June 18, 2009 should have been a normal day.

The smell of balsawood purchased from a vintage shop invaded my nostrils. A shiny purple shirt purchased from the Urban Outfitters in London appeared before me. Black wide leg pants and leather high heels arranged themselves. A fedora balanced perfectly on her head. A smile was planted blissfully on her lips. Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, these fragments presented themselves with blinding speed until the picture on the box was formed.

I felt tears swell in my eyes and a sense of disbelief force all air out of my system. Gasping, I clicked various links on my laptop until I was sure there was no mistake. I felt myself pale. Jumping from my bed, I ran around my house whimpering the same word over and over again, “Mom”. The sound of my own voice was distant. It wavered with a strange vibrato and the whine of a young child who was frightened. I finally found her in front of the computer, a spreadsheet before her, talking on the phone. “Mom. Mom!” Still that voice, who did it belong to? No doubt she heard the unusual urgency and turned. “ I knew her. I knew her.” Suddenly buckets of salty liquid poured from my eyes.
“I have to go. My daughter’s friend just committed suicide.”
Even as I hugged my mother and explained who it was, all the while sobbing in uncontrollable fits into her shoulder, I had a problem with her wording. I knew her. She was in my choir until just last year. We went to England and Ireland together, and we had gotten along really well. Still, I couldn’t call her my friend. Just a friendly acquaintance that, maybe if we had spent more time together, could be a friend. And she hadn’t just committed suicide. She had the previous night. It just took me almost an entire day to find out. Nonetheless, I cried as if I’d known her my whole life.

A numbing sensation came over me shortly after that. I walked back to my room, and let my Mom return to her work. Rather than study for my math final or edit my English paper yet again, I looked through every single photo on her facebook profile. I joined other grievers and wrote on her wall and I read what others had written there. How could she not know how loved she was? Those who knew her better than I wrote things that made me wish I had been closer to her. I cried on and off for the following hour.

I logged onto video chat with my friend Zoie and I broke down instantly all over again. She saw me cry, and this made me feel ashamed. I logged off. I went out food shopping with my Mom. I talked about it incessantly with her in the car. For some reason my normal barrier had broken. Its duel function, to prevent terror from entering and exclusive ideas from escaping, no longer seemed to work properly. The well-armed fortress I keep around all my words and thoughts had been destroyed by this canon into my soul. A siege of hurt entered through this fissure, and my defenses were rendered useless against this foreign invader.
My distraction lasted for the next two days and interfered with my performance in school and other activities. I did not do poorly on my finals, but I did not do very well. My mind was ridiculously jumbled. Coherent thought seemed impossible for every so often the same question kept resurfacing within me, “How could she?” Time pasted quickly, yet at a painfully slow rate. I felt moments like hours, and hours like minutes.
When I got home that second day, I expressed myself the best way I know how. I pulled out my laptop and wrote about what happened. It was a poem. More or less a list of facts of what had occurred. It is nothing too gushy, but nothing heartless. I didn’t really care that much, and my effort was minimal. I just needed to put some stuff on paper so I could clear out my mind a bit.
This helped more than I could have ever hoped. It removed some of the mournful debris that had built up and allowed for my blockade to rebuild itself with impressive speed. Those sorrow filled pangs have become less and less, bouncing off this mighty infrastructure and proving that it is once again working seamlessly. Negativity is brushed off with a flick of the wrist, and goodness is all that flows within it’s confides. One occasion though, I will still remember the girl in the fedora. Her spark of life shines brightly even in death and her smile glistens even in darkness. I refuse to ever forget her, or the lesson she has taught me about life, which has been seared into my being. As it is, a beautiful soul was lost from this world, and once a beautiful soul has been lost it can never be returned.