For Forever She Will Never

A tribute to a girl I once knew and recently lost. 

She’ll never grow up.

Grief is sporadic. In a way I never expected it to be. In a way that, in retrospect, I never could have fathomed; never could have grasped.

I've always wondered how I’d react to the death of someone I know. How it would differ now that I’m a teenager, with stronger emotions and deeper understandings, rather than when I was that child at a funeral; bemusedly surveying her grandparent’s headstone. As children do. Would I care? Would I cry? Would I react the same way I did when my dog died? Waking up in the middle of the night, choking on tears because for a moment I forgot he was gone.

She’ll never leave school.

There are moments I forget, my focus distracted, then I’ll remember. And then there’s this weight dragging in my chest, bearing down on my shoulders; pressing a curve into my back. My limbs are heavy with something I cannot see and my hands tremble incessantly, for no reason at all. All energy will leave me, and I’ll feel so incredibly weak.

She’ll never see her dreams come true.

But then other times I’m numb, as though I’ve distanced myself from the event so completely, that it doesn’t even register with me. It reminds me of the reason I believe I remember so little of Primary School, it was such a boring and lonely time in my life that my brain decided to block it out, for the memories were of no use to me. It scares me to feel like this.

She’ll never get a degree.

I met her in primary school. A bit more than a year before the end. She was the happiest girl I knew and the kindest of the lot. Primary School was kind of like a black hole for me, monotonous and shadowed by my timid insecurity. But she was a bright spot.

She’ll never have a career.

She was my friend. For a while. She was the nicest person in all of year seven, with the biggest smile, and she wanted to hang out with me of all people.

She’ll never fall in love.

I’ve only seen her once or twice in the past three years. We lost touch when High School began. But still, we talk from time to time. Text on birthdays. Comment on Instagram.

Or we… would talk. Would text. Tenses. Have to remember tenses.

She’ll never start a family.

I don’t know why I’m crying honestly. Why I’m reacting like this. It’s been three years, so really I barely knew her. I don’t even miss her really, she wasn’t a presence in my life anymore. I’m just… sad. Really, really sad.

Because I barely knew her.

She’s frozen where she was three days ago, where she will still be twenty years from now.

I barely knew her. I barely knew her. I barely knew her. I bare-

She will always and forever be…

But she was my best friend.

Sixteen.