Many things in life are lost. Sweaters, gloves, necklaces, headphones. These are all things that someone could lose. These are the mundane things that you would not miss that much, had you lost them. But there is one thing that you are never ready to lose, a friend. I don’t mean the friend who you had a disagreement with and stopped talking to. I mean the friend who died, suddenly. Nothing ever prepares you for what happens next.

At first, you laugh, thinking that the person who told you the terrible news was trying to prank you. If only they were. She would still be alive, still be breathing, still be with her family.

Then….then you look on your phone, search up their name. You see all of these articles about a car crash. All these articles and yet, you still deny it. Deny that this could happen to her. After this, you log onto the facebook account you haven’t used in years and you are bombarded with the outpouring of messages sent to her family.

R.I.P.
Much love to you and your family.
Praying for you guys.
Such a beautiful angel, what a terrible thing to happen.

You hold back the tears because your family is in the room. You don’t want them to know how much this affects you. You just quietly sit there, working so hard to keep the tears back. Your family disperses from the room into their own areas and that is when you slink off to the bathroom.

Once you hear the click of the lock, you slump down to the ground and quietly sob into your knees. After five minutes of just crying, you calm down. But you don’t feel better. There is that scratchy feeling in your throat from suppressing your cries. There is a filling emptiness that spreads through you like wildfire. You can’t feel anything as you just stare blankly into space, thinking of the times when you were kids. How you would go over to her house for birthdays and holidays. The days in church, the weird conversations that didn’t have much meaning to you then but now, now they are all you have left.

Your father’s voice asking if you are okay calls out to you, asking if you are alright. You shake your head and shout out yes. With a splash of cold water on your face, you leave the bathroom with dry eyes.

The next few days are a blur. All the people at school, you didn’t realize that she knew this many people. The funeral, seeing her body for one last time, seeing her family and knowing they must be hurting so much more than you ever will.

Your friends all ask you if you are okay and you say not to worry. Minutes later you lock yourself in a bathroom stall and start crying. You will never be okay after this. You have lost a part of yourself that you will never find again.