Most everyone thinks of life as this single first-person narrative that only involves you. The people in your life are complimentary, and only serve the purpose of enhancing your life story. When you realize that your existence is as ordinary as the next, something gives and you are stuck trying to figure out where you're meant to be. The people in your life become real, and they rise out of the noise you so quickly quieted before. You're as functional in your story as theirs. You have built these real characters and they have you, playing apart of their sub-plot you often ignored.
More to the point, I can't imagine where I would be if I had never met Tonya in middle school. An impact is an impact regardless of who we are. Middle school is wildly impressionable and I remember it so well that I can smell the binding in the textbooks. I looked up to all of my peers for any hint of direction because I couldn't find my own way and it wasn't for lack of trying rather, lack of experience.
Mind you, we grew up in such a small town that something larger than us was hard to fathom. We were all we had, and all we knew and there was a small-town comfort in that. I loved that small town because it nurtured my very being and I met some of the most influential people that would shape and love my very existence. I always felt that no matter the time, my skin bursting with insecurities and dreams that out-stretched the confines of that county, I was going to be more than that small-town radius. I dreamed of endless possibilities and I wondered how I would actually leave.
I met Tonya in seventh grade and realized that I had a kindred. I viewed her in the way that seventh graders typically viewed there friends. She was someone with immortality that would be a light for my soul. I had a handful of friends, all with the same feelings as me. When we all finally got to be together it was like all of that awkward searching was over. We found where our puzzle was and we just couldn't wait to get life started. Tonya was really it for me. As best friends go, she was the only one who really stayed behind with me until I could catch up.
Those crazy years of high school and emotions are rough, and I hope I always remember that. It's so easy as we age to forget how horribly awkward and hard those years are. It's as though we forget our own stages of life and feel as though we were always in this enlightened state of mind.
It isn't easy growing up. It isn't easy trying to find your own way while everyone else is finding theirs. Courses get mis-matched and things get muddled. All you want is some sort of catharsis and all you can do is save face.
I shouldn't be too sad about her going. In all reality I should have no emotions at all about it, given how we parted. But, something sticks when you grow up in a small town. Something glues the confines of your being and it's because in your delicate years, those tiny years of wild hesitation, not knowing that there is a vast beyond outside of your zip code, the people around you are a life raft saving you from drowning. She saved me. Tonya saved me in those years of confusion and failed understanding. All of us close friends saved each other.
All I can think about is how I thought I was her life raft in the years that should be functionality. Our early twenties were piled with mistakes and I was so sure I was there to help her for once. I thought of myself as someone that truly saw this girl as something more than she portrayed and even knew herself. I can't allow myself to be dishonest in the fact that I poorly executed all of what I should have been doing. I just, didn't know. I didn't understand her at all, as I came to realize.
When you grow up with someone you identify as family, having to cut that tie is unbearable. I realized that my spectrum of life experience was so small. So much smaller than I could give and so minute compared to what she needed. I was young, inexperienced and I had to cope with that. It's hard to cope with the knowledge of really having no real knowledge.
I felt, drained. I felt suffocated by our friendship and I hated myself for feeling that way. I'm not sure how many people can constantly handle seeing someone suffer, cut themselves, and cry uncontrollably or threaten their life because of their illnesses. I never knew what to do when she would fall to the ground crying in a pub, and I felt even more unsure when I had to force her to vomit a bottle of aspirin because she stood by her convictions long enough for me to get home from work.
I felt like I failed as a friend. I felt terrible about the fact that I had to lie to her all time time about every little thing that happened just so she wouldn't melt down. I felt bad for being so selfish... that I was willing to lie to keep some semblance of calm. I never thought of her as a hindrance, but she thought of herself as one, and her often overreactions to simple situations showed it. I would try to explain that I loved her very much and it was just fine, but she hated herself and felt like she was a burden and I couldn't change that. I couldn't change anything, I realized.
She did at least listen to me about her future, which was shocking in itself.
It felt good knowing that she did listen to me about following zoology rather than becoming a vet tech. She was smarter than that, and I told her that I wanted to be the friend that she told her crazy expedition stories to. I wanted to hear about her adventures on the sea. I wanted to see her doing amazing things out beyond where she felt valid, doing something of epic proportions that she couldn't do at home. Losing touch with her, I always wondered if she followed through with it and I felt such warmth when I found out she did. She loved all things earth, and she showed it. That little light of her accomplishment always made me smile.
As anyone else in this horrendous situation, I do have my own regrets and weights on my shoulder. I wish that I could have found a way to really reach her. I wished she really listened to my several pleas of getting her help for her manic moods and her unstable health. Her moods weren't the only thing that mattered, and I know now that she really did need some sort of medical intervention.
I wish I could have been more forceful for the doctors when she would cry of headaches and everything else that went wrong. I wish that I would have just shoved her in my car and forced her to go the hospital when she was doubled over in pain. I'm filled with wishes, like anyone in a similar state of grief would be.
When I had the ability to fully let go, I guess I never truly did. I always held on to a bit of shame that I should of just kept trying with her. She flourished in her schooling and did so beautifully but I feel like if she had just gotten help for all of her ailments, she would still be here. Angry with me but alive and well.
I loved her with all of my heart. Through high school adventures to post-pubescent experiences I just plainly loved her. But, I can't hold on to that guilt and I have finally found my calm. I can't live with the 'what-if's'. I wish her at rest, and that's all I have.
It goes to show that each life is heavily intertwined. That each life can play off of the next and impact really does matter. Each person, for better or worse is fundamental in the outline of you. Swirling around each story-line, you are only adding to yours and theirs.
Tonya-tot, you were my best friend and my guiding light through times I thought unseeable. You were someone I always thought would grow old with me and maybe this blow is so hard delivered because I've never had a sister that I could lean back on. You were my sister. I thought I would have a golden moment of heart-staking honesty and we would go back to our plans of two houses on the same plot of land. I imagined watching your dogs and birds while you were wild in the pacific and I imagined writing a book and drinking coffee with you while you were home.
I have to place those hopes behind me because while we were distant these few years I had always seen them as a possibility, and now, it is finally in the past. Everyone talks of heartache and while I am one that typically scoffs at the sentiment, I am overcome with heart-heaviness. I just can't really think about you being gone... I still doesn't feel real.
I prefer now, to think of you among the stars.
