Under the influence. Goodbye Sarah. I love you. RIP

A departure post from apraxia, but I would be remiss if I never publicly wrote about the death of one of my best friends.

Today, January 20th 2016 I received this text:

“She is dead!!!”

What did you think when you read that?  Then you can’t even imagine what I thought.  That “she” is my best friend since I was 14.  I’m 35.  That means that “she” was a girl I have known for 21 years.  21 years…..longer than half my life and she’s NOT a family member.

That “she” saved me.  I had come out of a sheltered 8 years of private Catholic school and public highschool ate me alive.  I ended up eating my lunch the entire first few months in the bathroom.

Thankfully basketball came around.  I never did club, but I was “a natural” as my dad would say.  I easily made the team even though I showed up to try outs in Payless tennis shoes that caused me to slip and slide.  Sarah didn’t care. Who is Sarah? Oh yeah. Sarah is that “she.”   She was a freshman about 6 foot tall.  She had a different solution to ridicule than eating in the bathroom.  She attracted attention and drew laughs.  I have this vision, just like a movie scene, seeing her in the hallway of Littleton Highschool; and she was participating in Spirit Day in which the basketball team was to wear ties; and she put hers around her forehead!

Being a 6 foot freshman girl was already drawing attention, but then she decided to slap her “spirit wear” around her forehead.

To be frank, I admired her balls.  She was ballsy.  Where I was hiding, she was like, “bring it bitches!  I DARE you to make fun of me.”

I’m not trying to knock public school, but I BREEZED through freshman year.  Apparently my Catholic 8th grade education was the equivalant to freshman honors in public school.  The only person who could challenge me was that 6 foot girl with the tie around her head.  I discovered she was brilliant.  Verbally gifted.  An unbelievable writer.  We challenged each other.  She was the ONLY one I trusted to proofread my writing, and she was the ONLY one who made my writing better.  Let’s face it though.  She was brilliant in general.  If it wasn’t for her, I would have failed chemistry.  She wasn’t just book smart though.  She was also artistic.

She loved models.  She was an artist with a talent for drawing portraits.  In fact, she drew a black and white charcoal sketch of me once and at the time I was riddled with acne.  Of course a black and white sketch left all that out, and for once, I felt someone saw me as beautiful.  That someone was that “she.”  You know, the “she” that is dead.

We went on to live life together.  Proms, boyfriends, teenage rebellions, vacations, road trips, heartbreaks, engagements, weddings, babies, careers……we would grow old together and we would laugh about our life.

Only….Sarah fell into something I couldn’t help her with.  Stricken by mental illness, fueled by drug abuse, she pushed anyone trying to help her away.  The system?  Well, her sister Sharon put it best.

A colossal failure.

Sarah and I had a special connection.  Both Scorpios and intuitive by nature, we had a connection.  It’s not different than when you are thinking of someone and they call you, and then you say, “oh my gosh!  I was JUST thinking of you!!”

Sarah and I had that all the time.  Well, if you know me though, you know I don’t believe in coincidences, and neither did Sarah….so when we were thinking of one another we knew to call.  We both knew it wasn’t a coincidence.

Until the last two years.  She drifted further and further away.  I felt helpless.  I watched via social media as everyone else did….but I was still powerless.

I found out she died today.  I don’t know when she actually passed at the time I am writing this, but I was in my car today. Alone.  I asked her to play a song for me.  Something we knew.  Something we sang.  Something I would remember her by.  We have MANY songs she could have picked from.

I started scrolling through stations.  I was looking for some old school song.  Some song to reminisce.  Instead, I ended up at the start of a catchy song and I couldn’t change the channel.  As  I listened I cried.

Well played Sarah.  I’ve never heard this song before…but you were speaking through it.  I understand now.  I love you friend.  You entered my life like a movie, and you leave like one too.  I learned you jumped off the parking garage at the Denver Center of Performing Arts.  Your final act.  I love you Sarah Elizabeth.  I will never forget you, how could I?  You are forever written into my life story and will always live on through my many memories.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGSC8a-eei4Under the Influence