Douglas. There aren’t that many Douglas’ out there. I don’t think I have come across any so far. Other than him. Take this with all the bias that is my thoughts, but Douglas is a name that had to have been planned. It’s not a name you can just pick out of thin air. The more common ones, yes. Chris. Kevin. Brian. These are at the tip of our tongues when it comes to names. And even most names that seem to be unique usually turn out not to be in the long term. Jayden must have seemed like a unique name at first. But how many kids do you know called Jayden? Douglas, that’s a name that was planned. And that to me seems to indicate one thing. That he was wanted. That he wasn’t a mistake. That his existence was intentional.
Shortened Names
But he wasn’t Douglas to me or the few people around him. He was Doug. Or Dougy - this only makes sense if you hear someone say it. There’s something to be said about shortened forms of names. It’s an indication that someone said your name enough times that they didn’t want to say it in full anymore. Someone called out your name enough times to want to shorten the burden of calling out your name. It’s an indication that someone out there was around you enough. That someone out there cared for you. That someone out there loved you. He was Doug to us. Nothing more. Nothing less.
The Climb Up
He was a quiet guy. Quiet enough to notice that he was quiet. Most people who self assign as quiet aren’t really that quiet. But he was. At least at first. Maybe it was because he didn’t have anything to say to me. Maybe it was because I didn’t exist in his life yet. But he was quiet. And he kept to himself. A solitary animal. In an environment where everyone wanted to be part of a clique. A cool clique. In a world where we were increasingly becoming obsessed with the lives of others. He seemed to exist in his own world. Separate from all of us. Whenever we someone like this, we automatically assume that this person thinks they are better than us. Those of us insecure in our skins of course. And for a minute there, I did.
He was decidedly himself in many ways. For one, he was neat. He was tidy. He was clean. He was all this in an environment which offered no incentive to be all this. We were a bunch of men living in prefabs. Toilets were always clogged. Hallways were always dirty. You lived in a room with at least two other people. There were bedbugs. There were occasional rats the size of cats. It was fucking chaos. The wild west. And yet he seemed to be separate from the rest of us. Maybe my memory is lying to me. But this is how I remember him. Long before we spoke our first sentences to each other. Long before he told me I have a cocoon.
Smoking on that Ex Pack
He smoked. Not anything though. Dunhills. If he was going to smoke, it had to be the good shit. He was conscious of the health risks of doing so. He did it anyways. And he was respectful enough to never do it in your presence. He’d excuse himself to go smoke. And he did this when the interaction was ending. He smoked in a world where fewer and fewer people smoked. The world smoked less, not because of the future dangers to health. Man is very rarely incentivized by future consequences or rewards. The world smoked less because we had managed to stigmatize the habit. To make it be disgusting. And I thought it was. But he did it anyway.
He was a critical thinker. He was pretty good at picking out fallacies in my own thinking. In other people’s thinking. And he wasn’t afraid to do so. Because he was, at core, respectful, and could do so in a respectful manner. And he wouldn’t do in the way that others do it. Where they pick out things that you can easily clap pack at. But in the way that made you stop in your tracks, and question yourself. Part of that is because he was very good at listening. Part of that was because he was an avid reader. Active listening allows you to pick out where to attack. Reading makes you articulate. He was a good listener, and he was articulate. Two things that made him formidable. We had long discussions. We had long arguments. We’d sometimes lay on to a close friend of mine - Gift - about his faith. And for a while later, I felt guilty about it. But I think it only served to strengthen his faith. Because you have to be well armed to go against someone like Doug. And he Gift made sure he was. That can only be a good thing. And so whether you won or lost, you came out just a little bit smarter.
Don’t Ever Say That Again
He forced me to reconsider my stance on many things. One of them was something I hadn’t ever considered. One day, I made a statement that I would never consider suicide. That it was a foolish thing to do. He rarely got mad. But in that moment I could tell that that statement hit him a certain way. He straight up told me not to make such kind of statement ever again. That I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Maybe he said that to me because he had stood at that edge. Maybe more than once. And he knew what standing on that edge felt like. And he was right. Because a while later, while I didn’t stand on it, I considered it. And it didn’t seem so foolish to me anymore.
He asserted that he wouldn’t bring a child into this world. Not into this fucked up world, he said. But the problem wasn’t the world. It was him. It was because he had a belief that doing so would just serve to progress the suffering that he carried with him. People’s opinions are a reflection of their world. And his world was pain. His existence was nothing but pain. He was sparing the little one that would come after him. His ideal future was a cabin in the woods. Isolation. Where his pain was his own. No one else’s.
Existence
He wrote. Way before I had the idea to create this blog. At a time when we were more concerned with girls, he wrote. He had a blog. He submitted pieces to newspapers. And they published some. He wrote in an abstract manner. Like his mind was moving way faster than his hands could. He cooked. Every night, at a particular time, he cooked. He had a routine. And he stuck to it. And he watched niche series and movies. Stuff that was hard to recommend to most people. Stuff that you only recommend to someone on the same spectrum of weirdness as you. Some shows that to this day, are at the top of my list.
And then he went on a downward spiral. A spiral that took him to the streets of town, where for a time, he knew as his home. When your existence is nothing but pain, it’s hard to continue…. existing. And yet he did. Through all that, he still did. He must have found something to hold on to. Something strong enough to make his continued existence worthwhile. What it is, I don’t know. But I do know this. Those who are bold enough to spend their life facing the darkness, are the first ones who will spot the light.