I can only begin by hoping that no readers have experienced the kind of particular loss which I have and that they only feel distant sympathy as they try to imagine how it feels when the person whom you shared your first college memories and home with disappears suddenly and unexpectedly.

Let me tell you, sometimes that’s what it feels like to me: I am on the outside looking in at a girl floating through her second semester of freshman year after her roommate was killed in a terrible car accident. Sometimes it still does not feel real, as my mind attempts to defend itself against the impossibility that someone who was so alive and so real is actually gone forever. Especially when I first heard the news; it came as a text message early in the morning, while I was still in bed, parting from the sleep that was sparing me from a truth that would change everything: “She has passed away.” The shock was overwhelming. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know what to feel. I was numb.

At first, all I could do was think about her family. She and her mother had one of those “my-mom-is-my-best-friend” relationships. But not the kind that leaves the kid without a stable parental figure in their life, but rather the kind that was adorned with so much love, trust, and understanding that they two could hang out forever without bickering, and kept no secrets. Then I thought about her older sister— the girl she aspired to be. She always spoke in awe of her sister’s fairytale lifestyle and knack for fashion.

I hurt for her father, as I imagined what it must feel like to lose his little girl. I ached for her best friends from her hometown and in college. I agonized about her boyfriend, who was driving, and crashed the car she died in.

Nothing made sense in a reality where my roommate was dead. For the first few days after the accident, I could only feel overwhelmingly sorry for the people whom it seemed deserved to mourn her more than I did.

Eventually, I was overcome by reality when I first returned to our dorm room. It was like she was going to come back, resume her nights sleeping in the bedding she had me approve before she bought, finish the doodle she left half-drawn on her desk, or munch on the Goldfish stowed under her bed. I sat down and stared at her side of our space that she left behind and knew she was never coming back.

I allowed the tears and the pain and the grief to take over. I remembered exploring college nightlife together during the first semester as we felt on top of the world at frat parties. I thought about the incredibly awkward “online-dating” experience months ago that brought us together over Facebook. I thought about the time we sang in the shower together, and when we skipped class to tan on the lawn because we knew it would be the last sunny day before winter. I reminisced in text messages like “I’m going to the store, do you need anything?” or “I’m not coming home tonight, have fun! Be safe!” And all the times she neglected to take out the trash or when I would wake her up getting ready for my early morning classes. We lived together beautifully.

Dorming together in college gave us a special relationship, sometimes difficult, but always well intentioned. I felt overwhelmingly alone, not only because I was now living by myself, but because I was grieving a relationship no one else had with her.

My roommate will always live in my fondest memories of my first taste of college life. I miss her all the time, and little things I know she would have loved or laughed at remind me of her every day. What happened to her is not fair, and does not make sense. But although she is gone now, the people who cared about her, knew her, or lived with her are still very much alive. We all have the responsibility to live wholly for her, as best we can, because she did not have the chance.