Enter Harry

I just had some kind of revelation experience with the novel I’m reading, A Separate Peace. Part of it is because I realize that with all the symbolism I can see in it (see the analysis for the novel A Separate Peace on my blog “A Poet in Wicker Park”) is actually closely related to my current friendship with a friend.

I don’t know if I can use his real name or not, so here I’ll just use a variation of his first name: Harry. To tell this whole story, I’ve got to start at the beginning, and I’m not entirely sure where the beginning is.

Really, the beginning is with another friend of mine named Eric. He was really good friends with me in sixth grade. We were almost best friends. Then in junior high, we kinda got apart from each other. In about eighth grade, Eric found a friend named Harry who had just moved from Canada. Harry was a social outcast for some reason; he was always alone and no one wanted to be his friend.

So in our freshmen year, Eric and Harry were best friends and I only befriended them from a distance. I was entangled in other friendships, like the one I had with Dan and Quinn, and I was also in the middle of a conflict that existed in the underground of my junior high—a conflict that threatened to escalate into a Columbine at our school. (Looking back on it now, I guess I’ve always been involved in something bigger than me.)

Anyway, that’s how I knew Harry when we got to Orem High, through Eric. I didn’t really hang out with them until halfway through my sophomore year when Harry was having problems with a girlfriend. I was connected with this girlfriend because she was the cousin of the sophomore class’s underground mafia/KGB hit man, Cameron. Because I was in his little “Godfather” family, I became plunged into the drama of the whole thing. And I won’t take the time to tell that here. It’s another story, and shall be told another time. One thing that did end up happening is that I got Harry and Sam to be best friends even though before Sam hated Harry. (Funny thing is that Sam doesn’t remember that. And Quinn predicted that he wouldn’t.)

So anyway, during the whole girlfriend thing with Harry, I got to know him through that. By the end of the year, we were friends but I wouldn’t say that we were good enough friends to really touch base with each other very often. Guess Harry didn’t feel that way, because the next thing I know in the summer he’s always coming to my house to talk, and hang out. And I was really appreciative of that because I never really had a friend.

And I mean that. Eric was a good friend, but he stood out. When I was younger—maybe in fifth grade—I was told that I would never, ever have any friends. I just kinda came to accept that. Now I look back and realize that something that stupid came out of the mouth of a girl who was struggling for social power. Nevertheless, the mentality that I would never have a true friend always stayed with me. All through even up to my sophomore year. I just came to accept that no one would really be there for me.

So when Harry started to hang out with me, I felt like “Hey! A friend.” And eventually, I started to return the friendship.

Then my junior year began. And this year was so…I can only compare it to a crucible. A small place where constant pressure was causing deep, lasting changes in me. I had such a hard time living from day to day. I was struggling with an internal darkness (see my spiritual blog “The Rainmaker Confessions”) that was getting stronger and stronger. More than once I attempted suicide. I felt so far away from God. And my physical life wasn’t doing so well; my family was financially in the hole.

Harry was the one person who saved me in this dark. If he hadn’t come around keeping up on me and constantly reminding me that he wanted to be my friend and help me with whatever I was going though, I know that this blog wouldn’t exist. Because either I wouldn’t exist, or I would be in a totally different world and a totally different life. Things would have a dramatic difference if it wasn’t for Harry’s brotherly love. As the Coldplay song “Amsterdam” puts it, I was on the edge and tied to the noose, but he came along and he cut me loose. And he helped me walk away from the bridge. He promised me that he’d always be there for me no matter what happened.

One thing he also did for me was he organized a Secret Santa for my family during Christmas 2004. We were so far down in the hole that my family didn’t think we’d be having Christmas for the second year in a row. I was all right with this—mainly because I had lost all hope. But I knew that my little siblings were going to school and singing Christmas carols and go to friends houses and see lights and trees and presents…and then they’d come home to no tree and no lights, and no presents. Such an empty Christmas would be something they’d remember for the rest of their lives.

So night after night, we’d get doorbell-ditches of boxes on our doorstep. Boxes of food and presents, and even a tree. I later forced out a confession from Dan that Harry had organized the whole thing with him and some other friends: around at least ten people. It had cost them about $200 (they refuse to tell me even now and sometimes jokingly deny that they were involved, so I estimate). It cost them a lot of their time and money. But they did it for me.

And Harry did it because he couldn’t stand the thought of me being without a Christmas. You see, Harry lives in a world with certain peace and freedom and innocence. The things that exist in my everyday life such as gassing a school, kids getting pregnant, next-door neighbors taking drugs, friends attempting suicide left and right, people depending half their lives on one single action that you do…the life I lead filled with violence and danger and darkness is just not something that he can tolerate because it goes against his nature.

(And I know that the above things may be stuff you go through everyday. But I live in a place called Happy Valley/Pleasantville/Paradise. Utah Valley—Orem City especially—is filled with people with the “Happy Valley” mentality. In Orem, people think that you can’t get hurt. My life is out of the ordinary for someone like Harry. Not that he has this mentality—it’s just his nature to be that way. Maybe it’s his way of escaping his Canadian past, because I know of some secrets he’s got there, as well as in his personal life.)

All these things that Harry did for me I was extremely grateful for. Perhaps too grateful, though, because I loved to brag about how cool Harry was. And that really got on Harry’s nerves. Now he’s told me that he needs space away from me. He told me that right before my life got really dark—just when I need him most, he left me.

So, after all that analysis of A Separate Peace, I’ve gotta wonder: who jouced the branch? Me or Harry? I guess that to do that, I should determine who’s Gene and who’s Finny. Funny thing is, just like Gene at the end of the novel, I’m both.

I'll comment more fully in a later post.