Let me share with you

The story of my best friend.

I had just begun the second half of my sophomore year of high school when I met my Lucy (not her real name, but her nickname), one of three soulmates I have met, two of 6 feet that have made such deep footprints in my very soul that I shall never forget them. I don't think I will ever forget that day. I was making my way out to the portable classroom the choir met in for second period varsity choir class when one of my friends came bursting out the door and nearly tackled me in the parking lot. "There's a new girl! ...And she's ONE OF US!" KT screamed, overjoyed. "One of us" sounds a bit strange, but it was very important to the outcast kids at a small town high school. Curious, I stepped inside the portable building to lay my eyes upon the most beautiful girl I have ever met, even to this day. Shoulder length auburn hair, burning blue eyes, pale porcelain skin, and dressed in all black with a Ramones tank top. And in that moment, I met a human being who changed my life more than I could probably even begin to describe.

Lucy was a troubled kid like me. We both were plagued by psychological problems, though different disorders. She was bipolar and I was obsessive-compulsive. She had recently been released from a psych ward and her mother sent her to live with her grandfather who was a retired drill sargeant as a hope of calming her rebelious behavior. But she was so...beautiful. When she let you get to know her, when you got to dig below the surface, down to the core, you just fell in love.

Our friendship was an odd one, and it's hard to wrap your head around it if you weren't part of it. See, when Lucy moved in, I was dating my first love Brandon. I had a picture of him on the cover of my notebook and she spotted him right away, telling me he was cute. Well, I had been friends with Brandon's sister previous to our dating, and I have my suspicions that she was upset that I came over to hang out with him instead of her, so she set to making sure Lucy and Brandon met. And they did...and he fell in love. And so I lost my Brandon. But somehow, our friendship withstood such a blow and we became even closer in spite of it.

Lucy's mother gave up on the idea of her straightening out here, so two days after my 17th birthday, she was on a bus back to California with Brandon who managed to get a ticket as well. Our friendship became long-distance, but it seemed that we were even closer through the computer screen and telephone lines than in person.

I only saw Lucy maybe once a year if I was lucky after she went back to California, but we talked as much as possible and kept in touch via e-mail, messenger services, MySpace, and phone calls, but I was never closer to another friend. She knew my secrets, my fears, everything about me.

The last words I said to my best friend were, "I love you, too." She called me at the beginning of the summer of '08 just to talk. Her father had told her to stop talking to him until she got off the drugs, but she had been clean other than cigarettes and marijuana (which she had a prescription card for) for months. Her mom had kicked her out of the house, she had been living in friends' cars. But somehow, she was still optimistic, and she left the conversation on a good note. I never heard her voice again.

On July 3, 2008, her grandfather knocked on my front door and D went out and talked to him, then returned, all the color drained from his face. I was clueless as to what was going on, I wasn't even sure that was her grandpa until I finally got D to say something. "Lucy's dead..." were the words he finally uttered. And my world came crashing down and nothing has ever been the same. Lucy was hanging out with a new guy, someone her friends didn't know too well, and somehow pills came into the equation and she overdosed. He abandoned her body in a ravine and at 11 on the morning of July 1, she was pronounced dead. They flew her body here so she could be buried in the same cemetary as her maternal grandmother and we had her funeral on July 12. It was probably the hardest moment in my entire life, sitting right up there, knowing that my best friend's cold and lifeless body was in that shiny box everyone was weeping over. A part of my soul died with her and nothing has ever been the same.

I wish I could tell you it gets easier as time goes on, I wish I could tell you I don't cry anymore. But so far, the wound is still fresh, and while I can say I don't cry every day...I don't even cry every week, it still hurts just as much today as it did that horrible Thursday. I don't consider anyone (sans D) my "best friend" these days, and I'd honestly be satisfied if I never did. I loved her so much, I still love her so much, and I got to experience that bond and that love, and I'd be alright if I never did again. I don't know if I could take the pain of losing someone else the way I lost her. And you know, I'm completely okay with that.