Your death leaves me with so many questions, and more that anything I wish we could have one more lucid and sober conversation about the lives we ended up living.
How the heck did we go from being loud and proud about our freak geek status and become freakier and geekier. . .and get all the better for it? How did we both reach where we did, with so much against us and so much baggage from our lives? How did we handle the disconnect between raising healthy daughters with ER visits on the down low, and teach our sons about how to treat women as we struggled with 2 that never learned?
How did it come to pass that you took all of your self esteem from your body, and how it looked, and let the years of critical comments and face it, some horribly hurtful ones from those who should have loved you and cared, lead you down the path to your ridiculous and tragic death?
That surgery was the start. . .you were so happy, as the weight came off, and you felt and acted happier than I had seen you in years. . .so convinced that new eyes, new breasts and new stomach were all that was needed to complete you. . .and for awhile it did. But that infection would not go away would it? It kept coming back, and the pain from the follow up surgeries was enough to drive you mad, and made you beg for something to end it, and the magic pill entered your life, and the joy left it.
OMG seeing you high all the time around the kids, and the way you sank, nothing would get you back after a time, and the last conversation we had before you died was surreal and magical, sad and final. Emaciated, painfully pale and so weak, my heart fell to my feet. . .omg WHAT THIS DRUG DID TO YOU??? You looked me straight in the eye and told me you were gone, that you did not exist anymore. . .and I believed it. You told me to stay strong, and to look after your angels. . .and I told you I would. You begged me for one last hug- and I gave it to you, and I did not want to let go, because I knew, just knew the way I have always know, that the next I was looking at you I would be giving your eulogy, and I was right. OMG what I would not give to have been wrong.
I knew when the conversation was over that I would never see you alive again, and I could not help you. . .and that was the most painful thing of all. We made a lifetime friendship habit of carrying the other through it all- you picking me up at the hospital when I couldn't see through 2 black eyes to drive, me driving you to the ER when you were bleeding from the mouth and ear. . .and each one of us telling the other. . .you deserve better, you should have better. . .why don't we?
The answer came too late for you, and maybe too late for me too, but I think I know now, and wanted to let you know-
There was no magic formula that made people happy in their relationships. There was no secret. We just never learned from anyone that the only way to have a relationship that is not painful that is not dysfunctional, and that fills you with good feelings is. . .to believe you deserve a great and healthy relationship with love, respect and tender care. You really have to believe it, you have to believe in your worth as a human being, and believe that no matter what you think your flaws are, no one should be in relationships like we were in, let alone for as long as we were.
I am sick that I could not save you, I tried so hard, as much as I could and finally had to take care of some health issues of my own, and in that time, you crossed some line and you just never came back all the way.
I will tell you again what I said to your family and friends on Sunday-
When I think of my friend and the life we had together, I remember the way I always had to wait for her to catch up. She was always willing and ready and able to stop and look at flowers, watch birds, and listen for some new sound to explore. I was always hurrying her along, and she would put her hands on her hips and remind me that I was missing out by rushing through life. Relax, breathe, and enjoy. . .over and over she would try to get me to listen.
I hear her now, she is still telling me once again to do this, and I finally understand. I will catch up to you, my best friend, when I'm done looking around. . .smelling flowers and waiting for the next great adventure.
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