It's been a pretty brutal winter for me. I haven't really been able to exercise so I've gained a lot of weight. Actually that's only half-true; I own an exercise bike and could have burned off calories in my basement, but I didn't. Instead I spent most of the colder months wondering why.

This time last year I was singing a different tune to say the least. There was some sort of a renaissance going on in my head, it's hard to explain. I was feeling closer than I've ever been to being at peace with the world. I was able to watch videos of people fursuiting in publuc and actually feel happy for them. I was closer than ever to being what some might call "sex-positive". I was just... happy about everything. I was having personal revelations and moving towards something it seemed.

Some stuff happened.... silly and pointless stuff... and I started getting this uncanny sense of "nah, this ain't it." I tried to carry on and keep the buzz going, but as the fall rolled around it just wasn't there. First I had a vacation weekend where I just started eating and drinking with reckless abandon, and I wasn't quite able to get back onto my streak after that. I hurt one of my feet somehow, and right after I recovered from that, I hurt the other foot somehow. Then I turned another year older, then there was the election, and then it started getting cold - really cold. I kept slogging through.

Then last month one of my best friends died.

He'd had cancer (liposarcoma) for at least a year at that point. It's hard to say truly how long because he'd been extremely private about the whole thing. Here's a dude who I mostly only kept in touch with via
an SMS group chat between he, my brother and several of our mutual friends. Poor guy turned 37 just last August, we all wished him a happy healthy birthday and many more. He replied "Thanks for the well-wishes! We'll see about more birthdays." I thought he was just being pessimistic. He scarcely updated us with his health situation, other than that he was staying dilligent with his chemo regimen. Turned out, that really was his last birthday.

I met Jason in business school back in the fall of 2007. It's been 18 years, wow. He spent his whole life in the Allentown PA area about 90 minutes from here. There was a period in time, between 15 and 10 years ago, where he would come out and visit us almost every month. He worked an odd schedule where he'd work 8 consecutive days and then have a 6-day weekend. He would frequently spend about 5 of those 6 days crashing with my old roommate and I, and every time he came he was the life of the party. Friends of mine I otherwise didn't see very often would come around and we'd all paint the town red, as they say.

Those salad years wouldn't last long, as he would eventually start dating and later get married and decide to devote most of his free time to his family, which is fine. But we kept in touch very avidly via text. conversing almost every day for years. Jason was the first person I told that I identified as a dog, and he was very supportive. His exact words were "Just keep being yourself, in otherwords keep being a good boy." He wasn't even a furry, he just always liked to immerse himself in those shenanigans to have a bit of levity with me and other furry mutuals. That was a year ago today, on the Ides of March.

In very early February he said that he was developing a cough and some abdominal pain. I wished him the best but wasn't aware of how serious it was. I'm not gonna lie, I'd still had hopes of having him visit once more. About three years ago my current roommate and I had found a nice little cottage-style house on the edge of the park for a reasonable amount, and I had been aching to show it off, much more ideal accomodations for weekend guests than the little hole-in-the-wall apartment I'd had previously. Wanting to show off my hifi and vinyl collection. I guess it's kinda vain of me but it was something I'd thought about a lot. As things seem to be getting worse I started to think about going to see him instead, but I wasn't sure how to breach the subject. I didn't want to just invite myself to his house.

On Monday, February 10th, we had our last text conversation. It was a totally average conversation, me complaining about work, Jason expressing sympathy. Later that night I found a nostalgic video about the college we both met at and sent it to him, but he didn't reply. I thought maybe he was just bitter and not in the mood to reminisce or something, so I gave him some space. And a whole week went by. I reached out again and got no reply for two days. I talked to my brother and said that I was worried about our friend. He didn't seem too concerned at the moment but said he'd search facebook for clues as to what was going on.

Turns out that very day that I consulted with my brother was Jason's last day on earth. He sent me a link to the obituary the following morning when it turned up. The following week we both took a day off work to roadtrip up to Allentown for his funeral. That itself was really weird... very short service, about a half an hour, for which we showed up a few minutes late, and afterwards they ushered everyone out of their seats, past the coffin and out the door. I wanted to stick around and meet up with some people, talk a little... Jason's wife and her family, his father, his best friend, his other best friend and his husband, his ex girlfriend... but after the service the exiting guests seemed to be leaving and making a bee-line for their cars.

The whole thing felt so rushed. That combined with the fact that Jason and I had been almost exclusively on a text-only basis for the last several years made everything feel artificial, as if he already hadn't truly existed for years. Very surreal to put it mildly. To this day almost a month later I'm not sure what to think. I can't stop seeing things and thinking that I want to text him about it, he'd find this amusing, etc. But I can't do that anymore.

This is the part where I'm supposed to tie it all together and make a moral statement I suppose. I hoped that maybe this brush with mortality would give me a fresh perspective on my own life or something but it hasn't happened lately. Right now the only takeaway from it all that I can think of is that life is life and that we die in the end. I'd like to be more positive than this because I've always been a glass-half-full kinda guy. I'm just not sure what to say at this junction. Perhaps I'll update this journal if I can think of a more suitable conclusion.