I’m not even sure where to begin.

Gwen left today, via bus. Curtis tried and tried to find someone who could drive them to the bus station, but couldn’t find anyone.

A really short time before the bus was scheduled to depart, they ran into Amber out in front of Blumberg. Curtis asked her if she would like to meet Gwen.

“No,” she replied.

He then asked her if she would drive Gwen and him to the bus station, and surprisingly enough she immediately agreed.

Evidently, the conversation in the car on the way to the bus station was normal, but it was quite different on the way back. Curtis described in big strokes the gist of the dialogue to me, and although I don’t remember much if any of that description, I do remember being very unsurprised by how it went.

Some time passed. (I was in class and/or at work during the above, by the way).

Curtis and Amber talked on ICQ for a bit, during which time she evidently threatened to kill herself. Now, I can recall her threatening the same to me on more than several occasions. Curtis handled that more or less as I would have: he assumed that she wasn’t going to.

Around 6:45, she took about 60 aspirin, which is evidently more than enough to cause big problems.

She told Curtis this over ICQ, and they went back and forth for several minutes, during which time Curtis was trying to ascertain whether she actually did or not.

This is where Casey and I enter the story, I guess. Curtis came upstairs, visibly distraught, and asked me how likely I thought it was. Now, I thought that she hadn’t, but that there was a distinct possibility that she had. So Casey, Curtis, and I drove to her apartment about 10 minutes from campus. Curtis went in first, and had us come in a bit later, after he had called 911 and all that.

While it was my first time in the apartment, it felt like I had been there many times before. This only added to the already very surreal feeling of the evening. The police arrived and called for an ambulance. The ambulance came and then it was just Curtis, Casey, and I standing near Casey’s car on the side of Home Avenue.

Both Curtis and I were (and still are, let me tell you) feeling really weird about the whole thing, so the three of us went to the Grounds so the two of us could attempt to sit and let things settle down inside.

I’m still very unsure of how I feel. It’s as though my feelings on the evening are a tightly wrapped ball of yarn, and I haven’t been able to unravel it yet. While I’m nowhere near finishing unraveling it, here are some of the more prominent feelings floating around:

• Anger. I’m angry at her for putting Curtis through this. It’s the closest to outright rage that I’ve felt in a long time. Fortunately there’s so much other stuff going on inside that it’s not kicking in.
• Resigned sadness. Here’s a person that I used to be extremely close to, trying to kill herself. I’m not sure what else there is to say here, other than that I wish this hadn’t happened.
• Bewilderment. At some base level, I just don’t understand what it is that drives people to this point.

There’s a lot more going on in there, but those are the big things.

I feel so strange.

The Japanese word for tomorrow, あした (ashita), is written 明日 ideographically. The ideographs literally mean, “bright day.” Perhaps it will be.