This is a repost of diary I published on April 2, 2007 - a tribute to friend who died four years ago today. I've tweaked it a bit and smoothed out some of the rough spots.
J, this one's for you.
I met her in the 6th grade. I was quiet, self-conscious, awkward and introverted. Painfully aware of the changes my body had begun going through and finding nearly all of them appalling and mortifying. I had to work hard to appear outwardly friendly.
She was my polar opposite. She was comfortable in her own skin and completely at ease with people. She had a quick wit and a winning smile. We became fast friends.
In the next six years, we were practically inseparable, sharing secrets about boys and life, sorrows and fears, shits and giggles. We became the best of friends and thought we would be our entire lives. But right around graduation, she found a new best friend to take my place. Her new friend listened to her problems much more intently than I ever could and understood and eased her pain much better than I ever did. Her new friend was also much more fun that I was. Her new friend made her laugh and smoothed out the extremely rough edges of her life in ways no other friend could. From that point on, she lived her life from the inside of a bottle and from that point on, I lost my best friend.
Four years ago today she died, and I miss the friend I used to have.
She and I shared much in those six short years. Good times always interlaced with the bad. Separating the two is impossible. I suspected early on that there was some mental or emotional disorder going on. As the old saying goes, "If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy." This rang all too true for anyone that was ever close with her. If one spent any significant time with her, they’d soon find out that the mood of any given time spent with her was dictated solely by her mood. This made things difficult, to say the least.
When she was "up", she was charming, flirtatious, warm, intelligent, and unbelievably funny, with a remarkably quick wit. It wasn’t until further into our friendship that her wit would turn mean spirited, mordant, and darkly sardonic. When she was "down" and her mood was dark, she would pull you into the depths of hell with her, voluntarily or involuntarily. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what and I didn’t know how to help her. Over the years, this became more and more difficult because, as I said above, the closer you were with her, the more likely you were to become a casualty in her struggle to find something salvageable within herself; at some point we all got caught in the crossfire between my friend and herself.
Not long after graduation, I severed my ties with her. I could no longer tolerate her verbal cruelty when she was down or "in it" with herself. From her view, I imagine, she’d discovered something - a friend - who seemed to understand her far better than any of her human friends could but what I saw was a crutch that was doing nothing more than compounding the problem. I was never a fan of alcohol. I’d seen and lived the devastating effects it had in the home I grew up in and saw, firsthand, how sometimes it made people happy, and in seconds turn them into a monster, spewing bile and shredding the dignity of anyone it targeted. I knew early on that alcohol would never become my friend because, in my life, it was nothing more than a liar.
In the years after I turned my back on my friendship with her, stories would filter around town about her antics while drunk. Nearly all of them, horribly embarrassing tales of her, juiced up and sloppy, and they made me sad for her. I wanted to help but knew that I couldn't. I was outmanned. We can't help those who can't/don't see the need for it.
I ran into her only once since that time. It was 23 years ago. Our children went to the same school and we happened to be picking them up at the same time after an after-school event. She was drunk and I was embarrassed for her. She clumsily hugged me and with tears in her eyes lamented our lost friendship, telling me I’d always be her best friend. My heart broke for her that she’d even thought about me after all the time that had passed between us. I wanted to tell her that maybe we could pick up where we’d left off, but I knew that wasn’t possible. I knew I couldn’t sit back and watch and enable her while she slowly committed suicide, drink by drink. Her friend was now a part of who she was. She couldn’t survive without it and it tore me apart to see the shadow of the friend I once shared my life and my heart with. Her friend was now slowly killing her.
About five years ago, in the fall, news found its way to me that she was having circulation problems in one of her legs and that she’d had a vein replaced. The replacement vein became infected and gangrene had set in. By the time she saw the doctor, two of her toes were black. Before Christmas of 2006, the only alternative to dying was amputating her leg. I was told that things had gone well and that she had done well adapting to her prostheses, so well in fact, that she’d been released early from her rehabilitation.
Well, as is the case so often with idle talk, nothing could’ve been further from the truth. She wasn’t released early, she never attended rehab at all. Her friend was calling her, telling her that only it could help and her addiction to it was too strong to deny. When she was taken back to the hospital in March of 2007, she weighed a mere 80 pounds. The stump that was once her leg hadn’t healed and was still raw and oozing. Her blood was infected with several types of staph and the doctors agreed that chances were slim that they could save her life. On March 20, 2007, while hospitalized, she suffered a heart attack and fell into a coma. The following day, her brain scan came back showing no activity and she was removed from life support, as was her request. The next day, she began having seizures.
Her poor abused body hung onto life until April 1, 2007 - eleven days after being removed from life support.
Today, I miss my friend. The friend I met back in the 6th grade. The friend who was an amazing gymnast and dancer, the friend who was remarkably intelligent and dreamed of working with wildlife in some degree because of her love of animals, the friend who could make me laugh at the drop of a hat, the friend whose smile would light up the room.
I miss you, my friend. You lived hard and you died hard. I hope you found the peace you so desperately sought in this life, the peace that so eluded you. Be well.©