Anti-Climacus

QUOTE: Andre Sullivan, on his anniversary:

"At times it feels as if that whole era is a strange part of near history. The last friend who died was seven years ago. Here in Provincetown, once a war zone, you can feel life returning in full. And yet I always succumb to depression at this time. It's totally unconscious. I have no conscious reason to feel blue. It's as if my body remembers the impact of that awful news received at a time when it really felt like a death sentence, and today shudders at the memory. But perhaps my depression is about the guilt of surviving when so many didn't, and in other parts of the world, aren't. I can close my eyes now and see the faces of my young friends who died - forever young and hopeful. Their ghosts hover in this town - on the beach at sunset, in corners of bars, as the sunlight rises on shingles. My close friend, Patrick, died at 31. What conceivable justice is there in my having eight more years than he ever had? Man, I still miss him so much. And so, in some ways, I'm proud of my unconscious remembering. I might have careened on obliviously without that psychic, physical memory, sending me into melancholy, withdrawal, sleep. And it serves to remind me why the struggle for the dignity for gay men and women is in large part fueled by the bequest of these lost ones. They urge us forward as we look wistfully back. And then I realize this isn't depression I feel. It's just sadness. Sadness that they are not here any more, edged only by the faith that one day I will be with them once more. "