People come and go. It can be caused by any sort of conflict, growing apart, or even inevitable death. Something I have realized about people is that we know death is inevitable and unavoidable, it’s bound to happen at any point for any reason, yet we have a hard time accepting it. I have lost people because of conflict, growing apart, and death, and, of course, death hurts the most because it’s the most final of them all. Sure, we can see them in the afterlife, but does the afterlife even exist? We won’t even know until we actually die. How can we deal with life with that knowledge? Sometimes, it keeps me up at night.

The heavy topic on my mind is loss, clearly. I lost someone very dear to me this year, one of my best friends. His name was Brett. He was a grade below me, and we met when I was in 4th grade, and he was in 3rd grade. When we first met, we hated each other. I don’t really know why. He was always a very sassy kid. We basically bullied each other on the bus we rode. That was the root of our friendship, because when we finally became friends during our time in our local drama club, we would pick on each other. It wasn’t to be mean, but it was how we showed our love. As we got older, we learned to tell each other if it got too far and we felt hurt, we apologized, we forgave, we moved on, and that was that. It was the best dynamic of a friendship I had ever had. It was healthy and it was fun. It’s like we knew exactly how to create good relationships with people, but only with each other.

It was an open secret that I had a crush on him. I was “boy crazy” ever since I was very little. Whether he had one on me is still unknown to me, but that’s okay. Just having him as a friend was all I ever needed. Unreciprocated romantic feelings would not completely break our bond. I think we tried to date when I was in 7th grade, but it didn’t work out. Maybe it was my “right person, wrong time” scenario. Looking back on it, we clearly had limited time, so it didn’t matter if it was the “wrong time.” 

I started the new year with a bang. I had a great time with a few friends on New Year’s Eve. I thought 2020 was going to be such an amazing year. I was going to make it good. I went home on New Year’s Day, not knowing at all that I was going to hear of news that would completely change my life for the worse the next day.

It was a normal day. I had been doing nothing at all. I was still tired from my crazy night on New Year’s Eve. I decided to get in the shower at around 3:00 p.m., and 7 minutes later, I got a text. 

I hear the notification. It was about the same time I needed to change the song playing on Youtube, so I thought why not look at the message.

“Hey,” it said. I looked at the contact name. I got confused. It was from a friend that I didn’t really talk to anymore. It seemed out of the ordinary that she was texting me, and it’s like I already knew she started a conversation with the purpose of telling me something. 

“Hey,” I responded back to her.

Almost immediately, the gray bubble with the three dots popped up, indicating that she was typing back. It took about 10 to 20 seconds, but then her response came up. It took me a second to actually comprehend what she had said.

“Did you see Brett passed away?” she had written. “Him and sister got into a car accident,” she added into another text.

Was this a prank? If so, did she actually think it was funny? This isn’t a funny joke. But why would she randomly text me about that? I knew it was real. I hoped it wasn’t, but it had to be.

It felt like I got kicked in the gut and punched in the throat. The wind had been knocked out of me. I sunk down to the shower floor, already sobbing. I think I even screamed. I could not believe that Brett was just no longer walking on the earth anymore. It’s like there was a shift, like everything was knocked off balance. The shower water was still running, getting colder and colder every second. I was already cold. This shook me to the core. I called another one of my friends right away to tell her. I knew she would have wanted to know. I don’t think I was comprehensive, I was still sobbing. The conversation was quick, I didn’t want to hold a conversation for very long, not when I couldn’t stop my crying

My mom was at work, so I called my aunt to tell her about Brett. She said she was on her way over, and that she was going to call my mom.

My dogs were too anxious and upset from the sounds of my cries, so I waited outside for her. When she got there, I had stopped crying somehow. I think I just felt numb. 

“Your mom is on her way,” she says as she walks up. I just nodded, staring off into the abyss. She walked over to me, insinuating she wanted to hug me, so I stood up and hugged her back. 

“It’ll be okay,” she says quietly. I just nod mindlessly. My mind was somewhere else. 

How was it okay? How could it ever be okay? He was only 16. How is it okay for a kid to die? In what world does the universe think that a kid who has barely lived his life is ready for it to end? Clearly, I had many questions, but none of them would ever be answered. 

I told my aunt what I knew about how he died and everything. It felt unreal to say it. I was waiting for Brett to come to my house and tell me it was a joke. He had pulled something like this before, why not now? He loved messing with me. This could have been some sick joke that we would laugh about in the future.

But it wasn’t. And I have been waking up every day just hoping he would walk through the door of my house and confirm that it was a joke. I would forgive him instantly, even if it would be a very cruel joke, because at least he would be alive. 

In some ways, I have dealt with the whole grieving process, but at the same time, I’m reliving the steps all of the time. I’m constantly in denial because I either forget he’s dead or I pretend he is alive and I just imagined that he died. I have this anger within me, sitting in my chest all the time, burning me alive from the inside out. I am angry that he left me and I’m angry that the universe is so cruel that he had to die. Sometimes I scream at the sky, trying to bargain that death takes me and brings him back to life. He deserves to live more than me. His death made my depression worse. I don’t know how to be truly happy in a world where he wasn’t alive. It’s utter nonsense, complete chaos. Acceptance is a tricky stage for me. I know he’s gone and I can’t do anything about it , but I don’t want to fully accept it, because then I have to move on, which feels totally wrong.

As I go through the process of grief every single day, I realize it’s not a one-time thing. You don’t just go through the stages and then you’re all done, and what caused the grief is a distant memory. It is something that you live through constantly. You just learn how to deal with it. You learn to normalize it, to make it part of your daily routine. You think about the person you lost all the time, you think of the good memories, and your heart smiles. Then you remember that they are gone, and now your heart has turned blue for the billionth time. Sometimes you cry, sometimes it just ruins your mood for a couple of hours or the whole day, or maybe even the whole week. Grief is not a perfectly aligned step-by-step process, it is a jumbled mess that never gets untangled. It’s different for everyone, but it’s difficult for everyone. Understanding that helps, or maybe it doesn’t.

Either way, we’re going to be fine, because whoever we lost would want us to be. They want us to continue living our lives. Brett would want me to move on and find happiness, and that’s what I do. It’s not necessarily for my sake, but for his. Everything I do is for him. 

Brett, cheers to you. This is for you, it always was.