When Someone Great Is Gone.

They say it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. 

I say the loss of you made the world feel like one where love didn't exist anymore. 

They told me "how lucky you are to have loved someone so much to miss them" or some bullshit like that. 

I said "fuck you what the fuck do you know?" 

They told me you were in a better place, you weren't suffering the way you had been anymore. 

Maybe it was selfish of me, but I believed the best place for you to be was here, because I needed you here. 

How could somewhere you never believed in be a better place? 

For the first time in a long time I actually wanted to believe that place might be real. 

-

I still remember the first time we met, both only 13 years old. 

We could not have been more different. 

You were big and bright and wonderful, and you burned hot and fierce, you made me feel so small and insignificant in it all, but for the first time I didn't mind the feeling.

I still remember the faded white Beatles t shirt you were wearing over your swim suit, and your faded bubblegum pink hair, spots of peachy orange and your golden blonde roots a couple weeks grown out. It blended in with the sunset as the sky grew darker. 

I remember the heat of that bonfire, the smell of burning wood and ashy smoke in my face, the coolness of the sand as I dug my feet into it and listened to you talking and laughing and thinking to myself "she's too cool to be my friend".

-

Seven years later and we are drunk in the bathroom of that bar by the boat yard while our friends play a show. We are giggling like we were still those 13 year old girls.

Our friends manage to book a gig at a Laundromat, I didn't know how they pulled that off, or why, but we are drinking old cheap wine that we poured into a can of Watermelon Arizona.

Then we're sitting at the look out above the beach, it's cloudy out and we can't see the stars but the lights of the coastline reflecting on the dark blanket of ocean makes up for it. We are sharing a spliff and a $3 40 oz bottle of Mickey's Fine Malt Liquor, back when they still came in glass.

You're doing your Kermit impression again and I laugh so hard I accidentally spit my cheap beer on you, now we're both laughing until we can't breathe.

Its still the best Kermit impression I've ever heard. You were so fucking funny but you were also so incredibly intelligent that even your jokes made me feel dumb.

- 

I remember the taste of shitty coffee and cheap cigarettes as we sat on the side of PCH like we used to before I had moved away.

The breeze from the ocean and the cars passing by is the only reprieve from the suffocating humidity of a coastal summer night. The heat isn't the only thing making me sweat, and it's not the heat making my hand shake as I take another drag of our shared Turkish Royal, your cigarette of choice.

I told you truth of what he had been doing to me. You weren't the first I told but somehow it felt the hardest. I was waiting for you to tell me "I told you so" because you told me he would do it again and I didn't want to listen. I was 20 and thought I knew better than anyone. Don't all 20 year olds?

You said to me "babe, there is no world in which that was your fault. It was never your fault." Would you believe me if I told you that you were the first to say that to me?

You weren't the first person who listened, but you were the first to really hear me. 

- 

I remember the night my dad found out about my girlfriend. I begged my mom not to tell him. We got in a fight and for the first time I raised my voice at him. He threatened to kick me out. 

I called you and told you I didn't know what to do. You told me to me to come stay with you until things cooled down. 

You were living in a hotel room at the time. One small room with one small bathroom and one small kitchenette. 

You carved out space for me when you hardly had any to spare while most in my life treated me like I took up too much of theirs. 

You would have carved out half of your heart to give to me if meant it would keep mine going. 

That's just the kind of person you were.

-

I remember the day you left. You text me asking me to come over. I told you I had a bad day at work and I wanted to go to bed early, I said I would call you tomorrow. I didn't call because I suck and I'm forgetful but I realize now you wouldn't have been there to pick up the phone. 

I remember the day I found out. It had been a couple weeks since you text me. I responded at some point, but I hadn't heard back. I was used to that. I understood you were just as forgetful as me. I understand that sometimes reaching out felt like too much.

That morning felt different though. Call it whatever you want, but I felt the wrongness in my bones, like maggots burrowed and eating at my flesh. An insatiable itch that no amount of scratching would relieve me from.

I pulled out my phone and googled your name. It wasn't the first time I had done so. My therapist tried to tell me it was something called a "compulsion", that I was seeking reassurance that my irrational fears were not true. 

This time they were. 

Your obituary was the first result that came up, on Facebook of all places. 

This wasn't the first time I found out about a death on Facebook. The first time was my biological father. 

I've since stopped using Facebook. It's for old fuckers anyways. 

"[Name Redacted] 1998-2021."

Three weeks. 

You had been gone for three weeks, and I found out through Facebook. 

I reached out to every person I could think of. Every old friend, every one of you ex boyfriends. I got the same response.

"We thought you knew."

Your funeral has already passed. They thought I knew and didn't show up for you. 

I hope wherever you are, you knew I would have shown up for you. 

-

A few hours later I found myself in the emergency room, blood thick and dried across my face, my neck, my hands; like something out of Carrie. 

I had an accident. Two gashes in my head, one on my forehead and one at the back. 

I slipped on the wooden stairs going down too fast wearing only socks and I fell, hard. What a fucking idiot. 

I hadn't realized what happened when my dad pulled me up off the stairs, my body limp in his arms like some doll. I tried to reach up to rub my head and I thought to myself "Thank God I didn't split my head open". It takes longer than I expected for blood to start pooling down my face. 

For a self proclaimed vampire, I don't do well with the sight of blood, especially my own. 

The next thing I remember was my dad dragging me out to the truck, speeding down PCH, right past that coffee shop we used to smoke in front of. 

I felt sick, like I would vomit, so I closed my eyes and memories of you unraveled in my mind like a roll of film. Just like the movies. 

I heard my dad calling my mom at work, I could tell he was trying to stay calm for her but I had never heard his voice sound like that except for his brother's funeral. 

It took a while for the pain to actually hit, by the time I was carried into the ER, fuck my head hurt something fierce, but when I cried and begged and pleaded for something to dull the pain, the nurses told me they had to make sure I didn't damage my brain. The nurses didn't realize I wasn't talking about the pain in my head. 

I remember laying on the table with my head in some big intimidating machine. They told me they were going to look at my brain and make sure it wasn't bleeding. I joked and told them they wouldn't have much to see. 

They wanted to keep me talking so they asked me what happened. 

I told them about you, and I told them that you were trying to take me with you. I laughed, the nurses didn't. I shut up after that. 

-

A week later I got that tattoo on my arm for you. I was dodgy about the bandage on my head when the artist asked, I was afraid they would turn me away if I told them I had a concussion.  

They told me how impressed they were with how well I sat. I didn't move or make a peep. I told them nothing really hurt all that much anymore. 

When I went to get my stitches out, the plastic surgeon who did them told me I could come back in a year to get laser to reduce the scar. I never ended up doing it. 

For a while I was insecure about it, I still edit it out of my pictures sometimes. 

Other times I look in the mirror and I realize how much it has faded, and I feel disappointed, like the memory of you is fading with it. 

I hope it stays forever. 

-

5 years later and I picked up my guitar again for the first time in a long time and I played that song I learned just to impress you, the one from The Beatles, because they were your favorite. It's the only song I really remember how to play anymore. 

You know, they say it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all, but sometimes I let myself believe you never truly left. 

I still see you in every sunset. 

I feel you in the bruises at my fingertips when I play that song on my guitar over and over until it feels perfect. 

I feel you in the pain I still sometimes get from that old wound at the back of my head. 

I smell you in the salt and seaweed and the sea breeze. 

I taste the memory of you at back of my tongue every time I have a sip of cheap red wine. You make the bitterness taste sweet. 

When people ask about my tattoo, I tell them it was for my best friend because it's the only word I can think to describe you in a way that feels recognizable and human, but what you meant to me was far beyond human, far beyond any words that exist. 

Sometimes people think I'm a crazy dreamer to believe that there is something bigger than this life, this world, this universe, but that's because they never met you. 

-

A/N: I debated for a while if I was going to post this. It's probably the most vulnerable thing I could possibly post, but vulnerability is less scary on the Internet full of strangers and what better time to do it than before I disappear for a little bit. Vulnerability is also much less scary when you can immediately run away from it.

Anyways, I've had it sitting in my notes app for too long now, mostly finished, and I didn't want to carry it with me on my time away so I am leaving the weight of it here.

Be back later!