heinous
"I don't understand. I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean I knew her, and then she's, there's just a body, and I don't understand why she can't just get back in it and not be dead anymore. It's stupid. It's mortal and stupid, and, and Xander crying and not talking, and I was having fruit punch and I thought, well, Joyce will never have any more fruit punch, ever. And she'll never have eggs, or yawn, or brush her hair, not ever and no one will explain to me why."
-Anya, in a Buffy episode
No one will ever be able to explain the why. I will never understand.
My best friend died this morning. She was climbing around on a roof at 2 am (if you knew her, this would surprise you not at all). She slipped, she fell, she died. That's it. The end.
I will never talk to her again. Never hug her again. Never punch her in the face because she's apologised too damn many times for me to take (I warned her. At the time, she was apologising for being alive. For breathing. For moving her purse. For being too slow getting on the train. She was incredibly depressed at the time, and I told her that if she apologised one more time, I would punch her in the face. It only took 30 seconds for her to apologise again. I glared and told her that was her warning. Two minutes later, I punched her in the face. She thanked me. It's as good a descriptor of our friendship as any other).
We met at a picnic in August, 20 years ago. I was 11. She was 9. I had braids down to my waist, and was as awkward as could be. She had a wild mane of long, tangled, bushy blond hair, and was wild and crazy and adventurous. We warily became friends, then our parents decided that it would be nice for us girls to spend some time together. I went over to her house. We built fires and got thoroughly dirty and her mom threw us in the bathtub together. Somehow, after that day, we were friends.
We drifted apart in the first part of high school: she was much cooler than me, and knew it. We still talked, but less often.
Her family started to fall apart, and her house became an unpleasant place to be. My father is a wise man. In his wisdom, he told Leah that if she needed to talk or a place to escape, our house was always open. He told me that no matter what time she called, day or night, I could take the time and spend it with her.
We took advantage of that opportunity to it's fullest extent. We went to Lake Michigan almost every week to watch the sunrise. We were on the eastern shore, looking out to the west -towards Chicago, so the sun rose behind our backs, but it was still magical. We often had to hurry to get home before school started. We went to Chicago as often as we had time and $20. We had figured it out: there was a place that we could park all day for $2, $10 filled the gas tank, and that left us with $8 for lunch. My wonderful brother lent us his car as often as we wanted to borrow it, and we would drive around and inevitably get lost in Michigan. We listened to music loudly: our lives started developing a soundtrack. The soundtrack never stopped growing, and there are a thousand songs (at least) that I can't hear without thinking of her.
We lived a crazy life together. There was never an adventure that we encountered that we turned down -ok; there was never one that she would turn down, and five minutes later, she would have talked me into following along. She was like that. She could talk you into doing a thousand things that you never otherwise would have done.
We hitch-hiked. We sat under trains. We let random people take us strange and wondrous places. We got proposed to by men that had just left jail. We talked to strangers. We relied on the kindness of thugs and weirdos. We ate strange food, went to houses down a dirt track in the middle of the woods, broke into federal property, lit cigarettes by gas tanks, hiked through mud and ice skated in the streets. With all of this, it never ended badly when we were together (well, except for that one time we blew up the car and it was -20 out, and my parents were really upset with us after we got safely home...).
She lived life to it's fullest, and dragged me along for the ride. I am more adventurous, wilder, more imaginative, and live more fully because of her. She was my evil twin, yang to my yin, strength to my weakness, wildly imaginative and creative and loving and wise and bitter and snarky and above all, funny.
She made sure that those around her knew that she loved them. She was as generous with her heart as she was adventurous with her spirit. I will always be grateful that my last words to her were "I love you", and that those were her last words to me. Those are the words that we ended every conversation with, and neither of us doubted for a minute that the other meant it with all of their heart.
My life will never be the same. I was stronger just knowing she was there -even if there was multiple hours away. I don't know how to live without her. I've never had to, and now I will, and I don't know if I can. I will always miss her, and always need her, and always want her in my life -there is so much that will be so much less vibrant without her to share it with.
-Anya, in a Buffy episode
No one will ever be able to explain the why. I will never understand.
My best friend died this morning. She was climbing around on a roof at 2 am (if you knew her, this would surprise you not at all). She slipped, she fell, she died. That's it. The end.
I will never talk to her again. Never hug her again. Never punch her in the face because she's apologised too damn many times for me to take (I warned her. At the time, she was apologising for being alive. For breathing. For moving her purse. For being too slow getting on the train. She was incredibly depressed at the time, and I told her that if she apologised one more time, I would punch her in the face. It only took 30 seconds for her to apologise again. I glared and told her that was her warning. Two minutes later, I punched her in the face. She thanked me. It's as good a descriptor of our friendship as any other).
We met at a picnic in August, 20 years ago. I was 11. She was 9. I had braids down to my waist, and was as awkward as could be. She had a wild mane of long, tangled, bushy blond hair, and was wild and crazy and adventurous. We warily became friends, then our parents decided that it would be nice for us girls to spend some time together. I went over to her house. We built fires and got thoroughly dirty and her mom threw us in the bathtub together. Somehow, after that day, we were friends.
We drifted apart in the first part of high school: she was much cooler than me, and knew it. We still talked, but less often.
Her family started to fall apart, and her house became an unpleasant place to be. My father is a wise man. In his wisdom, he told Leah that if she needed to talk or a place to escape, our house was always open. He told me that no matter what time she called, day or night, I could take the time and spend it with her.
We took advantage of that opportunity to it's fullest extent. We went to Lake Michigan almost every week to watch the sunrise. We were on the eastern shore, looking out to the west -towards Chicago, so the sun rose behind our backs, but it was still magical. We often had to hurry to get home before school started. We went to Chicago as often as we had time and $20. We had figured it out: there was a place that we could park all day for $2, $10 filled the gas tank, and that left us with $8 for lunch. My wonderful brother lent us his car as often as we wanted to borrow it, and we would drive around and inevitably get lost in Michigan. We listened to music loudly: our lives started developing a soundtrack. The soundtrack never stopped growing, and there are a thousand songs (at least) that I can't hear without thinking of her.
We lived a crazy life together. There was never an adventure that we encountered that we turned down -ok; there was never one that she would turn down, and five minutes later, she would have talked me into following along. She was like that. She could talk you into doing a thousand things that you never otherwise would have done.
We hitch-hiked. We sat under trains. We let random people take us strange and wondrous places. We got proposed to by men that had just left jail. We talked to strangers. We relied on the kindness of thugs and weirdos. We ate strange food, went to houses down a dirt track in the middle of the woods, broke into federal property, lit cigarettes by gas tanks, hiked through mud and ice skated in the streets. With all of this, it never ended badly when we were together (well, except for that one time we blew up the car and it was -20 out, and my parents were really upset with us after we got safely home...).
She lived life to it's fullest, and dragged me along for the ride. I am more adventurous, wilder, more imaginative, and live more fully because of her. She was my evil twin, yang to my yin, strength to my weakness, wildly imaginative and creative and loving and wise and bitter and snarky and above all, funny.
She made sure that those around her knew that she loved them. She was as generous with her heart as she was adventurous with her spirit. I will always be grateful that my last words to her were "I love you", and that those were her last words to me. Those are the words that we ended every conversation with, and neither of us doubted for a minute that the other meant it with all of their heart.
My life will never be the same. I was stronger just knowing she was there -even if there was multiple hours away. I don't know how to live without her. I've never had to, and now I will, and I don't know if I can. I will always miss her, and always need her, and always want her in my life -there is so much that will be so much less vibrant without her to share it with.