Thursday, November 13, 2008

too young... too late.

Two days ago, a woman who was one of my very best friends when I was a child passed away. She would have been 25 years old next month.

We met in grade four, when I was the new kid in town, and she was another awkward nine-year-old. We gravitated toward one another, as the fringe members of our clique... not quite cool enough to stand out, but close enough friends with this pair of gorgeous twin sisters who were the queens of our little group, that we managed to survive high school with the tiniest bit of social relevance in our little teen-aged world.

She was funny, and bold, and had this mix of confidence and self-consciousness that made her wonderful and charming. She had a giant smile, and these lovely, deep brown eyes with gorgeous long lashes. She never hesitated to stand up for her friends, and was the first one to jump in head-first... but she never seemed to stand up for herself, often cracking self-deprecating jokes about how she would never escape our crappy little town... about how she would never shine as bright as the rest of us...

But I beleive that she could have out-shone us all, if she'd had a few more opportunities... or a different set of circumstances in her life... or maybe just a little push in the right direction...

But I'll never get to tell her that... not now... and I never seized my chance.

I found out months ago about her cancer... cervical cancer... when my mom would call, she'd try to tell me about how it was spreading, about how the outlook wasn't good... about how I should give her a call... but I avoided it.

We weren't friends anymore, and I didn't know what I was suppose to call her and say...

A year after high school, just near the end of my first year at college, I had a falling out with one of the gorgeous twin queens... it was the culmination of months of issues and arguments, and I had decided that I'd had enough. I packed all my belongings and ran away to start my life over.

I completely cut my ties with our entire group of friends... what had been our high school clique, but was much older, and deeper... I decided to forgo another messy fight, and escape what had been an endless cycle of the same old arguments...

I moved away, and started from scratch... I did a lot of thinking, and dreaming, and got myself to a place where I was really comfortable in my own skin, and for once I wasn't a part of our little group... I wasn't a girl on the fringe... I realized that I didn't really like who I was before, and that I don't think I was really as happy as I was always trying to be... not until I made it on my own... not until I wasn't standing in anyone's shadow any longer...

I made new friends, and had a new job, a new home... I met the boy... things were good.

I didn't want to go back... I couldn't bring myself to break through the wall that I had built between my old life and my new world... a wall that had taken seven years to build.

In short - I was selfish.

I was afraid of how I would be opening myself up to that whole bag of things that I had run away from... that I would be forced to deal with everything and everyone... that there would be all this anger still... or worse, fake sweetness...

There were times when I almost picked up the phone and called... but I stopped myself... I was afraid that even if I did get the courage to make that call, that she would be insulted... that she would be too proud, and be insulted that I had only seen fit to call her because she was sick... that she would think that I was only calling out of pity...

And so I chose to remain detached... part of me was in disbelief that she would actually succumb to her disease... she was only 24! So young... and in my mind's eye, still a strong and vibrant girl, with mousy brown hair and a sparkle in her eye... calling out to ride shotgun... or sitting beside me in the backseat, smoke in hand, laughing and grinning, as we rode around aimlessly on a summer night...

And now I am overcome with regret... with horrible guilt and remorse... how could I let her leave this world without a word about how much I had loved her?

I have this pain in the pit of my stomach, and this lump in my throat and my head is swimming, and I am completely awash with anger at myself for being such a coward.