For the sake of privacy and respect for her family, I am not going to name drop her, nor am I going to share the circumstances of her death. I’m going to share my process of healing and acceptance that were really only dealt with very recently.

A close friend of mine died a few years ago. She was a long distance friend, someone who I met on Tumblr when I was 14-years-old. We weren’t friends for a super long time and we weren’t best friends but we talked almost every day. We would share minuscule moments or comment on each others’ posts. Back in the day, our group of friends would hang out on a website called Tinychat, where one could video call with a bunch of your friends. We would exchange silly YouTube videos, sing songs and talk about personal issues, too.

She bought and named a star after our favorite "South Park" character for our friend group. We used to talk about the morality of “Dexter” and I talked their ear off about my favorite television pairing at the time. I have an audio file of her singing. I recently listened to it and I cried for hours. I remember her voice so well. She was young when she passed and I have no doubt that she was destined for amazing things, on this Earth or not. She was the only one who I confided in regarding the huge crush on my best friend at the time.

They say that a passing of a friend is difficult to deal with, which I always knew. The unexpectedness of it all really tore me apart for a while. I never thought I would be so young when it happened. I was in denial for the first month. I kept checking her blog that didn’t have any new posts. It had to be a dream. I had just talked to her the day before. I didn’t want to accept it even though I knew it was real. I saw the article. It was tangible, but I wasn’t ready to accept it.

Mourning her was the most difficult thing I had to do. I was in the middle of high school. She lived miles away. I couldn’t go to her funeral. I haven’t written out these feelings in over three years. The computer keys feel foreign on my fingertips as I share this personal information.

I never said goodbye to her. Conversations with people online don’t usually end with “goodbye.” It is more of a “be right back” or “talk to you as soon as I get back.” Recently, in my head, I think I construed a final conversation between us. We joke around as per usual. Only, this time, I changed the narrative to our “be right back” ending to something I wish I had the chance to say in our two years of friendship:

When you followed me on Tumblr all those years ago, never did I really expect a true friendship to spring about. You are the glue to a lot of the friendships I’ve made on Tumblr. I can’t even imagine having an ounce of confidence if it weren’t for you telling me how proud you are of me for fighting with mental illness since it was new and scary to me at the time.

So much of our formative years were based on each others’ moral support and silly distractions to make the other feel less sad and lonely. I know that if I ever needed anything, I could always count on you. I love you so much and I think I’m finally ready to say goodbye or even better yet, “See you later.”

I don’t think I can ever forget about you and I don’t want to. I’m so happy I’ve gotten to know you and I think about you every day, which a hundred percent outweighs the sadness that I feel in my heart. I wish you were here, of course. Someday we are going to reunite and we will sing “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac and I will make you a Kermit the Frog plush for you to hold.