My heart aches and my mind is as bleary as my red and puffy eyes. I generally pride myself in finding the very best words to utilize in poignant expressions of my thoughts. Today’s writing will most likely fall short of beautiful, but I NEED to write it out. Have to somehow, maybe, find a whisper of comfort, a beginning to an easing of guilty grief.
Yesterday evening I decided to look up a friend from one of my first jobs. Hali was a girl I had worked with for five years at a formal wear store. She was a little ditzy, but so sweet and her clients loved her. Really, everyone did.
I scrolled through social media profiles in search of a slightly older and likely larger version of of my friend, maybe with a husband and a bunch of kids. I couldn’t find a thing. Remembering that Hali was never much for creating an online presence, I finally just googled her name and the town where I last knew she’d lived.
I found her photo on my first try. Her obituary photo. She died last year. My brain was just beginning to absorb that kick to my chest, and I saw Google’s next news. Below her obituary was a second photo. Her arrest photo. For drugs. Hard drugs.
Honestly, I can’t fully understand why this has affected me so very deeply. Our little coworker group did often go for dinner and drinks at Chili’s, and we hung out outside of the store once in a while – mostly at a pool. We both loved sunbathing in bikinis and flaunting our perfect 20’s bodies. We were never super close as far as sharing our deepest thoughts, but I considered Hali a good friend. I’d cared about her and tried to convince her a few times to leave her wannabe rapper boyfriend, but wasn’t that just work friends giving each other therapy? Why can’t I breathe, then? Why does my body ache and my chest feels as raw and swollen as my eyes? I keep wondering why we stopped being friends. Did she have friends when she died? Was she alone? Was it an overdose? Was she in pain? What if someone had reached out sooner? What if I had reached out sooner? I know her death wasn’t my fault and most likely I couldn’t have prevented it. I just…didn’t expect that. She shouldn’t have died so young. She shouldn’t have been engulfed in that life. It hurts and life is so unfair and just sucks.
Rest in peace, sweet Hali girl.
Creating Peace From the Pieces 