Journal 8: English Class.

Dear Ex-Best-Guy-Friend,

Even though its been a year and half since I declared you dead to me just the sound of your name makes me uneasy. I can never forgive you for lying to me about “you being in the hospital” just to make me have more attention on you. Or the lies that you came up with about you getting beat up, or threatened by my ex-boyfriend, or of being in the wrong neighborhood at night and getting shot at. How dare you think that coming up with these horrible situations would make me drop my life for you for your secret plan to beak up me and my current boyfriend, You just made my life more stressful and I worried all the time about you when in reality it was all for nothing. I trust you so much back it was ridicules that someone could of believed the things you were telling. You became a stalker, a creeper, a backstabber, a liar, and a manipulator. And yes you still try to get in my life to this day by messaging my boyfriend on face book to apologize for how you acted back them. But, it’s not going to work. Get over it. I never want to see you for the rest of my life. Ever.

Dear ====,

I know it’s been a year and half since I ended our friendship and bringing you up into conversations still makes me uneasy. I still don’t fully understand why the lies like you being in the hospital was what you really wanted so you get more attention from me. And I’m still unhappy with all the other lies that got tangled up in our past of certain situations. Those times made me very stressed and depressed with so much chaos going around me. I do miss the times where I could tell you anything and be fully myself without being self cautions about the things I said or the things I did around you. As of today I been trying to see how you trying to influence my life so much was because you thought it was the best for me. Or you thought I was going the wrong direction with my life path I picked. And what better to protect a person you love so much by having them be with you and you can control the outcome? I can understand and see that now. Maybe in the coming years as we grow older and more mature we can form a new friendship but as of right now many wounds of the pain are barley starting to heal. Thank you for the late night conversations, your shoulder I cried on too many times, and listened to my crazy ideas about life. I will never forget those happy moments.

Signed,

Crystal

22. [-/-] Earn $300 just from freelance work
23. [ ] Go to Disney Land
24. [X] Go Back to College (even if its just part time or online!) (August 29th 2011 @ Heritage University)
25. [X] Go Fishing (Haven't been in years why not?) (Summer 2011)



*Set the Starting Weight to when I actually started to weigh in weekly. I started the diet with out a scale 2 weeks previously.*

Like any fourteen year old girl, all I wanted to do is hang out with my best friend and lock ourselves in my room. On the first cold weekend of February this was no different. My best friend, who was also my cousin, and I were at our home away from home (also known as the grandparents’.) Behind the closed door of giggles and pop music was a half pink and black room we had painted ourselves. There were some smears in the corners and paint on the window seal, that our grandmother glared at each time she came in the room, but we were proud of our work. We began our routine of sharing the latest gossip from  our different schools and began the hoarding of junk food, phone, and pillows into our layer. If the paint on the walls was made of words there still would not be enough to cover the room with the years of conversations we had. As we lay on the tattered futon bed packed down by two naïve girls over the years, we started the night of constant phone calls to the new loves of our lives.

The last person a teenager wants is her mother interrupting her with a phone call.  “What do you want?!” I demanded, annoyed by the fact my birth giver had interrupted the most important time of my life.  I walked down the poorly lit hallway covered in photographs expanding back generations to surrender the cordless phone to my grandma. Little did I know this was the call to inform us that a limb of our family tree had been severed. My thirty-two year old sister would never grow older or be seen to blossom again.

The wind seemed to blow a little harder that night as we sat in a room I once considered my safe haven. The house I’d run to when I needed comfort now became a place of pain. The air in the deathly silent room that me, my cousin, and my grandma sat in was so tense I could cut it with a knife. “This is not true. Mom must have been mistaken of what she saw on the news,” I burst out, breaking the barrier to what we were all thinking. The first stage of grief has quickly set in: denial. The standard sayings staggered out. “She is wrong. This cannot happen to us. There must be some logical explanation of where sissy is.” The faucet behind my eyes now did not have an off switch. My voice was shaky, squeaky, and quiet as I rambled on about fictional scenarios to explain this to my family members. They stared at me with sorrow in their eyes as they listened to me and nodded like they understood. Maybe they were not the ones I was trying to convince but myself. Time began to stand still in my thoughts as I lay down on the lumpy bed. Facing the giant mirror on the closet door, I looked at my reflection without seeing myself. That girl in the mirror has sunken blood shot eyes with tear stained cheeks. She was not the smiley carefree teenager who walked in this room hours ago.

Early next morning, we sat at the counter for our usual breakfast of eggs. There could have been a hundred people in that kitchen that morning and I could not have been jolted out of the world in my head. Stage two of grief came suddenly into my body: anger. Angry at myself for not being home. Angry at my mother for spreading such bad news. Angry at the world for being the place it was. But most of all I was angry at my sister. “How could she have done this to us?!” I asked my cousin while she nibbled on a piece of toast. The door that opened to reality into my own world slammed shut and I did not hear her answer if indeed she even gave one. As the day grew longer, I leaned more information about my sister’s death. She was not just dead, but murdered. Now, I was furious. Furious with whomever did the deed. Furious with the cops for not doing their jobs better, and more importantly faster. The voice of reason and logic that guided me through life was now on vacation.  Hate festered in the pit of my stomach. The bright aura I radiated now grew dark with negativity. Day by day it engulfed me. I became a spiteful person to anyone in a close radius. As the harvesting of my madness continued, her funeral approached. The sympathy cards piled up by the front door unopened. I guess our logic was if we did not read them it did not make it true. The anger I withheld started to dissipate hours before the memorial.

The smell of roses and carnations filled the chapel as family and friends took their seats. It has been five years since the memorial and I cannot be in a room with flowers without flash backs. It is sad that the scent of such a beautiful plant as a rose sends me back to such a dark time of my life. The memorial began with words spoken by the pastor. The flame of my anger was snuffed out and replaced with depression. Sitting on the hard wooden bench in the church, the pastor’s words were tugging at my heart strings. His voice sailed through the crowd with empathy behind each word spoken. Songs were played that had a significant meaning to my sister and family members. ‘You and Me Against the World’ by Helen Reddy played and I thought of my mom and sister doing karaoke in her bedroom. ‘A Whole New World’ from Aladdin played next. It was her favorite Disney movie that we watched countless times and the song she wished to walk down the aisle to. The rest of the day was a blur. I was numb giving hugs to people as they passed by saying the occasional thank you. Before I knew it, I was back in my daily routine of school. I drowned myself in school work so I did not have to face family life. As the investigation came to a stand still, my G.P.A. grew higher. Changes happened such as moving and family separating.

As the years passed, I finally moved on to the last stage of the grief: acceptance. It is ironic how people can rapidly blow through the first stages but the last two are the hardest. On one of the hottest days during a summer, I was compelled to head to the greenway by myself. As I walked along the cement pavement path I passed areas where my family once gathered many summers ago. The memories were so vivid it was like watching it as it happened. To my right just under the bridge, I saw my mom, my sister, her three children, and I playing in the water. While walking past they vanished so I continued to head forward. Not too far ahead on the left was a bench where the second vision materialized.  This time is was just me and my sister stopping for a break chatting away. I began to run. Soon my feet hitting the pavement was all I concentrated on and my panting breath was all I could hear.  I raced past trees and zoomed by people until I reached the wooden playground, eerily empty. I stopped to catch my breath. One last memory formed before my eyes of the nine year old me playing tag with my sister. “Catch me if you can, Sissy!” I heard my little phantom voice yell as I gawked at the surreal movie projected in front of me. My sister stopped in the middle of the play ground crossing her legs laughing and cried out to me she was going to pee her pants. The little me just had to run up to her to tickle her to see if she was really going to do it. Her laughter was infectious and soon I had the giggles. The memory began to fade disappointingly as much as I wanted to see more and hold on to this moment. The sound of the world around me became audible and the realization of me being in a empty playground astonished me as a feeling came over me of acceptance that she was gone. I sat on a thick grassy area cross-legged to look over the horizon with the sun slowly setting. I reflected on her absence and how her being gone hurt, but welcomed the memories that I hold on to.