the deepest respect for him for telling me those words.
There was this other girl Kylie who had the locker below mine at school. What she did meant more to me than anything.
Kylie and I never hung out together at school. We didn’t really dig each others friends, we ran in different circles. We didn’t even have any classes together. But we caught the same bus together and would sit next to each other, and on the bus and at our lockers we would have the most intense, amazing deep and meaningful conversations. A bit like the deep conversations you can have with people on-line, when you know they have no real impact on your life and you don’t have to be frightened to be completely open and honest with them.
After Mum was gone, I would just sit around crying all day. My whole world collapsed. But the rest of the world seemed only to stop for a brief moment and be sad, but then got straight on with it and moved on.
My world just stopped. It was like being in a time warp. The rest of the world moved on, but left me behind.
The saddest time for me was about a week or so after the funeral, when all the flowers died. All week, the house had been filled with the perfume of beautiful bouquets and cards of well wishes and it was uplifting.
But then all the flowers wilted and died.
And I threw them out and the house was bare.
And the phone stopped ringing.
And the world moved on.
Except for Kylie. Out of everyone I knew and who I thought loved me and who I thought I could depend upon, Kylie, the girl who had the locker below mine at school, would come over to my house a couple of times a week when no one else did, and would sit with me for a few hours throughout the afternoon. I could see she was as uncomfortable as hell being around me, I mean it was so depressing. I didn’t care about anything, and would just cry.
Kylie would openly tell me, “Amy, I don’t know what to say to you. I don’t know anyone who has died, and I don’t quite know how to handle this… I feel like I have to say the right thing to make you feel better, but I just don’t have a clue what that is. I feel really uncomfortable because of this. But know this, I am here for you, because that’s the only thing I know how to do”.
And she would just sit with me, for hours, just being there.
Sometimes I would cry, sometimes I would stare blankly into space, sometimes I would prattle off random memories of Mum that would come into my head, and then cry some more. She sat with me, while I did what I need to do… grieve. As uncomfortable and awkward as it was for her, she kept coming back, just sitting with me.
There is never a right thing to say in these situations. And it is uncomfortable, and awkward, and scary. But what Kylie did was worth more than a thousand words. What Kylie did, a girl whose relationship with me was nothing more than the girl whose locker was below mine at school, was so comforting. What she did I dare say saved my life.
And I will never forget it.
So if anyone finds themselves in the situation where they are confronted with someone who has had a loss, remember this: You don’t have to say or be anything, you only need to be there. That is everything. The right thing to say, is nothing. Just be there. And that is more than enough.
I really hope Tracy reads what you said. She would be deeply touched.
Friday, May 06, 2005 11:40:00 PM
Both the post and the comment so good and so helpful, brought tears to my eyes because so much truth in them. Thank you.
Came along at the right time for me, and has explained to me how people behave sometimes and why they behave like that, because certain things are too hard for them to face.
You've both helped me understand behaviour that hurt me. Thank you.
Alyssa, so glad that Katie was there for you.
Sunday, May 08, 2005 6:24:00 AM
"On March 19, I SO wanted to write a kind of eulogy for my late brother Sam. He passed away in May 1991. 8 May to be precise. Just almost two weeks after I turned 14. I was still in school. It was raining that day. I was on crutches. I don't even remember what I was wearing, but I can see myself hopping on my crutches down two flights of stairs as I saw my Dad's brown 520 series BMW comein through the gates of the British School of Brussels--wipers going left to right quite powerfully.
March 19 is not so curious for me, cos that's when he fell into a coma. (...) we were the best of friends.
Actually, he was my best friend. And the only one I will ever have"
from http://ekbensah.blogspot.com/2005/04/being-best-i-can-be.html
You are right Alyssa that there is something in Western culture about accepting death of a loved one. People just find it uncomfortable expressing themselves, because they cannot begin to imagine what would be said to them if it happened to them?/ It's odd.
May 8--Mother's Day--was exactly 14 years since my brother passed away. And as it fell on a Mother's Day, you can imagine my Mum's grief...
Tommie, I'm sorry about Barium, and Alyssa about your Mum. And I definitely am sorry about my brother, but his loss transformed me into a better person ironically. Something I greatly dislike. I don't know why I had to lose him before becomoing a well-balanced individual, but such is life.
If it doesn't kill you, it can only make you stronger...
Wednesday, May 11, 2005 3:44:00 AM
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