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I am floating away I bought a copy of Margaret Atwood's, "The Edible Woman" today. I just started it, and it already makes me unbelievably happy. The ability to curl up in bed and read at all makes me unbelievably happy. I have, in general, been a very happy girl lately. I bitch and moan a lot, but really, I think I'm the luckiest person I know. and like that faith never ends but i really just have friends ~Dar Williams I don't want to remember people like that. I want to remember the truth, I want to remember every flaw. To pretend they never existed isn't fair. If I were to die tomorrow, I want my friends to remember that I sometimes got annoyed with them, I want them to remember the times I burst into tears and the times I ran away. Those times are as much a part of me as the happy memories, and right now I have more happy memories than not... but if that were to ever change, I want them to remember that to. I don't want to be remembered as perfect, I want to be remembered as the girl who sometimes tried too hard and sometimes didn't try hard enough, the one who obsessively tried to figure everything out, who was obsessed with ani and only picked on the people she loved. I want to be remembered as the slightly crazy one, who maybe wasn't as crazy as she thought she was. I can't say that it's good enough to just be remembered at all, because for me it's not. I want it to be the truth. And I don't view the truth as an absolute thing one can hold, but as something to strive towards, something that's so far away I'll never actually get there, but it's worth it just to work as hard as I can to get as close as I can. Kat was not always happy. She had more than her share of troubles. And I want to remember the first night I met her, when we were watching Empire Records and it got to Deb's "funeral" and she said, "I tried to kill myself with a Lady Bic, a pink plastic razor with daisies on it and a moisturizing strip." And I want to remember that Kat said, "I tried that" and that I was too scared to say, "me too," although I said it in my head. I need to remember that, right along with the time I waited in the car with her after the bonfire for her mom to come, and she told me all about her summer, and right then I wanted nothing but to sit in the car with her listening to Ani. We were listening to my tape of Dilate... she fastforwarded through Amazing Grace just like I always do. I just reread what I wrote the night after Kat's accident... it made me cry, and I'm so happy I have that. I put all the energy I had in it, I got home late and I sat down and wrote and wrote and wrote, everything I could remember for as long as I could sit up. I didn't know her very long, or very well for that matter... but I wanted to. I desperately wanted to. I had an assignment in one of my classes, due tuesday after she died on sunday... it was basically write one page about your life. I edited a little, and turned in one page of what I wrote that night... and I never let anyone read it except for the people in that class, but I was really proud of it, and I still am, I think. I coped that night. I didn't cut myself, I didn't yell or scream or even really want to. I didn't run away, and I didn't hide under the bed. I wrote. "Hey, Sarah? Did you hear what happened to Kat?" No… "You didn't hear anything?" No…. "She was in a pretty bad car accident…" "Is she okay?" "Not really… we're going to the hospital now, do you wanna go?" So I left. I grabbed my bag, because it had my wallet and my notebook and I never go anywhere without them. I went and stood outside on the curb and waited for them to come. And I started saying good-bye in my head, I started pushing away. I've only known Kat for six months. The first time I met her was at our friend Magen's "my parents are on vacation and I have the house to myself" party. We were both slightly drunk. She did a tarot card reading, and told me I was looking for something and possibly neglecting my responsibilities in search of it. I thought about the fact that it was Monday night and I had classes the next day and I was sitting there drinking my third Zima. She was damn close. We sat on Magen's bed and used her nail polish. She told me I was cool and asked me my life story, and she didn't even call me a freak when I told her it. I fell madly in love. I took a break from writing this story and went to a frat party. It was in a church. I wore a tight black shirt and too much make-up. I held on to Anna's shoulder and followed her through the hallways, in a circle, stopping to refill at every station. I never got that wasted before, apparently when I'm wasted I start talking. I talked non-stop for three hours. When we got back to the dorms I kept checking my messages and saying, "they didn't call me, so she didn't die. They would've called me if she died." The next day, I ate eggs and toast (not recommended for a hangover, by the way) and then picked up my friend Michelle and went to the hospital. We sat in the ICU waiting room for a couple hours until I started having anxiety attacks. My arms tingled and my heart went too fast, so we walked around and I recounted all the hundreds of times I'd been in a hospital. She'd never been in one before. At 5pm we left, without going back upstairs to check in. At 5:30 the doctors held a meeting with Kat's family and told them she was brain dead. I got a whispered message on my voicemail, "Sarah, it's Judy, called the hospital waiting room, call me back." I knew then. I hung up and, for the first time, started crying. We congregated at Denny's. we sat in the corner booth drinking cokes and eating french fries and remembering Kat. We told funny little stories and laughed, and agreed if she could see us, she'd approve. She always loved being the center of attention. Later, we heard she was gone. I can't decide whether cell phones help or make it worse. They let us stay in Denny's almost an hour after it closed, while they were cleaning. And I thought, I want to remember it all, I want to write it all down. The way she bought a double espresso at Java's the last night I saw her, and kept saying, "this is SO good" and pouring sugar into it until I thought it would turn to syrup. The way she introduced me to Tim, her new boyfriend, and while we were walking to Billiards she caught up with me, put her arm through my arm, and asked how I liked him. And the way I was so jealous I couldn't even tell her I liked him a lot, I told her I wasn't sure. And the way I prickled when she touched me. The way we went to Billiards, Ho night, that night and she played half a game and left early with Tim. I remember I hugged her good-bye, I always did, I can't remember what I said. I want to remember the little things, her favorite flavor of Ben and Jerry's, how much she loved her big black boots, the way her hair smelled of shampoo and patchouli, like only Kat's hair could. There is no ending to this story. I keep typing and typing and I just remember more and more. There is nothing to say, all the possible endings deteriorate into clichés, and she's too good for that, she deserves better, she deserves a better writer, a writer who can tell her story with a beginning and a middle and an end, a writer who can tell the world what they lost at that intersection Thursday. She had so much left to do. this isn't what I was going to write tonight. i was going to write happy stories. It occured to me, the other day, when I was talking to melchelle, that I rarely tell happy stories, that I seem to give the impression of only having sad stories to tell. and I want to fix that. As much as I need to remember the bad times I need to remember the good times, and when I write they seem to go away, I seem to forget about them. Melchelle told me it's hard for her to imagine me not okay on a daily basis. And I realized how far I've really come... she's seen me not okay, she's usually the first to know. and it did used to be like that. It was always like that. and I don't remember kat's favorite flavor of ben and jerry's. I can't remember if I knew when I wrote that or not. I think I must've, otherwise why would i have written it down? and why didn't I write it down? time doesn't pull you through cuz there are nights when i still cry when I think of you ~soraya Happy stories. I am capable of this, I really am. okay. in seventh grade, I had just gotten aol. nobody else had the internet yet, the world wide web wasn't even a part of aol and aol was years and years away from having a flat rate. My monthly bill was once $200... my dad didn't even yell, he just looked disappointed. wait, i'm off track. okay. I had just gotten aol. and since it was such a novel thing, that's how we usually spent sleepovers, me in the chair right in front of the computer, emily sitting on the recliner and leaning over to read the screen, while we talked in random chat rooms until we were falling asleep in our chairs. There was one time she did something... I don't remember what, although I know I have this story written down in other places... and in the middle of a conversation I fell off my chair and "broke" my little toe against the desk. We laughed for hours about that. and a different time, amanda and stacy were over too, and they were playing with the computer, and emily and I were lying on the floor, side by side, by the chair. and we were making up strange sentences in our seventh grade spanish, and laughing so much my chest hurt. my chest always hurt the day after she came over, we laughed that much. this was all when we were just friends. My family took her with us to cedar point that year. We rode every roller coaster, several of them twice, and competed to see who could scream louder. She was smaller and quieter than I was, but she could out-scream me. Except for one time... there's an indoor roller coaster there, and you have to walk through three or four waiting rooms to get to it. And they're dark, with blacklights, and when the lines are short the rooms are empty and you still have to walk through them and they're kinda creepy. and emily was walking in front of me, and we were walking through one of the empty rooms when I stopped and screamed, as loud as I could, to scare her. And she turned around and glared at me, with the funniest expression, and I laughed hysterically all the way to the ride, and when we went back to school the next week I told that story to everyone, and I was completely incapable of doing so without bursting into giggles after every sentence. there, see? sarah has happy stories. granted, no one ever said I didn't. we now conclude our coverage of Sarah's competition with herself, she won, making the score 15,003 to 0, Sarah always wins... now back to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress... I am calling, can you hear this? ~me |