By Wyatt L. Stayner

Nine years ago, my close friend James Carter Zwack died. James loved me, even though he probably shouldn’t have. I wanted to be friends with his older brother, Paul, when I moved from Vermont to Birmingham, Alabama at age 5. One of the first things I did in our house was yell at some boys walking by. My mom thinks I called them “turkeys” or “poopooheads” or maybe both. She told me I had to apologize or I wouldn’t be able to see the new “Powerangers" movie. I mustered enough courage to walk down the street and apologize. Turns out they hadn’t heard me. They invited me to play basketball. They were my first friends in Birmingham.

James was around my age, but Paul was seven years older and therefore cooler. For a while, I hung with Paul. Then he probably got tired of me because, after all, I was younger, and therefore less cool. So I switched to hanging with James and Micah, who were about my age. We lived on the same street. We played backyard football weekly. We climbed in the creek down the street. We did all kinds of skateboard and BMX stunts, and James always led the way because, most of the time, it seemed like he was afraid of nothing.

James and Micah were a grade below me, so when I hit high school, I saw them less. And then I started to isolate myself because side effects from the anxiety and depression medication I was taking started to dominate my life, and made the anxiety and depression worse. My appetite increased. My stamina decreased. My weight increased. My confidence decreased. I peaked at 260 pounds in high-school, where I quickly learned that being an obese teenager is hard. I had to be funny because humor was my only pause from obesity. But I couldn’t just be funny; I had to be endlessly funny because the moment I stopped being funny was the moment I went back to being obese. And I needed to have thick skin, because sometimes I wouldn’t be as quick as I needed to be or as funny as I needed to be, and I would go back to being obese again. And then people would make fun of me for how I looked. How I had two chins. How I had boobs, not a chest. How I wore baggy clothes to hide behind. I didn’t like the way people talked about my body, or how that made me feel, so I went from an anxious and depressed kid to a severely anxious, depressed and angry kid.

I stopped doing homework. My GPA hovered around 2.0 freshmen and sophomore years. I couldn’t leave my bed in the morning. I missed school. I acted out in class. I got kicked out of one class for an entire semester. I isolated myself even more. I went an entire year without really seeing James. And then we hung out again. 

In my junior year of high school, our mutual friend Carter fell ill, so I stopped to visit him, and James was there. I remember almost nothing about the visit, except that it felt like we had never been apart, and that it was the last time we were together. It seemed like the start of a reconnection. Instead, two weeks later, my sister burst through my door sobbing early on a Sunday to say that James had died in a car accident. Which meant that on Nov. 9, 2008, one of my best friends died, and I had missed the last year of his life. 

Now it has been nine years without James. In those years, I graduated high school, and moved across the country to attend the University of Oregon, where I didn’t know any students. I was too ashamed and anxious to live in the dorms because of my weight, so I lived in an off-campus apartment. I thought I would make friends, I never had a visitor, or even a friend my age. I had family friends in Eugene, so I ate dinner with them frequently. Their presence kept me going. But I didn’t have a typical college experience. I never went to a party freshmen and sophomore years. I never hung out outside of class. I called my parents every night, and sometimes I cried. I thought about moving home. I got into TV shows, and the characters on those shows became my community, my friends. I was deeply lonely, and started to believe I wasn’t worth hanging out with. Sometimes I would lie in bed daydreaming that when I woke up the next morning, all the weight would be gone. It would just magically disappear overnight, and I wouldn’t be ashamed or anxious anymore because I would like my body. I would feel free to let out everything I love about myself — my humor, my kindness, my knowledge, my empathy, my joy — instead of holding it in. 

My only social activity was playing basketball. Weight shed accidentally at first. Then over the summer, I picked up running and began to eat healthier. When I returned to Eugene junior year at a slimmed-down 180 pounds, I moved to a new, more communal, dorm-like complex. On my first day there I made my first friends of college, and later that night, I went to my first party. I’ve moved three times since graduating college, so I’m prepared for the hard work of making new friends. I always ask for a phone number after meeting someone I like. I invite myself to things. I invite others out as much as possible. I write unnecessarily long, and (hopefully) hilarious emails inviting co-workers out. I am goofy. I let people know that I like hanging out with them, and why I like hanging out with them. There is never a good reason to hold love in. I wish I could give James love. I wish his family and friends could, too. If I could let James know the tiny, unique details I loved about him, it’d sound like this.  

James had brown hair. James ran like a chicken. James was a wrestler. And he had the perfect wiry, flexible frame for it. James was named after President Jimmy Carter, and he got a letter from President Carter because of it. James had a red rope in his room, and we used to swing from it. The only time I ever believed in ghosts was the time James and I were playing guitar. He set his guitar down but it kept playing while we ran away screaming. James accidentally sat on a gerbil once and killed it. James liked to order pizza with no sauce, and we made fun of him for it. As a kid, James would greet me at his front door on Saturday mornings in nothing but tighty whities, braces and headgear. At age 12, Micah heard James say his favorite three things were “sex, drugs and rock n’ roll.” James had an older brother, so he knew all the cuss words first. James had a laugh that hijacked his whole body. James always went with the flow — sometimes too much. We probably should have done more of what James wanted to do. James seemed fearless. And he was. James loved to skateboard. James loved risk. James lived at 100 mph, because he wanted to get to as much stuff as possible. James was destined to pick up some scars and break some bones. Truth be told, James was probably destined to scare the crap out of us a few times. But James was also probably destined to amaze us. James made friends with everyone because he discovered what you loved about yourself, and loved it just as much as you did. James would invite my tiny, younger sister to play football with us. James was inclusive. James was physically affectionate with guy friends when most guys were too cool for love. James was compassionate. He quit wrestling, and told his parents it was because he didn’t like having to pin someone. James enjoyed reality shows about hospitals and emergency rooms. James loved to know how things worked. James wanted to be a nurse. I wish I could have met Nurse Zwack. 

What I have left of James is his love, and how it makes be better. James’ family, Connie, John and Paul, will never see the ways in which James would have grown, but they can see my growth, and I can tell them about my life, and the good I do, and the fun I have, and the places I go and the friends I make. They can know the influence James has, and will forever have, on me. And they can know that James has, and will forever have, influence on countless others. And they can know that James did make his friends better people. When the old die, we celebrate the life they lived. When the young die, we mourn the life they didn’t get to live. I know James did amazing things in life. I know he lived it fully. I know he lived it loving. And I know he lived it loved. I just wish he could have lived it longer.