on june 3rd, i will be celebrating the birthday of my significant other and i will also be honoring the sudden death of someone i loved many years ago more than my own life. she died in a car accident while driving my car and i was her co-pilot. my sports car excited her, so whenever we would travel somewhere, i would always let her do the driving. we had plans. the next semester of college we were going to attend the some school. i had my scholarship. she had her own plans on how to afford the tuition fees. our world was ahead of us and our lives together were only just beginning. that week i was to move in with her. it was only just a formality, because i slept at her apartment everynight and we spent most of the days and nights together. i had become her world.

she told me that she felt i was the only person she could trust. that everyone just wanted something from her but didn’t give anything in return. she told me i was different, that i wanted to give her what she needed and did not ask for anything in return. that isn’t totally true. i loved her and wanted her to be loved without reservation. i didn’t want her to feel like i was with her for what i could get from her. she was a special woman that i would do anything for, anythng at all. our lives were ahead of us.

but the fates were not on our side that night of june 3rd. while driving in the opposite direction from home on the freeway, to see a woman whom she had broken off with in order to free her life from those who wanted to own her. we were going toward danger. this woman hated me and wanted me out of my friend’s life. she would do anything to see that this would happen. on the way to this woman’s place we entered into a dimension that was other worldly. it was just moments before we crashed into the guard rail that was just after exit 13 on the freeway. the impact that the car made and the speed that we were traveling, caused our car to fly into the air, go into the motions of a roll and flip for over 150 feet. the endless crashing sounds, the blackness that surrounded us, made it feel like an eternity, that it would never stop. eventully, it did. suddenly, there was total silence all around us. we were in a complete blackness. my senses were distorted. i felt that i was dead. that the world had ended. i managed to get some sense of awareness. i called out my fried’s name. no answer or sound was returned. i couldn’t move at first. then my survival instincts literally kicked in. my feet started kicking at anything that i could make contact with. it happened to be the passesnger door. i was able, after a struggle, to push it open and maneuver myself out of the car. it was upside down. when i was out and able to stand, i didn’t check myself for injuries but just rushed to the other side of the car to find out how my friend was doing. her door wasn’t there or my memory isn’t clear but there she was lying upside down, trapped in her seat. i reached in to feel if she was breathing. her lungs were expanding her chest. people and other cars were stopping. the police and ambulances had been contacted. there was this one woman who took ahold of me while the rescue people were trying to get my friend out from the smashed car. i struggled with this woman but she wouldn’t let me go. she told me: “let the people work to rescue your friend.” but i couldn’t see what they were doing.

they came for me, to take me in the ambulance to the hospital. i asked about my friend. they told me she was going in a different ambulance and that we would all meet up at the same hospital. time flashed by and the next thing i knew i was getting x-rays. the questions from me started. i wanted to know about what was happening with my friend. no matter who i asked, no one would tell me anything. there answers were always that i should talk to the doctor when he came to see me. finally the doctor arrived. while he did an examination on me in silence, i broke the quiet and asked: “how was “****” (my friend)? the doctor said: “she is not here.” but i told him the ambulance person said that they were bringing us both to this hospital. sounding bothered and frustrated, he blurted out: “no, you don’t understand, she is dead.” blunt and direct as can be, he slapped me in the face with those three words: “she is dead.”

my brain exploded inside of my head. all of my controls were lost and i started to scream. the scream started but it wouldn’t stop. everyone in that er tried to calm me down but i was lost inside of pure, anguishing pain.

a priest came to talk to me, telling me to calm down and to be quiet. that the words i shouted through the screams were unnecessary to speak out loud. those words were: “i love her. i love her. i love her.” he told me that i didn’t want to expose myself as a ‘homosexual’ to the world. he whispered the word “homosexual.” i told him i was not going to hide my feelings for her. that i loved her and there was nothing wrong with that. then angrily, i told him to leave. basically, i ordered him to leave me alone and go.

the police came next. they must have thought i was out of my mind when i answered there questions about what i thought caused the accident. i told them her old girl friend had someone tamper with the car. that she had tried to kill us both but she was only successful in killing my friend. they said they would check into it. eventually, another friend of mine and her family showed up in the middle of the night to come and get me. by that time i had quieted down but i felt destroyed inside.

the days that followed, my therapist visited me, my father acted like a jackass about my feelings for my friend who was now dead and he questioned me about my supposed sexual relationship with my gay male friend who came to be with me for the funeral. he was with me the first night that i first saw her across a dance floor and fell in love with her.

the funeral was a nightmare.the cementary was worse. i couldn’t get out of the car. i broke down sobbing again. eventually, with assistance walking, i went over to the grace site. later, i repeated the same scene outside of the wake before and afterwards. i was taking valium and also drinking at the wake. everywhere i went i kept falling down on my knees and sobbing. i couldn’t bare the pain. when we all got back to my parents house, once again, down on my knees in the driveway crying. i could barely contain myself. inside the house, i kneeled down in the living room, still crying. another female friend and my mother started pushing valium down my throat. no one knew what to do for me. my crying was out of control.

at the funeral parlor, when i was sitting behind my friends family, i heard her mother say: “why was it my daughter and not her? my daughter was special. she should not have died.” well, i felt the same way. why was i still alive? i put a great deal of thought, meditation, smoking the pot my mother swore later on that she never bought for me, and reading the correct passages from The Tibetan Book of the Dead, i wanted to help guide my friend through all the places one goes through before the ultimate place is reached. i wanted to help her try to understand where she was going.

the answer to the question, why was i still alive? there must be some grand purpose for me to be left here on earth? my friend’s death drastically changed the course of my life. there are no what ifs’ except in one’s imagination.

i found out a few months later, while speaking to a woman who knew about the white and black arts, often referred to as magic, that a ritual that my friend’s former girlfriend and this dark, strange man performed on the two of us, was to cast a spell of death. not my friend’s death, but it was meant for me. this all may sound quite strange. it did to me at the time. but i have had time to reflect and all the pieces fit together. my friend wasn’t suppose to die, i was. her former girlfriend wanted me out of the way, in a complete way. i am too protected by my guardian angels but my friend that was killed was too vulnerable. the first time we were alone together, she told me of a dream that she had where she was killed. a few months later, i had the same dream and sat bolt upright in her bed. the dream was the exact events that happened the night of the “accident.” when i told the police that someone had killed my friend. i thought i was being delirious but there was more truth in my words that night then i even imagined.

i have never forgotten that night. it was too powerfully etched into my mind and memory. So when i met the woman i live with now in New Haven, CT, she was visiting from another state. i got to know her through Yale Lesbians and my co-producing a Gay & Lesbian Radio Show at the Yale Campus Radio Station. i felt extremely attracted to her. then during a night at a New Haven Gay & Lesbian bar, while we were talking, she told me the date of her birthday. it was the same date, June 3rd, as the night the woman i was in love with died. i looked upon this as a monumental message of fate that we were meant to meet. later on, i realized we were serendipitously brought together so that we could spend our lives together. we had an amazing love growing within of us for each other.