Another Half-My-Life-Iversary, But Not Like The Other One, Soz

CW: mentions of death, death of a minor, death of a childhood friend, grief, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, attempted suicide, bullying/friendship breakup, unconfirmed suspected medical malpractice, dark humor right out the gate, discussion of bodily trauma, trauma resulting from a motor vehicle incident, reference to a motor vehicle collision, implied/referenced homophobia, implied/suspected rape/sexual assault, survivor’s guilt, many curse words, (there’s probably more I’m forgetting just lemme know and I’ll add them).     

This one time at band camp, I got a phone call from my mother that my childhood best friend was dead. 

…okay, perhaps some of you have never heard me do the band camp intro reference joke to a story before, and this one is certainly not that funny, but I had to start somewhere. 

Today, June 30 of 2022, is another Half-My-Life-iversary that’s a bit of a mindblower. Obviously, it’s not in any way, shape, or form fun or funny like my Coming Out To Myself adventure, but it deserves recognition and a post about it just as much, if not more. 

Before I begin, though, I really REALLY do have to add a disclaimer here. I know a lot of content creators on the internets, particularly in the Bookternet world, feel like they need to include them in their videos/posts/etc. so that they don’t get a ton of backlash from random viewers, their followers or any other such folk. Normally, I would support them and say that they don’t need to have disclaimers because everyone has opinions, and just because this one content creator didn’t like a certain book/movie/t.v. show/product/whatever that you like doesn’t mean that it’s a personal attack on you and your life or that they’re “cancelling” it or what have you. But in this case, I THINK perhaps there may or may not actually be some legal stuff involved?…so I’m going to err on the side of caution, go on the record and state:

“Disclaimer: This stuff all happened sixteen years ago, when I was still a teenager of sixteen years old. I don’t know if many of the things I’m discussing on this post are official, on a record or statement or anything of the sort, and this post is entirely of events that are just from MY OWN MEMORY of what occurred. Do not take what I have mentioned here as 100% fact, take many of these things with a grain of salt, and do not quote me or do any sort of official anything for records or any other some such whatever.”  

Probably not the most legal way to phrase that, but methinks you get the idea. With that out of the way, now I’m not sure where to start. 

How we met, I guess? Goodness, I don’t remember the specific details on that one. We were in the same afternoon Kindergarten class. I was…four? Five? I can vaguely remember things like playing on the school playground. Or sitting at the desks together in groups during class. Or going over to her old house and playing with our American Girl Dolls or watching Rugrats. Or going to the local nearby water park over the summers to swim and get ice cream sammiches. Or when it was her birthday and she’d have a small birthday party fun gathering with other peeps, especially one of her best friends, [Name redacted because now she’s famous and has won Emmys and shit].  

It was the 90’s. Not gonna lie, that feels like another lifetime. 

After kindy, my family moved to the next town over so we didn’t go to the same school anymore, but we still grew up together. I can’t even begin to count how many sleepovers we had where we ended up talking all night. 

She was way more mainstream than I was, so she introduced me to a lot of popular things and we bonded over so many of them together; Avril Lavinge, Michelle Branch, Evanescence, Moulin Rouge, How to Deal, Saved, and so many other music artists and movies. We both did musical theater so we always saw each other in shows. She made me laugh, all the time. I promised her that she would be the first to give me her speech after my Bat Mitzvah, which she did. She showed and introduced me to a lot of technology and social media type things from that time, like Livejournal and AOL. She let me read her journal after her dad died. 

The long and short of it is that she was my bestie, my closest and favorite person for YEARS, and we always hung out and spent endless amounts of time doing everything together.  

Things started to change a bit, though, when high school hit. I previously mentioned that she was pretty mainstream, but then her mainstream proclivities turned the other way. I think the kids call it a “scene phase” now, but I’m more inclined to call it the “emo phase,” due to some suspicions that I have that I’ll mention later. 

I don’t really know how to explain it, but she just became different. Maybe it’s silly, me saying this shit, since I didn’t do the stereotypical rebellious teenage experience. I didn’t do the sneaking-into-R-rated-movies-that-I-didn’t-pay-for thing (well, I did, with her and her friends once, and it was really freaking weird. I didn’t really see what the point was), or sneak out of the house after curfew for whatever shenanigans and mischief that may or may not have technically been “illegal.” 

I’d heard from a couple mutual acquaintances that she had said some not very nice things about me, about how I was “kinda weird” (lol undiagnosed untreated ADHD ftw probs). I’m not quite sure how to accurately and easily portray this in one mere blog post, but regardless we drifted apart, we weren’t as close friends as we used to be, and I think she might have had some unfriendly and negative thoughts/opinions about me. 

I don’t blame her, by the way. Not anymore, and even not that much at the time. Junior High/High School is a very uncomfy strange time where shit is going down, friendship circles and dynamics change, and, like I said before, I suspect that she was going THROUGH some shit, and when you’re going through some shit, your brain changes and adapts and you maybe do some unexpected stuff, right? We didn’t have a big huge dramatic major falling out or anything like that, we just kind of stopped being close friends, stopped talking regularly and hanging out. I’m not sure if I’m saying this very well, but I just remember thinking and feeling that all of this was very strange. 

So that was the status of our relationship; just kind of in this awkward limbo state, where I’m pretty sure I had essentially been ghosted by her, and she had moved on to more “fun” and “cooler” people. It sucked. I was upset about it. But this shit happens in high school, I guess. 

She’s actually the one who introduced me to the “band camp” just before high school. It was in [Redacted U.S. State Of Which I Am Not A Resident], and we went together for four weeks the summer before our freshman year of high school in 2004. She played violin and was there for orchestra. She seemed to have as lovely a time as I did, but she only went that one summer. I, on the other hand, loved it so very very much I went every summer throughout high school. 

Now, time for an unnecessarily long introduction explanation type thing that will hopefully make sense in a bit and connect things between y’all and my ADHD[Redacted]Brain:

I’ll have you know that the “band camp” was technically an arts camp, and while my main area of study was creative writing and screenwriting, I DID take private clarinet lessons while I was there, so it counts when I say that I went to band camp and therefore its totally valid for me to make those “this one time at band camp” jokes. 

I’ll also have you know that technically x2, the arts camp was at an arts academy, so while I was there for the summers and did summer housing, there were dorms on campus and classes for the school year. There was even a uniform we had to wear. Basically what this was an artsy boarding school, and I was at this artsy boarding school for summer classes in the mid noughties (2004-2007), so long story short, smartphones weren’t a thing, and as it was a school campus with classes, we weren’t allowed to have our cell phones.

I bring this up because, depending on how lax your cabin counselor was in the “no cell phones” rule, in order to make phone calls and/or receive phone calls, we had to have a prepaid card with minutes on it, and call a special number in order to get the credit for the minutes on a landline at our part of campus’ cabin headquarters. 

(ADHD[Redacted]BrainThought: WOW holy effin balls, this was a really fckin long time ago I don’t even know if I explained that clearly at all!) 

Regardless, my cabin counselor was awesome the summer the year [Redacted] died. She was super chill and wasn’t strict at all on the “no cell phones” thing, but as it was still technically the policy and she could get in trouble if her campers were found using their cell phones, I really did try to refrain from using and having my mobile as much as possible. So while I theoretically could have been able to receive a call on my cell phone, my mom did not know this, and it was probably better and safer for all parties anyways. 

Again, apologies for all the boring historical technology exposition I just did. Kind of a long winded way to explain to any younger, more modern, tech savvy folk reading this that that’s how on, or at least very near to, June 30, 2006, I got an urgent phone call on a landline telephone that I did not have immediate access to from my mother.

My cabin counselor was working at the front desk of our section’s headquarters of the camp at that time, and conveniently she’s the one that received the call from my mother, so she knew who I was in order to immediately come find me. I was in the cabin, I don’t remember if I had just gotten out of a class or if I was back from hanging out on main campus grounds, but Cabin Counselor had come into our cabin, breathless, very promptly looking for me to tell me that my mom was on the phone. I, of course, had no context for any of this, so I asked why, but then my counselor shook her head, and basically implied that it was an emergency, very important, not for her to tell and that I should hear it from my mom. 

I also should inform you that why I explained the old, mid 2000s, no cell phones, low tech situation that the camp had is because I need y’all to know that that moment, that that one minute walk from my cabin to the camp section headquarters cabin was THE MOST anxiety inducing, devastatingly terrifying moment of my life.

Many of you know that I was an overly anxious child at the time, so naturally catastrophising was already an instinctual habit in my life. Think of those movies or t.v. shows when a character walks into a room to see everyone else looking upset and they go “oh no, who died?”, usually as a humorous coping mechanism to deal with how nervous and uncomfortable they really were. Yep, that was me. Every day, all the time, 24/7. But this time when my brain immediately went “shit, someone’s dead,” I knew I was right. My first thought was that it was my father. Then perhaps my paternal grandmother (which…that’s a thought that now hits differently since she passed on a few months ago). But when I finally got in the cabin headquarters and sat on the chair by the landline telephone to take the phone call, it was the VERY last person I was expecting to hear. 

“[REDACTED] DIED!” was what my mother sobbed to me after I brought the phone to my ear and questioned what was wrong. 

Now that I look back on it, I didn’t really know what to do with or how to feel about that information. I remember I cried and yelled very loudly in grief, anger and disbelief about how she was my best friend. But because our relationship was so strained at the time, I’m not really sure if that was even true, and I just said that because for a very long time, she was. I was so confused about my feelings. Of course I was hurting, of course I was sad, but I expected to be more sad. I thought I would be more devastated. Because she was my best friend…

Except she wasn’t anymore. Except she hadn’t been for a while. I’d already lost her. I think that was why it was so simple, so quick, and so easy for me to refer to her in the past tense. Because she, our relationship, had already been in the past tense. Because it was already over. I already missed her. I already missed what we’d had. I’d been missing her for a while, and just hadn’t quite gone through that grief yet. 

Honestly, I think I was mostly very sad and angry because I didn’t have any answers, and I hated that. I hate not understanding things. I didn’t know what had happened between us. I didn’t know why she had apparently stopped liking me and thought I was “weird.” I wanted to know what I did to make her not want to hang out and be close friends with me anymore. I wanted her friendship back. I wanted to know if we even were still friends, if we could still be friends, or if we had gone through some sort of friendship breakup.  

And now I would, and still will, never know the answer to that. I would, and still will, never have that closure, which really fucking sucks. 

Obviously, I have speculated a lot over the years about those answers. I’ve alluded to this endlessly over the course of this post, but there’s a lot of things that I suspect that she was going through that maybe made her feel like I would never understand her. That I couldn’t possibly get what she was going through, and that’s why she didn’t want to be around me anymore. 

When I’d gotten home that summer after the camp session ended, my mom spoke with me about what had happened. She had said something about how very late one night [Redacted] had just – and I AM paraphrasing here from what I remember – gotten into the car, went for a drive, and crashed…(into a brick wall, if I remember correctly, but don’t quote me on that). 

Now, to be very VERY clear, it wasn’t actually the crash that killed her. In fact, she’d been transported to the hospital and had to have surgeries that replaced and/or repaired body parts that had been physically traumatized from the collision. She had even been stable for most of the night and throughout the next day, if I recall. It wasn’t until June 30th that she’d had a negative reaction to some sort of medication, and that was when she coded and we lost her. 

Again, I want to bring up the disclaimer because this happened 16 years ago and I don’t need to be misconstrued on things. I can only say what I remember. And what I remember is being told about the negative reaction to the medicine, and that there was discussion of a potential medmal lawsuit. 

I don’t know any medmal attorneys, and I don’t know what happened after that very brief discussion of a potential medmal lawsuit. I don’t know if a Complaint was filed. I don’t know if there was some sort of litigation or negotiation with a medmal insurance provider and/or the doctor involved. I don’t know if a settlement was reached, I don’t know if something happened to the doctor, I don’t know if there was litigation and/or negotiations with the company that the drug came from. I don’t know. 

I don’t know if my friend’s mother really wanted to go through so much legal bullshit after she lost her daughter, six years after losing her husband. I don’t know. And honestly, I don’t even know if I want to ask. It’s so impersonal and dehumanizing to have to place a dollar amount, a monetary value, in a late-stage capitalist society, on someone’s life, someone’s WORTH, on what someone’s family is OWED for a hospital accidentally losing someone so important in their lives. 

But, as someone with ADHD[Redacted]Brain does frequently, I seem to have digressed.         

I think I’ve also mentioned in previous posts that as someone with undiagnosed and untreated ADHD, I was kind of a late bloomer in regards to some (developmental) understanding of society and things. I say this because I feel like you all should know the extreme level of obliviousness I’d had, because when my mom told me about her “going for a late night drive”, I’d had absolutely no idea what the fuck that meant. I remember wanting to ask why (and maybe I did, I don’t remember), but never getting a clear answer, and continuing to not really understand what was going on and why this had happened. 

It wasn’t until I was a freshman in college and I’d gone to a panel or some sort of talk regarding mental health that things clicked for me. The speaker was doing some sort of exercise or demonstration regarding suicides and/or attempts at such, and asked people to stand if they know someone close to them who had done either. Of course, most people stood, because most people know someone close in their lives who has either attempted or died by suicide. Then the speaker asked if we knew two. Three. More than that. And people would sit back down in response to not knowing as many close people. I sat down after two, of course, because at the time I personally had known of two people who had attempted suicide close to me. 

But then it hit me. That was when I finally realized, two fucking years later, that the “late night drive” my mom had told me [Redacted] went on was most likely a suicide attempt. I realized then I had known not two, but THREE people close to me who had attempted suicide. My brain went “oh…duh,” and I stood once again in response to the speaker. 

After that conference I went back to my dorm and could NOT stop thinking about what I suspected and how to possibly verify it. I didn’t think I’d be able to ask my parents because I wasn’t sure they would know any specifics and want to talk about them with me, so I didn’t ask them. 

I looked on Facebook to see if she or any of her friends said anything that sounded vaguely of her having depression and/or suicidal ideations, or even just to see if there was/were event(s) that would lead to her having those things (aside from her father’s death, that is, since I knew about that). It didn’t seem like she was on Facebook very much, or her settings were set to private, as the only posts I found about her were from other people. So I didn’t really get anything from that.  

Even still, I perused around on Facebook to see if I knew or remembered any of her close friends so I could ask them what had been going on. I didn’t. Not really. I maybe knew of some people I’d met once or twice. I didn’t think they would remember me, or even if they did, they probably thought I was just some fuckin weirdo that they met through [Redacted], who also thought I was a fuckin weirdo. They barely knew me. Heck, they probably didn’t even like me (is what overly anxious me thought back then)! 

And as desperate as I was for answers, I figured it would be super uncomfortable for these random mutuals, who probs didn’t even remember me, have me go into their PMs to introduce myself as an old, mutual friend of [Redacted] and then ask a bunch of super personal questions about if and/or why she was depressed and suicidal. So, of course, I didn’t. 

Then I remembered she had online blogs. Livejournal. MySpace (I think). Xanga. 

God, do y’all fuckin’ remember XANGA?!

Anywho, I remembered her username, and I found her Xanga page. I’d wondered if she’d left a goodbye note as her very last post. It wasn’t a goodbye note, but I do recall it heavily implied depression. I’d even gone further back into previous posts and I remember seeing ones where she had said things like “I didn’t think I would make it to sixteen.” I also remember seeing at least one where she had mentioned her sibling jokingly calling her a lesbian. I may also vaguely remember one where she was talking about some dude(s) who was/were creepy at her and her friends. 

And THIS is what I mean by she was going through a lot, and I don’t blame her for what happened between us. Heck, I even blamed myself because after this, there were things that I’d remembered about her thoughts and actions that I KNEW were signs of multiple things, but I never said anything.       

I remembered when she told me about the song Rape Me by Nirvana and how it barely had the word “rape” in it. That was a falsehood, as its basically half the lyrics, and she would pretend to scream the words with Kurt Cobain. I remember when she made a rainbow beaded bracelet at our band camp and “jokingly” called it her Gay Pride bracelet. I remember one of her favorite songs by Evanescence was Tourniquet and she loved the part where Amy Lee screamed “I WANT TO DIE!” and she would pretend to scream it along with her. 

I saw that. I was there. I noticed all that and I didn’t say anything. I didn’t ask her any questions. I didn’t know if this was some subtle form of communication or not. I didn’t know if I was supposed to say anything or bring it up, to her or an adult like they tell you to do, because I didn’t want to start or make a big deal out of anything that wasn’t there. But there absolutely was. And I didn’t DO anything about it. I fucking sat there, seeing and noticing signs, and said nothing.

With all that said, I can’t actually say that I know for sure what she was going through. I don’t actually know if she was queer and struggling with her sexuality. I don’t actually know if she had been raped. I don’t actually know what other sorts of intrusive thoughts invaded her mind to the point where it made her believe that her death would be a relief, to herself and everyone in her life around her. 

And I can’t ask her. I will never know. 

Because she’s dead. 

And now she’s been dead for 16 years, HALF of my life. 

I think about her all the time. I probably think about her every day, but especially much more recently because of this milestone in my life that I never asked for. 

I really first started spiraling through so many thoughts about what she would be like when I first saw a clip on Twitter of people watching the big battle episode from the final season of Game of Thrones at a bar. I’d wondered, since it was pretty popular and mainstream to watch and love Game of Thrones, if she would’ve been there, too, or somewhere similar, rooting for Arya with a glass of beer in her hand, despite in the past her thinking that I was “weird” for liking Lord of the Rings.

Things have changed so fucking much over sixteen years, and because she was so “with it” and so mainstream, I wonder every day, every time there’s a new meme, a new technological advancement, a new social media thing, a new popular TV show or movie franchise, if she would have been on and all over that shit. 

This is also why I wonder a lot if we would have reconciled and become close friends again. Especially if she had actually been queer. Would we have bonded over TV Shows like Glee, Lost Girl or Rupaul’s Drag Race? Would she have introduced me to and laughed at all the hashtag relatable memes about being a sad depressed (queer?) millennial?

Would she have gone to University? Where? Would she have cheered and celebrated in the streets when Obama became president like we did at my University? Or when Obergefell happened?

Would she have become a Youtuber? Would she post about her “emo” phase for other people to relate to? Would she have still been friends with [Redacted Emmy Winning Celebrity] and have excitedly posted on Twitter and Instagram about how happy and proud she was of them when that person won their Emmys?   

There’s also a lot of not very fun things that have happened that I wonder if she would’ve hated and put her through another depression/suicidal ideation spiral. Like Trump becoming president, and the resulting/escalating violent bigotry. Or if she would’ve gotten angry and active instead and went to protests and raised awareness. I think about her reactions to the whole COVID situation, especially since she probably would’ve been chronically disabled after all the trauma her body went through after the crash.

Roe just got overturned, and sometimes it’s things like that that have happened over the past six or seven years when I think about her and how she doesn’t have to deal with this shit. If spirits and/or souls are a thing, I wonder if, while she may be upset that her living loved ones have to go through all this, that she’s actually kinda relieved and grateful that she doesn’t. Oddly enough, I think I myself am somewhat relieved for her that she doesn’t have to go through this shit, and I’ll metaphorically and jokingly raise a glass to her with a grin and say “You damn lucky bitch, lol.” 

Even though that still means she’s dead, and has been dead for sixteen years.

Recently a fellow Bookterneter lost someone very close to them and they asked when one stops counting the days. I told them you don’t. Not really. And this post is entirely case and point since I’ve been thinking about this day for almost as long as the date that I calculated would be the half-of-my-life point of coming out to myself. I’ve thought many times about how one day I will have been alive longer than she has been dead and that’s mindblowingly horrifying and a bit fucked up. 

I also told them that it for sure becomes more manageable over time. I like the analogy of grief not getting smaller and going away, but of one growing around it, because the grief never goes away. Because it doesn’t, but some times will be better than others. There are times where I go into sentimental nostalgic grief when I listen to the songs on the playlist that remind me of her, and those actually make me kinda happy. There are times when I feel like I’m going to cry because I’ve never really dealt with and talked about this so deeply and intensely with anyone before, not even my therapist. Sure, I’ve made the occasional sad post about it on Facebook, but this post went much more in depth with thoughts and feelings that I haven’t brought out into the world, even within myself, which was honestly kind of nice even though it made me nearly burst into tears in public. 

I’m okay, by the way, I promise. Like I’ve said 50 million times in this post, this happened sixteen years ago, which is somehow both not very long when you think about how young a sixteen year old is, but also incredibly long when you think about what things were like in 2006 vs. now. 

Um…I think that’s all I got for this. Kind of a downer of a rambly, nine-page word vomit post after an unintentional and very extended hiatus, but this is one I needed to do, and maybe you’re here and wanted to read it. I believe, and have lots of hope and faith, that my posts will be more consistent now.  

I hope you’re doing well, even in this clusterfuck of times in the world. While I don’t anticipate any posts being as heavy or personal as this one, I hope this one was still…interesting? Enjoyable? Relatable? Helpful? Hopeful? Uplifting? Some sort of positive adjective. 

Bye for now, all the love!

~Mackenzie Brynn Rap