Matt Golub was a very special person to me. When I look back on my life thus far, I can safely say that Matt has been one of the most influential people in creating the person that is here today. I won't try to deify him. I won't try to make him a paragon of a man who did everything right in his life. I will remember him as someone who taught me how to live spontaneously and for the moment, how to make me cry, and most importantly how to love.
Matt was the first non-blood related person I loved unconditionally. The day I discovered it was that fateful New Year's Day where he got drunk (Alison, Sue, Mary and Rob will remember this one for sure). I stunned myself with the revelation, and from that point forward I had to make a number of decisions. All of them centered around the question of how much I was willing to put myself on the line to support and love a person who was constantly at battle with his demons. I chose to throw myself full-throttle into things and got in over my head, multiple times.
I don't know how many of you know what it's like to be in love with someone that is so deep into things out of his control and out of YOUR control that you have no choice but to sit, watch, and let your heart break over and over and over again. My heartbreak wasn't solely from having this passenger seat approach to his problems. It was from knowing that there was such an amazing, intelligent, spontaneous, vibrant, caring human being that was being consumed by something intangible. I couldn't fight it, although I tried...HARD. I went to every source of help I could find. I took the bus home from college on weekends because he said he needed me. I abandoned my needs to try to find SOME WAY to help him. Sometimes I briefly succeeded and sometimes I did not. I don't want to paint the picture that I was always there...because I was not. You could say I was on a fishing line. Sometimes I threw myself out there, getting pretty far, but eventually I would have to reel myself back in. In reeling myself back in I had to live with whatever repercussions my actions would have on him. Not an easy thing to do.
Once Matt and I had finished with our relationship saga, we were able to start up a friendship of sorts. Throughout my college years we would email or IM sporadically. Cutting myself off from Matt felt nearly impossible to do. It thrilled me that he was able to come to my wedding. There was no finer way to have closure on everything than to have him there, at my wedding, and happy for me. I have him on tape, HAPPY! And yet, it was the last time I saw him, spoke to him, and communicated with him in any way, a regret I will carry with me.
When I went to the funeral and his mother told me that she buried him in the suit he wore to my wedding because he had been so proud of the outfit, I felt a horrible tear run through me and broke down. He will spend eternity immortalized in a suit he wore to my wedding...MY wedding...because that outfit and that moment meant something to him...to me. Symbolic, I feel, in many ways.
Matt had extraordinary potential in every way there was to have it. He brought me unbelievable happiness, no matter how short-lived. He was my "first" for nearly everything and I was his. You can't just forget someone like that. You can't just forget Matt.
I've learned so much from Matt. It is from him that I learned how dangerous drugs could be. It is from him I learned to take people's feelings of depression seriously. It is from him that I began truly developing my values. It is from him that I learned how to do crazy things. It is from him that I began to learn how to love and be loved. It is from him that I learned how to cry until my eyes were nearly sealed shut from missing his presence in the world.
I have taken these things with me and will do so forever. They have made me a more sensitive, sympathetic, and caring person. When I see students of mine who are running up against the same obstacles Matt ran into, I throw myself into their lives and try to help them and their families however I can. In this way, I hope to try to save some young people from going through the horrible trials and tribulations Matt had to endure. I will never cease to try to help everyone that I can and use my experiences, gained only through knowing Matt, to make their lives a little better and to simply BE THERE for them.
To all those who loved Matt, I'm sure you can relate to some of the things I've said. To all those of you who never knew him, I'm sorry you got to miss out on one of the most real people I have ever had the privilege to know. G-d bless you Matt. I miss you now and I always will. Catch you in my dreams.
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