I feel aged Tallulah. A little worn out.
Five years is a pretty long time when you think about it; I finished school over two years ago, boyfriends have come, gone and come back again and frat parties are already getting old. Life has moved on from October 16th 2012 but I can’t. Friends aren’t meant to die when you’re fifteen Tallulah. You’re not meant to commemorate a fifth year anniversary of your best friend’s death when you’re twenty years old.
I don’t like the fact that whenever I hear Ne-yo, I cry. I hate crying in public anyway but did you really have to die when he was having his little comeback?
I really don’t like the fact that your face pops up into my head sometimes and I can’t get rid of it. Obviously, I want to see you Toots, but you’re stuck in this place I can’t really access anymore.
I try and climb my way back into it but unlike you, I’m not fifteen anymore. I’m not seven and catching crabs with your grandparents in Dorset. I’m not twelve bouncing down the stairs on your mattress and making your mum mad when our party upstairs was louder than her 40th birthday going on below. I’m not fourteen, getting mad at you for trying drugs and kissing the boy I liked. I’m not fifteen anymore Tallulah. I can’t keep re-living watching you upset, I can’t keep reliving you showing me scars. Life doesn’t work like that.
I don’t know what you would be like at twenty. I hope you’d be at university by now; 100% you would have taken a gap year though. Who knows, maybe you would have come to Australia with me and watched me fuck up my first tattoo; perhaps incorrectly googling translating it into Persian wasn’t the best way to go about it.
I hope you would have kept up with the dancing; just not enough to get all the boys attention on a night out. I think you and I would have had some pretty wild nights out together- you would actually be able to have your gin and tonic legally now. That’s big toots.
I think you probably would have come to Ibiza with me this year. It was your last holiday that summer and although you were already quite sick at that point, your mum said you enjoyed it quite a lot.
I don’t think I’ve changed too much since we last spoke. You’d be happy to know I’m still fucking running, so your hours watching me practice day in day out and turning up to every-race paid off. I raced pretty shit today but I was in pain so thanks for keeping me going. I would have quit if you weren’t in my head.
The hardest part about grief is that it hits you like a truck but you don’t die. The truck hits you and you feel it. It slams you but somehow you’re able to stand up after. The worst part is that you know that the truck hit you. The pain isn’t anything like getting run over but the remnants are there. You may feel a little bruised but it’s something about the knowledge that you were just hit.
You’re upset at the driver but you didn’t die so you move on. But when you go to bed, you wake up and remember being hit and how, for that split second, how badly it fucking hurt. That’s grief.
I’m sitting on a plane coming back from the race and the truck has hit me again. The bruises will be gone by tomorrow but I’ll wake up in a few days and I’ll feel a bit sore.
Rest in Peace Toots. And don’t worry. I promise you, your truck isn’t pink; we ALL know you hate pink.
Photo by Sophia Liu
Originally published at www.thinkremind.com