[cont.]

VI. Tenth grade granted me the gift of being able to cope with the role I was given in life. These new handlings of affliction created hope, love, spirituality and peace. I went through a cleaning process, which included getting rid of anything that caused myself harm. I quit the life we had shared during our first few years as teenagers. We decided that this was best for me. I asked you to follow, and you agreed to do so, but we both knew it wasn’t going to happen. You weren’t ready yet to face a world with determined eyes and a clean mind.



I learned self-acceptance that year from someone who I would fall for, date, leave and loathe, and eventually befriend, all before eleventh grade. He was everything any girl could want: dark, brooding, charming, and charismatic. He captivated me the same way a spider catches its prey. The web he spun enchanted my heart and dizzied my commonsense. I was not a person who often used the shallow word “hot,” but everything about this boy sizzled.



With an ego of fierce proportions and the grace of a feline, he was rough and smooth all at once. If I was a young maiden in Transylvania, he was Dracula. I willingly displayed my neck for him to sink his teeth in. His poison was honey to the taste. I drank heavily of everything he had to offer me: consolation, philosophy, and lessons in life. I was his student yearning for all he had to teach. I was very disappointed when he decided to retire from our personal college.



After things had been over with for about a month, he made his way back into my life, asking for my hand, but this time in friendship. I forgave him because he had taught me how to accept myself for who I was. For that, I couldn’t deem him entirely evil. You begrudged my attachment to him the same way I begrudged yours to Danny. Neither of us liked it when a guy hurt us and then decided to come back. I still enjoy how watchful we are of each other.



VII. We pencil-dived into grade eleven. I enlisted in honors classes because being clean made my brain lust for knowledge and my heart desire a better life than the one I had been born into. I wanted to go to a university and knew the only way I could was through academic scholarships. You enrolled in the PSEO program of the community college in our town. You wanted to be rid of the immaturity of our grade. We both would be earning college credits our last two years of school.



The girl friend of yours I had been envious of was now a single mother at the fresh age of sixteen. I no longer could hold against her the lifestyle you two had kept me out of: it was obvious that she had gotten something far worse than anything I had wished upon her. An entire being to take care of for eighteen years exceeded my wish for her to simply remove herself from St. Louis County.



My second eldest brother tried to yank apart my finally safe and happy life. On and off since his late teens, he had been addicted to drugs that were far more dangerous than anything we ever tried. His latest was methamphetamines. Minnesota was known as one of four states to suffer from a meth epidemic. Our region was where the problem festered.



My family and I had known about his usage, but had been blind to the extent it reached. I babysat his daughters for him and his fiancé and witnessed the results of it with unknowing vision. If I had been more cautious back then, I would’ve stopped many things that he caused to happen.



The aftermath would be that I would grow to hate my brother for almost making me a victim of incest. The hate would further expand when I was told that if a battle would take place in a courtroom, I would be the only one fighting against him. No one would help cut the family ties. I decided that I didn’t have enough strength to wrestle him. I would regret this later on.



Shortly after, a series of bad incidents would try to pick at me. My father suffered a heart attack that nearly took his life. Trailing behind was Grampa’s diagnosis of prostrate cancer. Finishing up the school year would be Gramma’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Her death occurred two weeks short of the birthday she and I shared.



I couldn’t be shaken forever. Your love and hugs kept me going. You held my hand at her funeral and helped cry the tears I desperately needed to shed. You held onto me every time I peered down the cliff, my legs urging me to jump.



VIII. I crouched in front of a tombstone engraved with the name of an angel and a blossomed rose. I was trying to read a letter I had written to the grave‘s inhabitant. I stumbled through these words: “You found me in a place where no one else even cared to look. Your love and hugs kept me going. You held my hand when it wouldn’t stop shaking. You trapped my body every time I felt like jumping. Mandy in the Morning, the sun shines so bright. Six feet separate us, but I still feel you with every breath I take.”



IX. The living connection was severed one year ago. I failed in my effort to keep whole the happier picture you had painted about yourself and your life. I should have foreseen the events that were to take place that dark night. The psychic storm had been booming that whole afternoon. In class you were far and distant. Your eyes were calculating something seen only by you. I felt you being sucked in by unreserved darkness.



It was our friend Russell’s birthday, and I decided to attend the small get together. Sometimes even the biggest clues can go unnoticed. We were in the ladies’ room after school, reapplying eyeliner. You were going to “let go” this evening, you said. I assumed you meant you were going to get trashed.



At the party, the music had been loud, the company had been terrible, and the boys had been playing videogames for about a half hour since you had gone into the bathroom. I had offered to hold your hair, laughing at your poor attempts to walk without a stagger. You had declined my help, mumbling that you felt fine.



I made my way down the hallway, ready to investigate your consciousness. I believed you had passed out, and I came to scoop you up off the floor and put you to rest in the lower bunk bed. What I found was a nightmare that won’t stop replaying in my head. Except I don’t even remember all of it. What I do remember is that you had broken one of the sliding doors to the shower. How the shattering noise had gone by unheard is unbeknownst to me; the music had not seemed that loud. You were curled in the bathtub, staring the same way you had been staring in class earlier that day. I went to you, asking what was wrong and if you were okay. What happened next has only been told to me.



You were dead when I had checked on you in the bathroom. Upon realizing this, I had gone into a state of rage. I broke the other glass door with my fist and proceeded to break open the mirror of the medicine cabinet. Our friend Barry who had come up for a visit was the first to enter. After seeing a pair of scissors in one hand held against my left wrist, and then your body in the shower, he had rushed at me. He grabbed the shears and threw them behind him. With his hands planted on both of my shoulders, he shook me and asked if I was going to be as inconsiderate as you were. I slapped him and fell to ground after my knees buckled from under the weight of my heart breaking in two. Russell forced most of the guests out the door and called the police. The only people that remained were Anne, the other Anne, Amanda, Phoebe, Russell, Barry, me, and Ben (Russell’s brother). Barry held onto me while I just sat stone cold. I guess I had gone into shock. I didn’t come out of it for three whole months. It took me seven more months after coming out of shock before I was “all better” again.



X. Now I was visiting your plot in the city cemetary. I had brought you pink roses along with a letter, a picture, a candle, and a tattoo I had gotten on my left wrist in your memory. It was the image of two arms with hands clasped together. I had mustered the courage to get it after receiving a voicemail message you had left on my cell phone the night of your death. Some people say it is your suicide note, I say that it is an exchange of words between two friends that shouldn’t be shared. It’s one of those deep dark secrets that no one else really needs to know. The message you left was simple.



I am amused by how hard of a task picking out a present for a loved one is for most of the people that come into the flower shop I work in. I think that our society has forgotten that not all gifts must be purchased. You proved this with five simple words in a voicemail that lasts about ten minutes. After a slurred rant of things I will not speak of, you speak the words, “The love-- it never ends.”



The bond between two best friends surpasses that of any other relationship. If one is lucky, they will never part ways with their best friend. If one is luckier, their best friend will also be their lifelong lover. One of the only things that can separate such a link is death. Although the rope has been untied and thrown to sea, Mandy’s last words were truth. The love hasn’t ended. I carry the memories of her with me wherever I go. Inscribed below the holding hands in my tattoo is a bit of lyrics from my favorite musician. The quote reads, “I can still feel you, even so far away.” It’s the truest part of my body.