It hurts to say Goodbye. It hurts more to keep Moving Forward.
I’ve lost so many people in my life. Family members, friends, loved ones, and I just keep moving. In August of 2023, I lost a good friend from High School; she was one of the most amazing people I had ever met, and I don’t think she even realized how important she was. So, I’d like to take a minute to tell you about her, to keep her memory alive. So, let’s talk about that, together.
Fall, 2019:
I was a Junior in high school. Every day, I would grab food from the loud, packed lunchroom. The room was so small, bodies of hormonal teenagers pressed shoulder to shoulder. It boomed with noise as different cliques conversed about the latest in town news, sportsball scores, and relationship drama.
Disconnected from this experience was me, sitting on the floor outside the cafeteria in the long, empty hallway. I had a spot I’d go to every day next to the quiet school office doors. There wasn’t a single other person in sight. It was peaceful.. and yet, in a strange way, lonely.
Until one fateful day, a blonde girl with bright sea-blue eyes, freckles, and ice white hair turned around the corner. She wore a long black skirt and an oversized flannel shirt. Around her neck lay a golden necklace of a fallen angel with its wings breaking off. Roman numerals were tattooed just under her neck, though what the date symbolized to her was a mystery to me.
At the time, I thought “She looks like an angel”, and though she was an angel in my eyes, I’m sure she wouldn’t have described herself that way. For about two weeks, I sat in my usual spot, the long, empty hallway echoing with every movement. Across from me sat this mystery woman. I grew up in this small town. I didn’t know everyone’s name, but surely I ’ve recognized her face before? Why didn’t I know anything about her? Was she new? How had I not heard of a new person attending the school? I guess I HAD been pretty out of the loop in regards to news. Friendships weren’t exactly easy to find lately.. Perhaps I should build up the courage to talk to her. I could just ask her what her name was. This wasn’t the question I had been most interested in finding out, but it’d be a nice icebreaker. Truthfully, I wanted to ask her what the tattoo meant. Why did she look down and cover her face when walking through the hallways? Why did she sit alone? Did she have friends? Why did I sit alone? Did she want friends? Did I want a friend?
The more I pondered her image, the more I wondered whether or not it was right for me to engage in discourse with her. After all, I myself chose this spot specifically to get away from the loud noise of melodrama happening just a few doors down. Perhaps she had chosen this spot as well. I didn’t want to disturb her during her free period if she just wanted some alone time. Everyone deserves some nice alone time, and I didn’t know what her home situation was like. Perhaps this was her only chance to have some peace and quiet every day. Or perhaps I was simply overthinking all of this? This girl has never ever looked at me before. Why am I putting so much thought into her? Why am I spiraling about her?
I tried distracting myself, but she was right there. Just a few feet away. An angel dressed in oversized clothing, staring blankly at the ground. Not on her phone. Not eating food. Just, letting the seconds count by. Her eyes twitched slightly, almost like she was drawing something in her head. There was something more to her. I didn’t know whether knowing the answers would satisfy my hunger or even what the cost would be for gaining this knowledge. What if I embarrassed myself? What if I hurt her? Though the potential rejection terrified me, I was curious. No. More than that.. I was nosey. I needed to know more. But how to approach her?
Monday Morning: The icy air whistled as I entered the school’s front doors. My lips chattered. My ears burned, not from heat, but from cold. I walked cautiously through the maze of hallways next to my half-asleep zombie-like peers. Though music blasted loudly through my earbuds, the high-pitched squeaks of the slick, wet floor still pierced my ear. Damn, cheap headphones. Walking into class, I tried to hype myself up. “Today will be a good day. Today will be a good day…”
I sat down in my seat for my first class of the day, not even noticing that my teacher, who normally greets students gleefully and tries to help wake people up to revivify the classroom, was uncharacteristically silent. The school’s routine prerecorded morning announcements kicked in.
“Good morning, everyone. Today is Monday, [Month, Year]. Here are our morning announcements. Over the weekend, the football team played against—”
A long pause. The students looked around at each other in confusion, except for one tall student in the back of my classroom, who looked at my teacher somberly. My teacher reciprocated the look. Then, the principal cleared her throat over the intercom. The Principal’s voice cracked as she spoke.
“Nathan Everette passed away last night. I’m very sorry to anyone who knew him. He was a wonderful kid. If you need to step out of the room, you are more than welcome. If you need someone to talk to, we have trained staff in the office to help. There are resources available. You are not alone.”
I began crying. I didn’t know Nathan very well, but he had been in my chemistry class the previous year. He kicked my seat and told jokes about our band director. At the time, I had thought he was annoying, but looking back, I genuinely don’t think I would’ve passed the class without him keeping me invested. His persistent distraction was like a challenge for me to stay focused on my work. After a few weeks, we grew to be friends. We talked about marching band and Star Wars.
The tall kid in the back of the class walked over to the teacher and hugged her. I listened in on parts of their conversation, though it was faint. I swear this is a true story.
“I have a police radio in my bedroom. I heard the call late last night.”
I won’t share it here for privacy reasons and for the sake of not potentially triggering people, but the tall boy explained in graphic detail what he heard about how Nathan had ended his life.
Nathan had managed to roll a D20 in Charisma over the previous summer, and by some strange combination of fate and willpower on his part, we became good friends throughout our sophomore year. Sadly, I didn’t get his phone number, and we lost touch over the summer. If I had known, maybe.. maybe he would still be alive if I had made more effort to be friends. But in that scenario, would I have been his friend because I wanted to? Or because I was just trying to keep him from killing himself? What kind of friendship is that? Would he have been happy with that dynamic? Is it better that I didn’t know, and events turned out the way they did? Would they have turned out the same way otherwise? I know it’s not my fault that he’s gone, but… Was there something I could have done to help him feel less alone? Would the cost have been worth it?
These questions and more raced through my mind during lunch that day, along with a flurry of memories of Nathan telling me about how he quit band practice because of the teacher’s “weird nose”. He was a funny guy, but I can’t lie, I didn’t understand about half of what went through his brain. And now he’s gone. Nothing is going to go through his brain ever again…. And I did nothing to help him.
Looking up, I see the Angel again. Sitting alone across the hallway from me, barely moving. Her shallow breaths echoed faintly. Her eyes drew sketches in the floor. Doesn’t she have paper she could draw on? Is she epileptic? No, something more would’ve happened by now if she were having seizures. I hadn’t realized it before, but sitting in the silence now feels so foreign. In a strange way, I kind of miss Nathan’s annoying rattling. I miss the nuisance of the chair kicking and the prodding about my favorite Stormtrooper design. Things are too still. Too quiet. I needed a friend. Perhaps this “angel” needed one too. I should, at least, give her the opportunity to say no.
Unspoken rule: It’s not your job to reject yourself on behalf of other people. Let other people be in control of their own boundaries. And for god’s sake, put up some boundaries of your own. Don’t be a fucking doormat for people’s shoes.
Standing up, my feet trembled. Was I really about to waste this person’s time? Was I that egotistical to think myself worthy of that time I’m taking? Or perhaps my self-image is too low? Nevertheless, my feet have already started moving. Oh god, she just looked at me. It’s too late now. If I turn around, she’s going to think I’m a weirdo or a creep. Had she noticed me looking at her? Does she think I’m a freak?
I sat down, about a foot away from her, and timidly whispered “Hi,” waving with a small smile. She smiled back, replying with a “Hi” of her own. A thought occurs. How could I know if she was being genuine with her smile or if she was simply being nice? Was I being genuine? Is social interaction ever genuine? Or is it all just a game with some of us understanding the rules and strategies better than others? Maybe I’m a psychopath. I’ll figure that out later. This is my chance to figure out this person’s deal.
“Did you, uh, did you hear about Nathan Everette’s death?” I asked.
She stopped drawing with her eyes and looked at me sympathetically.
“I didn’t really know him that well,” she replied, “I’m kind of new here.”
That’s why I didn’t recognize her. She’s new. With one question answered, 15 more formed. Where was she from? Why had they moved? I moved around a lot when I was little because of my parents’ work. Do her parents have to hop jobs a lot? Does she avoid eating at school because she’s low-income? What is her home life like? Why do I care so much about this person I’ve never met?
“I was friends with him last year, but I didn’t really know him that well. I don’t know why I miss him so much.”
I paused for a moment to gather my words. Only six came to mind.
“It’s so weird that he’s gone.”
That’s all I had to say? I wasn’t grieving. I wasn’t depressed or sad. Or hurting? It wasn’t that I missed him.. it was “weird” that he was gone. I felt guilty for not feeling more. I SHOULD feel something. But it’s just, emptiness.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she whimpered, her voice dry and rehearsed. She traced the ground again as she muttered, “Death sucks.”
Her voice had a beautiful softness to it with a darkness rumbling underneath, warning potential threats to beware.. She was like a rose; beautiful on the surface, with roots made of thorns.
We sat there in silence for a while. I wondered to myself if she wanted me to leave. Was her silence an indication that she didn’t want to talk to me, or was she attempting to give me space to open up? What do I do now? What do I say next? Where do we go from here? In improv, you’re supposed to YES, AND, but I can’t YES, AND the phrase “Death sucks”. What am I supposed to say to that? “Yes, and…. Who have you known that has died recently?” That’s WAY too personal way too fast. Even I knew that, and I wasn’t very good at this game.
I have never been particularly great at social interactions. Making friends is hard. On top of that, every person is different and has different expectations and boundaries. There are so many unspoken rules and expectations that I’m sure are there for a reason, but I don’t know what they are. If communication is a game, I never received a rule book to look over. I needed to study.
In the meantime, I tried to ask an “icebreaker” question I’d read online a few weeks before.
“If you could have any super power, what would it be?”
It was a simple question. Silly, even. But, given the current topic, maybe something a bit lighter would help us shift the mood.
“Invisibility.”
Wonderful. I’m still nowhere closer to knowing whether or not she even wants to continue talking to me, let alone any actual information about who she is.
"What about you?” she asked in a hushed tone.
She looked over her shoulder toward me slightly. Her snow white hair brushed gently, glowly in the sunlight from the window beside her. As she smiled, something felt off. Her movements were fluid. Calculated. Like waves dispersing after a storm. Was this a performance?
She asked a question to continue the conversation. She is smiling and facing towards me. All signs point towards her being engaged… and yet, I have this pit in my stomach. What if it’s an act? What if she leaves too? What if this friendship is short-lived? Or worse, a figment of my imagination? Had I been performing for Nathan? Was this Angel sitting before me simply performing for me?
I wasn’t sure whether Nathan and I would even qualify as “friends”. I hadn’t much enjoyed Nathan’s company while he was alive; he was like a little brother, always poking into my business. And yet, his absence left a void. Silence. Perhaps I had appreciated his friendship more than I’d realized.. Even if I HAD been performing, could it still have been real? Can friendships be real even while performances are occurring? What happened to being your “authentic self”? On the other hand, what kind of person does nothing while their pal feels helpless and alone?
Even if she were performing, is it not her responsibility to tell me to leave her alone? Or is it my responsibility to stop invading her quiet time in the first place? I’ve already broken the latter. Might as well continue moving along until she tells me to go away.
“Hmm.. That’s a hard question,” I responded, pondering.
“You asked me first,” she snorted.
I must have smiled or perked my head slightly because soon after her snort, she immediately began defending herself.
“Shut up. Don’t make fun of me,” She snorted again, laughing.
“If I had a superpower.. I would probably pick flying. But every time I take flight, I accidentally poop my pants.”
In truth, I had accidentally messed up the question. The Icebreaker I had read online had posed the question “Would you accept the power of flight IF you had to poop your pants every time your feet left the ground?” This seems like a small error, but in fact, I had just accidentally given myself the shits, unprompted, as my hypothetical superpower during my first conversation with my new friend. What an amazing first impression.. So embarrassing…
She laughed, luckily, and asked why I went out of my way to give myself a defect.
“Because otherwise, I’d be way too overpowered,” I joked, “Even in real life, the universe gave me ADHD because it knows this world would be no match for my ambition.”
It turns out, she was neurodivergent herself. We had a lot in common, in fact. We both enjoyed Sci-Fi Stories, riddles, reading, and animals. We had our differences, though. She, unfortunately for her, enjoyed Country Music. I know. Disgusting. She also was not super into video gaming, but she liked listening to me talk about some of my favorites, and I liked talking about them. In return, she shared some books that she enjoyed. We laughed. We cried. And we sailed off into the sunset together… I really wish the story ended here. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.
I tried to be a good friend. That voice lingered in my mind. I don’t want to fail again. I don’t want her to leave. I want to get to know her inside and out. That way, I won’t be blindsided again. Nathan is dead, and all I’m concerned about is how his death is affecting me. How selfish is that? So much emotion and nowhere for it to go, except spiraling downwards until it crashes into the ground.. Do you know the pain of realizing you were a bad friend to someone, there’s nothing you can do to fix it, trying to learn from the experience so you can be better to the next friend, only to end up hurting them all the same?
As we grew closer over the following weeks, I wondered when the shoe would drop or whether my questions would ever get answered. Why did she move here? What was her story? I figured she would open up when / if she was ready, but if I’m being 100% honest, I was really, really curious. She fascinated me.
I got glimpses behind the veil, like the day I tried taking a photo of her and she covered her face in horror. She didn’t like her photo taken. She never told me why. One day, she revealed how she used to shoot firearms a few years back, before suddenly quitting. I noticed she avoided mirrors like the plague and only looked out windows from a distance. She loved trains, but hated empty tracks. She collected knives, but never allowed herself to be alone with them.
These quirks clearly all had rooted motivations because she would go from laughing gleefully to unemotionally staring blankly at the ground in silence. The shutdown happened so fast, like a reflex. I don’t even know if she was aware that it was happening. When I would enquire for more information, she would quickly shift the conversation elsewhere. I had body image issues myself, and often see myself as “fat”; did she have a similar issue? or something else entirely?
I said earlier how I thought she was an Angel. From the warped view in photos and her desperate avoidance of mirrors, I sometimes wonder if she would have described herself more like a vampire instead.
I was desperate for answers, but I had learned from past friendships not to prod. Prodding is rude. People have a right to privacy. She will open up when she is ready. Don’t prod. I have to wait for her….
Unfortunately, I’ve come to realize in retrospect that the reason no rule book exists for this game is that the rules are constantly changing. Not only is every single person different, but we all have different anxieties, traumas, triggers. We try to move and glide around them to accommodate people, but when you don’t know someone, or if you’re just talking about a casual work colleague, you justifiably don’t know the ins and outs of their entire life, or vice versa. You don’t have the right to anyone’s story, nor does anyone to yours. This system of erring on the side of caution allows people to have privacy, but sometimes can leave gaps for miscommunications to form. These miscommunications, well-intentioned or not, may lead to unpleasant emotions. Triggers. Flashbacks. This is why certain unspoken rules have been put in place.
For example, there is a difference between “Casual Conversation” and “Deep Conversation”. Casual Conversations, or “water cooler” conversations often happen with peers, involving neutral topics such as: The Weather, Sports, Hobbies, Home Layouts, Social Security Numbers—Forget those last two. “Deep Conversations” are the fun, introspective conversations, often with closer friends. Friendships exist so people can have Connection and Vulnerability with one another. Not every peer is a close friend.
Unspoken Rule #227: When engaging in Casual Conversation:
DO ask about the weather.
DON’T talk about Social Security Numbers
DO ask about their pets.
DON’T ask about someone’s dead relative because their social media was recommended to you, and you saw a picture of them together, along with a grave emoji attached to a date in their bio. Yikes..
Let’s just say that was not a great day for our friendship. I didn’t know they had passed away until it was too late. I had simply asked who was in the photo next to her. Following standard procedure, she traced lines in the ground and switched topics. I should have let the conversation drift away and allowed her to control the flow of information, but instead, I was stupid. I prodded.
Her soul drained. Recounting the events visibly aged her.
Her sibling. The photo had been taken just a few months before. They looked so similar, except in the photo, her sibling had blonde white hair, while my friend had short, dyed brownish-red hair. It turns out that’s why they moved. It’s like she said before. Death sucks. Suicide sucks.
The next few weeks, I spent my lunch breaks eating alone. I went back to sitting in my usual corner. Dust hadn’t yet collected in my absence, which was nice. It was smaller than I remembered. Perhaps my heart had grown larger. It hurt all the more, now having lost another friend. The Angel wasn’t dead, not yet anyway. She just sat in her usual area, though she didn’t smile at me like she once did. Now, she looked away whenever I met her gaze. At least I finally knew whether or not it was a performance. Months of friendship. Gone. I finally had the answer to my questions, and all I had to do was break my own heart and resurrect traumatic memories for someone I’d grown to care about. The cost was not worth it.
Maybe Failing People was my superpower. In that moment, sitting alone once more in the empty hallway, hearing the echoes of her movements, I wanted to fly away. But I couldn’t. I was stuck. Trapped. My feet never left the ground. And yet, my life felt like shit.
2020:
Junior Year. COVID Hit. Yikes.
Summer 2021:
Graduation Year. After spending the past two years completing half of my 11th grade and all of 12th grade online, I was finally about to graduate high school. I hadn’t seen any of my old friends from high school in at least a year and a half. In just a few short days, the graduation ceremonies would be upon us. Along with the cerekonies would mean reuniting with all of the old cliques I had long-since disconnected from. After a year and a half of quarantine, I would see the Angel again. I thought about texting her number, but would I even get a response? We didn’t exactly leave on the best of terms.. I’m left, once again, with a decision. Should I reach out to the Angel? Would she want to talk to me? Would my name trigger negative emotions? Am I worth her time or energy? I don’t want to hurt her again. But I haven’t seen her since 2019, and I want to know how she’s doing. I care about her. Or, I’m nosey.
Time is a strange thing. When I was younger, I imagined it like a ball, moldable and shapeable. Living with ADHD means object permanence is more of a theoretical concept, rather than a lived experience.
By the time I saw her again, two years had passed. Two years of unfinished sentences and unanswered questions.
What’s strange about time is memory. We think about ourselves as fixed events. One string of consciousness woven throughout all of your life, experiencing, learning, evolving, maturing. In reality, we’re all different people all throughout our lives. You’re physically different in that your body is an amalgamation of over 30 trillion living cells, socially different in that your friend groups, needs, boundaries, etc, change over time, and mentally different in that you mature and change over time. You’re not the same person you were, say, 10 years ago.
However, we remember what it was like to be our former selves. Often, we find identity in connecting who we perceive ourselves to be in the present with all of the different perceived versions of ourselves we remember from the past.
(Notice the difference between who we perceive ourselves to be vs. who we are. Our perception of reality is often skewed by our limited perspective. Talking to other people and listening to others about their experiences is often helpful in expanding our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.)
This shared link between the past and the present helps us form a more cohesive story about our identity. Who we were, where we came from, where we went, and how it shaped us into who we are now. But what happens when that link is broken? What happens when something so core to your identity is cut?
What happens when you are completely cut off from those past versions of yourself?
I wish I could tell you I remembered our last conversation. I wish I could tell you that I had a recording of it. Or even a diary entry or a photograph from that day. Something.. But unfortunately, I don’t. Not because I don’t care. It pains me not to remember. Object Permanence isn’t a thing for me.
The day of our last confrontation, two days before graduation, we had established a time and place to meet over text. I walked into the steak restaurant. RING, RING. A small golden bell above the door signaled my entrance to the staff tasked with helping me find my seat. and sat down at an empty booth up a small vault of four stairs near the door, my back facing toward the entrance.
The restaurant wasn’t remarkably fancy. Though it was located on the water where rich people took their boats on joyrides, the interior decor suggested something more akin to “casual fine dining”. Coffee-shop style posters covered the walls, kids' menus were pre-placed on every table, accompanied by small packs of crayons, and sports channels displayed the latest scores on overly large TV screens mounted across multiple walls near the ceiling so they could be viewed from every angle in the building, and an adult-only alcohol section illuminated faintly next to the restrooms near the back of the restaurant.
I waited anxiously, my knee bouncing up and down. Fidgeting with the menu, I checked the time on my phone. Three minutes past the hour. “I got us a table! Let me know when you get here,” I typed, contemplating clicking ‘send’. I didn’t want to come off as clingy. On the other hand, what if I had been stood up? Wouldn’t it be better to know now, rather than having to waste 30 minutes waiting to find out? On the other, other hand, was 30 minutes of waiting potentially worth risking coming across as clingy? First impressions are really important right now. It wasn’t worth the risk, I decided, deleting the message. For another two minutes, I sat stuck with my thoughts. What if she hated me? Why had she agreed to meet? Did she truly want to rebuild our friendship? Or was this just a check-in type of situation to say goodbye before we graduated and went our separate ways?
RING, RING.
I turned around. There she was, walking through the door, her hair now more of a dirty blonde. She wore fashionably torn jeans, a t-shirt with pictures of random Newspaper clippings printed all over it, and a golden necklace attached to a bullet around her neck. The midday sun radiated around her face, her freckles showing prominently in the light. As I saw her face for the first time, memories flashed back to me. The angel. The vampire. The person I’d hurt. My friend. Emotions of guilt, shame, fear, remorse, and abandonment all rushed through me. She sat down and smiled lightly as we made eye contact. Suddenly, those negative feelings slipped away in an instant, replaced by one singular emotion: peace.
They say people we’ve lost still live on in our memories or in the stories we share about them. But for the most part, everything I remember about the time I spent with her, I’ve already told you. I ordered a burger. She ate a salad. We talked about our plans after college. I was about to attend a school for web development, and she was going to work as a vet tech to help animals. She had started seeing a guy recently. She said he treated her well. Knowing that she was happy meant the world to me. I hugged her goodbye as we left the restaurant, waving as she walked to her car. And that’s it. I don’t remember the words we exchanged or any other topics we brought up. We were there for roughly two hours, so knowing us, we probably talked about anything and everything. With our ADHD brains, we kind of had our own Rule 34: If it exists, we probably talked about it. And yet, I remember nothing. I hate my memory. In a way, it’s like losing a part of myself. It’s like losing her all over again.
After that lunch, we didn’t talk again. Not for any reason in particular, we just lost touch. Mostly, I think I was afraid of making the first move again. I didn’t always want to be the one reaching out first, and I figured since I sent the text to initiate meeting up for lunch, it was her turn to initiate the next social interaction. When that text never came, I guess I just assumed she didn’t want to interact. I had disrespected her space and her boundaries before. I wasn’t about to do it again.
The text never came. The trouble was, just before graduation, we had picked things right where they were at before the ensuing drama in 2019, but we never actually dealt with that. I still felt like I had things I needed to say, past wrongs I needed to atone for, or at the very least apologize for. I still needed to finish closing the door. And so, in March 2023, I reached out one final time to see how she was doing and to apologize for my past wrongs, but I didn’t receive a text back. In all honesty, I to this day don’t even know if she ever saw it. In August of 2023, I saw a post on Instagram linking to her obituary. Cause of death: Suicide.
Another friend I failed to save. She was survived by her family, along with the guy she told me about Two years prior. I walked toward her body during the funeral. Even in death, she was beautiful. It’s strange. Dead people always have this weird glossy look to them. Like their soul have just faded from the body, and now you’re just staring at an empty vessel.
I hadn’t prepared to give a speech, but the room where she was being displayed was filled with photos of her and her family. For someone petrified by the sight of a camera lens, she had a lot of photos. Further evidence that others saw her beauty, even when she didn’t.
I had arrived early to ensure I didn’t have to attend the actual funeral. I didn’t think it was appropriate for me to be there since we hadn’t really talked in so long. As I watched over her vessel, I felt that wave of peace leave with her soul. In its place remained guilt, remorse, dread, self-loathing, and heartache.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, hoping her spirit floating somewhere in the cosmos could hear, “I’m sorry I let you down. I’m sorry I was a bad friend. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to support you. I’m sorry I didn’t respect your boundaries. You deserved to be happy and supported. You deserved to feel loved and accepted. You deserved to be happy. I’m sorry life was so rough for you. Truly. And, I’m sorry I contributed to that.”
It’s been more than two years since she passed. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about her and wonder if things could’ve been different. Nathan passed six years ago. In my mind, I like to imagine sometimes that he’s still at home, practicing his trumpet for his college band’s Holiday Program.
I’m not going to sit here to say you shouldn’t feel guilty. If I said that, I would be the biggest hypocrite on the planet. Hurting people sucks. I will say, however, that making mistakes and hurting people is, unfortunately, one of the most human things you can do. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It certainly doesn’t make you an alien or a psychopath. Feeling guilt means that you care. Sometimes caring is all we can do.
I met the Angel in 2019. After two years of silence, I saw her again in 2021. Two years later, she passed in 2023, and I said goodbye to her vessel. Now, once again, two more years have passed. Two long years. Hopefully, I won’t be seeing her anytime soon. If I make it to Heaven at all. The list of people I won’t be seeing for a while has only grown as the years have dragged on.
Since 2023, I’ve lost more people: pets, friends, and family members. I’m anticipating more death before the end of the year. Cancer sucks. I can’t say whether someone unexpectedly dying is worse or better than helplessly watching someone slowly die over the course of several agonizing months. Both suck. As I walk further into adulthood, I’m starting to find that part of living is occasionally having to say goodbye. To places, circumstances, memories, and people. Saying goodbye sucks. Whether we remember or not, the events still happen. If time is like a ball, then, in a strange, roundabout way, I like to imagine that those joyous moments are still occurring somewhere in the timestream.
Earlier, I mentioned how our body is like an amalgamation of 30 trillion cells working together to maintain one body. That’s how our society is, too, in theory. Or at least, that’s how it should be. It should be a system where everyone is valued and knows that they are important. We are all a part of a larger ecosystem. We all work together, putting in what we can, getting what we need, and supporting other people.
Unspoken Rule #229: We have a responsibility to care for one another.
Though we try to be good people, how to do that isn’t always so simple. Things are messy. And complicated. And often, small actions lead to devastatingly permanent consequences. The sad part of growing up is realizing the world is often messy, complicated, difficult, and painful. As much as it is filled with life, joy, happy memories about superpowered shits and snorts of laughter, it’s equally filled with grief, scarcity, systemic inequity, and death. You can’t avoid it. And you can’t really sugarcoat it by focusing on the good. Because the bad is real, it’s valid, and it hurts.
So what does it all add up to? What’s the point of loving and caring if we’re just going to forget about it later and eventually watch the people we love die, and then fade away ourselves as our own story gets forgotten?
Unspoken Rule #230: Legacy is overrated.
Stories all get forgotten. Even the most famous of people are mostly remembered for their work or a specific quality about themselves, but the little things that truly make someone who they are are, like their mannerisms or their interests, or strange, mysterious, unexplainable quirks with histories stretching back 15 years of repressed trauma— those interesting parts of our humanity inevitably fade away.
What’s important is what you chose to do while you lived, the experiences you went through, whether you remember them or not, because living in the present and enjoying the here and now is the only way to have a fulfilling life.
You can’t live life in the past, nor can you live a balanced life by stressing about every possible potential danger.
Slow down, and enjoy the moment. Enjoy the water. Enjoy the strange conversations. Enjoy the casual experiences where you find them. And when you’re in the bad times, know that this moment too shall pass. You are surrounded by an entire ecosystem of people just trying to live. You are not alone.
I’m not the same person I was when I met her, or the same person I was the last time I saw her. I’m a new person today, tomorrow, and so on. But one part of me is unchanging. One part of me that she helped show me: I am imperfect. Yes, I shit whenever I take flight. But I still fly. I am capable of, and worthy of, love.
