I have not been myself lately. For the past semester I have found it hard to be passionate, rested, and driven. And I know that sometimes when there is just nothing you can do to fix that hole God will step in....and last night God really opened my eyes. I was sitting in my room at midnight, about to take my medicine and go to bed when one of my dearest friends walked in my room, her mascara was smeared across her face and I could tell that her heart was hurting. She came in to get paint....but I just had to ask her what was wrong. She broke down right in front of me....told me that the guy she had been casually dating...in all the wrong ways, left at 11:00pm to get his backpack. At 11:45 she got a text message asking her to let let him into room 213....his own room. He was hauled into the room by two of his buddies...they said they found him in the stairwell, and they left him with her. She watched him...rock back and forth....not speaking. He left with his shirt on looking for his backpack....he came back shirtless....no backpack. She watched him and she waited for him to speak....but he was not home. He left as our friend, he came back a shell of a man. She looked into his eyes and she told me, "He was not home anymore". As she continued to tell me his symptoms....she told me she searched his phone for numbers to call for help. What she found broke her heart....that the one she had been involved with was not just involved with her. It was vulgar...abrasive....crass. And she was so so broken. But her first and foremost concern was that when she left him he would not wake up. He couldn't even stand....or talk. We argued for hours about whether to call for help...and when we finally did Will was unshakeable. We checked his heart rate. We checked his breathing....but Will wouldn't wake up no matter how hard we tried. We waited impatiently for our RD to call the ambulance. When we finally saw the flashing blue and red lights out of my dorm room window...we quickly put on shoes and got ready to go to the hospital. We got on the elevator and were met by a stretcher....carrying a very, very sick unconscious boy. It was so disturbing to see him....so gone and so destroyed. And as I was holding my poor, distraught Hannah....I remembered....why I was in school....why I was called to help addicts....because that boy will never be the same.
We sat in the waiting room until 5am when they finally told us that they believed he had taken some sort of morhpine, probably with alcohol. He would be asleep anywhere from 4 to 12 hours. But he was going to make it.
I realize that Will will never be the same. And that he might continue using...and because of that I know....I will never be the same either. Neither will Hannah. Because our lives have been changed under the worse conditions....for the better.
"Passion, it lies in all of us, sleeping...waiting...and through unwanted...unbidden...it will stir...open its jaws and howl." -Joss Whedon
