Blindsided...

I'm sitting here bleary-eyed. My gut feels like someone just shoved their fist into it. My heart has sunk so low, so very sad.

Micifus Phil has left us.

One of my two 'blog heros' (the other being Matt at DTB) has decided to stop his blog. I knew this was coming, in a way. His posts have been more and more mundane, more infrequent, for the month of January. He was detaching himself from his blog, and it showed. But I hoped it was just a phase, something that was distracting him, and that he would return to tell us the next chapter in his newly out life. It looks like we're never going to know what happens next.

I'm a little surprised at my reaction, really. I don't know Phil, have never e-mailed him, never IM-ed him...but I picked up his blog during my period of soul searching back in December, and I felt like I connected to him. He's a lot of things I wish I were: part of 'the team' at school, well adapted to universiy life, dare I say popular in his social circles...the all-American college boy with a heart of gold.

In the days where I felt like I had no chance of turning my life around, I would read Micifus and be filled with emotion. Joy at the fact that a closeted boy had found a 'tkbf', and run around the East Coast with him and his friends. Relief when his friends and ulitmately family accepted his sexuality. Sexuality at the sometimes explicit posts detailing his various romps. Jealousy when he seemed to finally be putting all his pieces together, and his fractured life formed a beautiful picture. And the secret wish to be a fly on the wall the time he and Matt slept together.

Really, it's difficult to string all these feelings together about why I'm so upset. I just seem to have developed a very deep respect and admiration for Phil and how he's handeled his last 8 months. I get so frustrated with myself, being older than he is, realizing that I'm nowhere near where I want to be, yet this 18-year-old wippersnapper has finally learned to love himself and pull off the stereotypical college life too.

That all sounds like petty jealousy, and I freely admit I'm jealous of his life (for the most part). But it's out of complete admiration and love.

Back in December, I'd fostered a crazy notion that I could somehow befriend Phil and actually get to meet this amazing human being. I daydreamed about getting to know him online, then going to visit him in Chicago some day, actually getting to see what his life is like.

One of my biggest struggles right now is trying to define what I want my next year of life to be like. I've got my experiences on one hand, and the stereotypical Hollywood-college influence on the other. Phil was an amazing blend of the two: the athlete-friend-of-all who also had self-doubt and a host of other issues he had to deal with. He was a real person, not some reality show, who because of his blog was able to show us his deepest feelings and emotions.

I don't know why I'm so shook up by the fact he's gone. The biggest lessons were things that I had read in the pre-December postings, other than his coming out to his family. But it's like a friend you just don't want to loose touch of after school ends...there are still stories and expereinces to tell that could and would shape how others look at their lives. Sadly, for the time being, that's not going to happen.

Still, I'm going to e-mail him one of these days. Tell him how much his blog meant to me. Attempt to strike up a friendship with a boy I don't even know. Beg him for advice on how he's gotten where he's gotten. Express my deepest thanks for his inspiration.

Goodbye Micifus Phil, take care of yourself, and always know there's people who wouldn't be the same had they not read your words.