Anxiety and depression kept me isolated in high school. And then on Nov. 9, 2008, James Zwack died in a car accident at age 16, and I began to realize I missed the last year of a best friend's life. 

 

 

James loved me, even though he probably shouldn’t have. I wanted to be friends with his older brother, Paul, when I moved from Vermont to Birmingham, Alabama at age 5. One of the first things I did in our new house was yell at some boys walking by. My mom thinks I called them “turkeys” or “poopooheads” or maybe both. She told me I had to apologize or I wouldn’t be able to see the new “Powerangers" movie. I mustered enough courage to walk down the street and apologize. Turns out they hadn’t heard me. They invited me to play basketball. They were my first friends in Birmingham.

James was about my age, but Paul was seven years older and therefore far cooler. For a while, I hung with Paul. Then he probably got tired of me because, after all, I was a little kid, and therefore less cool. So I started hanging with James and Micah, who were also in elementary school like me. We lived on the same street. We played backyard football weekly. We climbed in the kudzu-covered creek in our neighborhood. We did all kinds of skateboard and BMX stunts, and James always led the way because he was afraid of nothing.

James and Micah were a grade below me, so when I hit high school, I saw them less. And then I started to isolate myself. The side effects of anxiety and depression medication I was taking began to dominate my life, and made the anxiety and depression worse. My appetite increased. My stamina decreased. My weight increased. My confidence decreased. I peaked at 260 pounds in high school, where I quickly learned that being an obese teenager is hard. Humor was my only defense. But I couldn’t just be funny; I had to be endlessly funny because the moment I stopped being funny was the moment I went back to being obese. And I needed to have thick skin, because sometimes I wouldn’t be as quick as I needed to be or as funny as I needed to be, and I would go back to being obese again. And then people would make fun of me for how I looked. How I had two chins. How I had boobs, not a chest. How I wore baggy clothes to hide behind. I didn’t like the way people talked about my body, so I went from an anxious and depressed kid to a severely anxious and depressed and angry kid who spent long hours in his room.

I stopped doing homework. My GPA hovered around 2.0 freshman and sophomore years. I couldn’t leave bed in the morning. I acted out in class. I talked back to teachers. I got kicked out of one class for an entire semester. I isolated myself even more. I went an entire year without really seeing James.

Then In my junior year of high school, our mutual friend Carter fell ill so I stopped by to visit him, and James was there. I remember almost nothing about the visit, except that it felt like we had never been apart. I started to recall the things I loved about James. Early on in our friendship, James, Micah and I would camp in his backyard. Then we graduated to Paul’s room once Paul left for college. James would stay up talking all night at sleepovers. I loved that because I was always the other kid who wouldn’t shut the hell up and go to bed. We’d make his dad John furious because John would have to come upstairs to quiet us on the hour until we finally dozed off around 3 or 4 a.m. James was an inquisitive kid. He loved to know how things worked. He also always laughed at your jokes. And he was sincere about it. And his laugh, which Micah describes as a goofy shriek, would hijack his whole body and inevitably make everyone else laugh harder. So the last time I saw James, we did a lot of laughing. And I left that visit thinking about how much fun I had, and how dumb I was to not have had James in my life as much as I possibly could. But it didn’t seem like a big deal. It seemed like the start of us reconnecting. Then two weeks later, early on a Sunday morning, my sister burst through my door to say that James had died in a car accident. Which meant that on Nov. 9, 2008, one of my best friends died, and I missed the last year of his life. 

Now it has been nine years without James. In those years, I graduated from high school, and moved across the country to attend the University of Oregon, where I didn’t know any students. I was too ashamed and anxious to live in the dorms because of my weight, so I lived in an off-campus apartment. I thought I would make friends. I never had a visitor, or even a friend my age. I had family friends in Eugene, so I ate dinner with them frequently. Their presence kept me going. But I didn’t have a typical college experience. I didn’t go to one party freshman and sophomore years. I never hung out outside of class. I called my parents every night, and sometimes I cried. I thought about moving home. I got into TV shows, and the characters on those shows became my community, my friends. I was deeply lonely, and started to believe I wasn’t worth hanging out with. Sometimes I would lie in bed daydreaming that when I woke up the next morning, all the weight would be gone. It would just magically disappear overnight, and I wouldn’t be ashamed or anxious anymore, and I would feel free to let everything I love about myself — my humor, my kindness, my knowledge, my empathy, my joy — out, instead of holding it in.

The only social activity I had during those two years in college was playing basketball. Weight shed accidentally at first. Then over the summer, I picked up running and began to eat healthier. When I returned to Eugene junior year slimmed-down at 180 pounds, I did it in a new, more communal, dorm-like complex. On my first day there I made my first friends in college, and later that night, I went to my first party. I’ve moved three times since graduating college, so I’m prepared for how much hard work making new friends is. I always ask for numbers after meeting someone I like. I invite myself to things. I invite others out as much as possible. I write unnecessarily long, and (hopefully) hilarious emails inviting co-workers out. I am goofy. I let people know that I like hanging out with them, and why I like hanging out with them. There is never a good reason to hold love in. I wish I could give James love. I wish his family and friends could, too. If I could let James know the tiny, unique details I loved about him, it’d sound like this.  

James had brown hair. James ran like a chicken. James was a great wrestler. And he had the perfect wiry, flexible frame for it. James was named after President Jimmy Carter, and he got a letter from President Carter because of it. James had a red rope in his room, and we used to swing from it. The only time I ever believed in ghosts was the time James and I were playing guitar and he set his guitar down, but it kept playing while we ran away screaming. James accidentally sat on a gerbil once and killed it. James liked to order pizza with no sauce, and we made fun of him for it. As a kid, James would greet you at his front door on Saturday mornings in nothing but tighty whities, braces and headgear. At age 12, Micah heard James say his favorite three things were “sex, drugs and rock n’ roll.” James had an older brother, so he knew all the cuss words first. James always went with the flow — sometimes too much. We probably should have done more of what James wanted to do. James looked fearless. And he was. James loved to skateboard. James loved risk. James was probably destined to pick up some scars and break some bones. Truth be told, James was probably destined to scare the crap out of us a few times. But James was also probably destined to amaze us. James made friends with everyone because he discovered what you loved about yourself, and loved it just as much as you did. James would invite my tiny, younger sister to play football with us. James was physically affectionate with guy friends when most guys were too cool for love. James was compassionate. He quit wrestling, and told his parents it was because he didn’t like having to pin someone. James enjoyed reality shows about hospitals and emergency rooms. James wanted to be a nurse. I wish I could have met Nurse Zwack. 

What I have left of James is his love, and how it makes me better. Because of James, I’m less afraid of taking chances. Less afraid of moving. Less afraid of going outside my comfort zone. James’ family, Connie, John and Paul, will never see the ways in which James would have grown, but they can see my growth, and I can tell them about my life, and the good I do, and the fun I have, and the places I go and the friends I make. They can know that James has, and will forever influence me. And they can know that James has, and will forever influence countless others. And they can know that James did make his friends better people. When the old die, we celebrate the life they lived. When the young die, we mourn the life they didn’t get to live. I know James did amazing things in life. I know he lived it fully. I know he lived it loving. And I know he lived it loved. I just wish he could have lived it longer. 

Wyatt is a graduate student at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and an editor at Prison Journalism Project. Contact Wyatt at wlstayner@gmail.com. ©