One day, my world just wasn't the same anymore. The sun wasn't as bright, sleep didn't come as easy, and my heart didn't feel near as complete.
I wasn't myself.
One phone call, one night, and a million emotions.
In a matter of minutes, someone I knew and loved was no longer my bubbly, sarcastic best friend, but a statistic.
Young drivers between 15- and 20-years-old accounted for 6.4 percent (13.2 million) of total drivers on the road.
55 percent of car accident deaths among teens occurred on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.
It was Friday night, almost Saturday morning, and I honestly can't remember why I was up so late. Right as I was about to shut my phone off and go to bed, I got news that still echoes through my mind.
Within the next half an hour, I was out on a country road, my hair disheveled and my heart pounding, in the middle of the night surrounded by police and the lingering smoke of destruction. I wanted to remain hopeful, but hope turned into denial. I remember repeating, "she's gonna be fine" to myself and everyone around me to try and keep everything calm, but in the back of my mind, I was screaming because things like this just don't happen in real life.
It did happen, though, and I was caught in the center of the aftermath. She was a beautiful person, taken by something so ugly, and there were plenty of people who spent time having to do things they never thought they'd have to do. A mother and father had to make funeral arrangements for their only child, a boyfriend had to adjust to life without his usual goodnight text, relatives had to explain to the little ones why their cousin wasn't here anymore, and I had to speak at my best friend's memorial.
I no longer had my late night Taco Bell date, my Netflix binging buddy, my shoulder to cry on, my spontaneous laugh, my nudge out of the comfort zone, or my other half.
In the week following her death, my mind was vacant of significant thought and I tried to find some way of feeling something other than sadness, but it was everywhere.
It was on Facebook, in every room of my house where we'd shared some sort of memory, in the texts and pictures on my phone, and the lining of my existence.
You always hear people say that there are five stages of grief, depression, denial, anger, bargaining, and acceptance .They're right, and I was a huge mess of denial and anger for the longest time. People who had maybe ever said two words to her made it out to be like they were experiencing this huge loss, but they weren't. The people that use tragedy for their own personal gain are the worst kind of people because in reality: they had no clue how it really felt to be there where she took her last breath, to see her truck burnt beyond recognition, to hold onto someone bawling your eyes out at 4 a.m. because you've been up hoping everything would turn out okay but it didn't. Worst of all, they didn't know how it felt to wake up and have those few moments of blissful ignorance to what you'd been feeling the night before; only to have it hit you, knock the wind out of you, and leave you there sitting in your own sorrow. Nobody will ever get how it felt to get phone calls from friends, begging me to tell them it wasn't true, only to have them collapse into hysterics because you're numb enough to repeat what you've already told a handful of people.
That was the day my life changed forever.
You see and hear about tragedies on TV all the time, and you assume it's never going to affect you...until it does. It hits you hard and shakes you to the point where every joint, bone, and vein aches so hard you can barely think straight as you lay in your bed sobbing.
Since she's passed, things have happened to me that I feel can only be her doing.The timing belt on the car, that she knew wasn't safe for me to be driving, snapped for the second time and I got a new, safer car. That was the second time the timing belt had snapped; the first time it happened, she had been in the car with me. We weren't sure I would be able to go to college because loans and scholarships were falling through left and right, and she was just as upset as I was that I wouldn't get to go to my dream school. At her memorial, my mother found out from a family friend that there was a loan we hadn't tried, and we were approved. I had been struggling to find a job for a while because of a traumatizing experience at my first job, where she and I had both worked. The day she passed, I had had an interview that I didn't tell her about because we'd been fighting, and two days later I was told I'd gotten the job. Every once in a while, I'll be having a rough day and spot a random butterfly fluttering by; she had gotten a beautiful butterfly tattoo on her back a few months before her accident. I know these incidents aren't just a mere coincidence.
I'm not a religious person and I have no clue what I believe, but my friend believed in God and tried on a frequent basis to try and show me the comfort she felt knowing she was in His good graces. I think I've found peace knowing that she's somewhere, wherever that may be, keeping an eye on me and helping me through life. Even though she's not here, she's here in spirit and in my heart, and that's the biggest change for me.
