Posted on by Liz

Trying

Your mom reached out to me last month. I was lying in my bed at 11:00 pm and I heard my phone’s notification sound. She misses you so much; she feels like she failed you. I told her that whenever she needed to talk, I was here. I miss you just as much.

I know it’s not the same; losing a friend is different than losing a child. But loss is loss and when you lose someone you really care about, talking to someone who loved them too is really helpful. So I hope your mom does reach out to me when she wants a reminder that you won’t be forgotten. I could use the reminder too.

She also told me that you stopped talking to me because you were ashamed of your addiction and you thought I hated you. I know that you were sick and your thoughts were clouded by substance abuse and mental illness, but I really hope – I have to – that you knew somehow, however deep down, I could never hate you. No matter what life choices you made, no matter who you surrounded yourself with, no matter who you loved, no matter what you did, I always cared about you. I could and would forgive you for anything and everything because you were my friend.

I wish you were still around to talk to. Our late night whispers over instant message will always be a memory I cherish. I miss you more than I could ever articulate in writing or out loud, but I will always continue to try.

Posted on by Liz

Identity

Nighttime. This is always when I think about you the most. We would stay up so late, talking about anything and everything until I was forced to accept the need for sleep. Even though somehow I knew I wasn’t the only one you sent late night messages too, I felt like it was only us up late, the rest of the room dark, only lit by the bright screens of our computers, typing, typing, typing. Like everything and everyone else was asleep and we could say anything we wanted and no one would know. Not that we talked about anything important. But it was special to me and I miss our midnight conversations.

I read an email you sent to a treatment facility today. It made my heart hurt to hear that your life was stressful, exhausting, and painful because of your addiction to heroin. It made me angry that there wasn’t anyone willing to accept you into a treatment program. It made me even sadder that the email you wrote sounded so you, so normal, like you never changed. I know you must have changed, though. We all do. And I haven’t spoken to you in four years. But, I need to hold on to the you that I know.

From reading comments online, it looks like you started going by your middle name. I see people who I have never heard of call you by that name in comments missing you, loving you, wondering why you had to leave so soon. I don’t know why you chose to stop going by your first name, but I liked to see that you signed your name to this email as Kelsey. This other name, this other identity, I like to think of as a separate entity. Someone that I don’t know. Someone I don’t have to mourn. Someone that doesn’t matter.

But I know you’re one in the same. And you’re gone. And I’ll never have you back.

Posted on by Liz

Hello

So far, you haven’t been in my dreams. But last night, I did dream of you. It was strange. My conscious mind somehow knew you were gone, but there you were, driving the car I was a passenger in. I don’t know where we were going or what I was doing in a car with you. But, we were having a conversation. We were talking about why you cut me out and if it was because of your drug use. I spoke to you like you were still doing it. For some reason, I told you that you needed to stop and you told me how your addiction began. You said that you were taking a different drug, not expecting it to be laced with heroin. It wasn’t something you sought out or even wanted to start in the first place. But once you had it once, you couldn’t stop. And then you were lost.

Dreams are such tricky business. I don’t think I’m psychic or that I was actually speaking with you last night. I’m sure it was just my own mind searching for answers, wishing I could have them for my own curiosity and closure. But I’d like to think my dream was right and that you didn’t want to do heroin and that you took it once by accident, mixed with a party drug or something. I’m not sure if that’s even possible, but it’s somehow preferable in my mind than believing you sought out a dangerous opioid while trying to self medicate your mental health.

When my dream ended, I don’t think we said goodbye. If we did, I don’t remember. That’s not really what I want though. I don’t want to say goodbye. I want to say hello. I haven’t said hello to you in such a long time. And I miss you so much.

Posted on by Liz

Lonely Wishes

For the past two days, I was alone in my house. My mother-in-law has moved in with us you see, so she and my husband went back to get the rest of her stuff. It was strange. Since we moved in, I had not had the house to myself. It was nice. Sure, I missed my husband, but I didn’t miss him as much as I thought. And I think that’s okay.

I’ve always liked being alone. It gives me time to recharge, to think, get things done. My sister is the complete opposite. She always like someone around, to be entertained, to be taken care of. I guess that’s the difference between older and younger siblings. My sister, from the time she entered this world, has never been alone. She always had me. I came into the world alone and got used to it before my sister was born. Psychology: nothing special, nothing new.

Did you like to be alone? You had a step-brother. Whenever I was over growing up, he was never home. Or if he was, he was in his room with the door closed. I don’t think I even saw his face. Just in pictures, in frames, around your parents’ house. Did that make you an only child? I know you loved attention. I know you liked talking to friends at all hours of the night. I wasn’t the only one who would message you at 1:00 am on a school night to share secrets and mundane details of our silly lives. Were you lonely? I wish I had asked these questions.

I wish a lot of things. So many things. We all do.

Posted on by Liz

Small

I have returned to obsessively watching Criminal Minds again. I love the first season. It has such unrealistic poetic justice. It’s great seeing the original cast in all of their original glory. The new seasons are so disappointing. Rewatching the old just reinforces how far the show has fallen. But here I am again, watching Mandy Patinkin take down an unsub by insulting the size of his penis. And I’ve never been prouder.

Here I am again, talking to you about my small life. I’ve always felt like my life was pretty small. I don’t know if I ever expressed this to you. I don’t think I have. Whenever you would talk about your life, my life seemed even smaller. That was okay; I’ve been content. I still am content.

The differences between us were so vast in a way. I was perfectly fine living my small life, with my small experiences, with my small mind. You wanted adventure and experiences. So, you moved to DC and became a stripper. We always talked about that future. I guess I always knew of your quiet desperation to escape. I was just young and ignorant and didn’t fully understand what you were running away from. Now I get it.

I’m sorry it took me so long.

Posted on by Liz

Strangers

One of your self professed favorite pastimes was stalking yourself on social media. Like most people, I think. I know that when I get bored of scrolling through my timeline on Facebook of my usual suspects’ pictures and memes and links, I go to my own page and look at my own pictures and memes and links. It’s very nostalgic and sometimes a little cringey, but I do it all the time. I’m assuming you found the same.

Now that you’re gone, I’ve taken on the task for you, stalking you on social media. Can you stalk someone after they’re gone? I don’t know. I looked at your Instagram for the thousandth time today. This time, I looked at the comments. So many business pages reaching out for brand deals and modeling opportunities. You are so beautiful. You were so beautiful. And your Instagram served as a resume for your appearance. A lot of thirsty individuals were there as well, quenching your desire for flattery but also unsettling at the same time. So many strangers.

But everyone who commented on your posts are strangers to me. What struck me most is how little I knew you at the end. The people you spoke to, the places you went, the job you worked – who was I to you anymore? Nothing. I was nothing. Seeing the people you called friends comment on your pictures, expressing sorrow at your loss and gratitude for having known you made me feel so tiny and insignificant.

It’s weird to be mourning the loss of a friendship that died so long ago, but also mourning the person who that friendship was with who left so recently. And mourning the loss of any reason for the death of that friendship. I can speculate forever and still never know for sure, but I do know that I wish that I could fix it.

I’ll never be able to fix it. And that’s the real tragedy of your loss.

Posted on by Liz

I keep rereading our old conversations. Over and over and over again. I get something new out of it each time. Today, I noticed you asked me six years ago if I ever watched Game of Thrones. I said no. You asked me a few times later too and I conveyed that I had no intention of watching it either.

My husband made me watch the entire series beginning this past March. I didn’t like it. I don’t know if it was because the hype surrounding the television show made my expectations higher than they would have been if I had just started watching the show from the beginning, but nevertheless, I was not impressed. From what you said me to me in that conversation though, you were.

It surprised me actually. While the show does have its fair share of violence and sex and beautiful men and women, which are things you lived for, it seems like it would have been below you in terms of the quality of writing and the amount of intelligence it requires for viewers to understand. I always assumed a show like Games of Thrones wouldn’t really pique your interest and would only be something you watched to please a boyfriend or lover. Maybe that’s how it started. Maybe he asked you to watch and then you got hooked. Maybe it became your guilty pleasure. I wonder if that’s how it was with the heroin too.

The series’s last episode airs tonight. I’ll be thinking of you. I’m always thinking of you.

Posted on by Liz

Outside

The weather is so nice today. The bluest sky, the eighty degree temperature… It reminds me of you. Your Instagram is full of poses outside, in a bikini, at the beach or by the pool. You sought it out above anything else. The attention you got was all you ever talked about. This obsession with attention was what drove you and in some way, it took away your mystery.

But in the end, looking at pictures of you makes me realize that I didn’t know you anymore. I’m not sure what you became in the last years. I know it wasn’t who I was friends with. I’m curious and afraid of what I found while searching for you online. So many nude photos, your long brown hair covering your chest. You looked so vulnerable, so desperate, like you finally let your addiction to attention take over. I guess that’s what it was. Vanity mixed with low self worth and confidence took over who you were and the friend I knew, the one who fought so hard against who she was, was gone.

And then you were gone too.

Posted on by Liz

Why.

Hello. It’s been over a month now. I can’t believe it. Time goes by so quickly when you’re preoccupied. Funny how life does that. It distracts you, puts a thousand things in front of you, and then you find yourself wondering what the fuck you were doing for the past thirty days…for the past thirty months. It certainly wasn’t anything productive.

Let me tell you about my life right now. I live in Florida. Yes, that’s right. I moved to Central Florida back in 2017. This August, I’ll have lived here for two years with my husband and two cats in a townhouse in a city located about forty five minutes away from Disney World. It’s hot and humid and it storms every afternoon in the summer and it’s wonderful. People don’t know how to drive properly in this state, but with it being the elderly capital of America, I don’t think anyone would expect any different.

I work in the office of a small business which is not a departure from what my life was up north. I have the weekends off so I can’t complain.

Anyway, that’s enough context. I don’t want to bore you with the mundanity that is always my life. It’s always the same and never interesting. Even when I thought it was interesting, it never measured up to the drama that was your constant reality. I must have reread our online conversations dozens of times in the past weeks and it amazes me how often a new boy was brought up by you. This one you like, this one you don’t, this one you wish liked you, this one stopped returning your texts… I always listened and gave you my advice but you never listened. That was just your way. And I respect that.

From the rereading, I noticed that I didn’t contribute in the same way you did. Shorter sentences, a lot of one word answers. It wasn’t that I didn’t care or that I was uninterested. A lot was going on in 2013 and 2014 and I just didn’t have the emotional capacity to take on any more at the time. I was going through a personal journey – one that I needed to go at alone. And it wasn’t easy for me to articulate that to anyone. We started speaking less and less and then when I got engaged, it stopped completely. I don’t know why. I will never know why.