🕊️🤍🕊️
This starts on the day before, Saturday, 04/06/2024. Yes, I am 20, and I have never really had a girlfriend in the essence of what a girlfriend is. However, one defines it. I still don't have one, don't get me wrong, maybe this will turn into something, I don't know, or you may call me dumb by the end, but feelings aside. I met this girl, no it wasn't love at first sight. And no, I had no idea it would transpire to anything close to this than in the last week. I've had Chinese class with her for a full 1.5 semesters. I have never really felt anything; just studied with her and a friend for tests and learned about her through my autism, asking random questions to procrastinate studying. Though last week was different, I guess, studying for a psychology test just one-on-one, for me, a spark lit up. I pulled my balls together and asked her if she wanted to hang out, and low and behold we watched a movie on Saturday night, Howl's Moving Castle - the movie is overhyped. But we ended up talking for 7 hrs until 4 am. I admit I was hesitant; she's lovely but not entirely my type, but I did not want to pass anything up because of something so small. Through that night that spark became a small fire, and I fell, how far I yet don't know. But this isn't about finding someone but losing someone.
04/07/2024, 4:30 am the phone read as I went to sleep, unexpectedly waking up at 11:00 am. I was working on my Chinese workbook, when my roommate came back to the room asking if I knew a guy, with my response his face turned to sorrow. For the next two hours I cried, with the grief washing over me like ocean waves. Seeking solace in my closest friends and parents and Max as the tears flowed with no end, and the walls of my room felt ever more foreign.
Learning that a friend was no longer around, but flying high. My friend's dead, the word dead replaying over and over, nothing prepares you for that. The feeling is indescribable: shock, fear, pain, sorrow, grief tied into one. The past memories, no matter how small, flood back. Someone I was starting to get to know better and become closer to throughout the semester. I didn't yet know him on a deep level and will now never get the chance, but nonetheless, friends, and nonetheless, did it hurt any less. I say this about few, but he was truly a selfless friend, always helping me and my friends out on the Macro problem sets on the night it was due, without hesitation. He always had a smile on his face, and he was always joyous and upbeat.
It's not just the fact that he's gone that hurts so much. The realization that no-one is immune, that the happiest face can be hurting, that the happiest person hurts the most, that life and death sits on the finest of edges. Everyone knows these things, but they never ring true or feel serious until they happen. The simple waves and conversations of how you are, what you are doing over the weekend, and what's up are gone. Gone in an instant. Most of the time, I am fine, though the times when I think about him or see something about him, the tears come back. It's the first time I've lost someone. Now it's a weird feeling. Not believing that he's really gone, to forgetting and keeping my mind occupied on something else, to I don't know. As I write this, my chest hurts, and my heart throbs.
It puts life in a new perspective of how brittle life is, and as corny as it sounds to always spend time checking on friends. To be the best person you can be, that the only thing that matters is not how much money you make or the grades you get, but how kind and selfless you are that lasts and is felt in the hearts of others.