I am a bad friend. I tell myself this frequently along with, bad wife, bad mother, bad person. Am I a bad friend? If you are reading this, it is not about you. I want to tell you the story of my friend Laurie. I want to turn back time. I want to go back 20 years and do things differently, but I can’t. There are some things you can’t do differently. Sometimes there are no second chances.
My teen years were tough. My brother left to go to college when I was in 8th grade and my father had delved back into alcohol the year before after a year (or so) break. And I sought love wherever I could find it. Fourteen was a particularly hard year. I was alone. I was hurt. But then I fell in love. For real. For the first time. His name is Randie. But then he left. His father also struggled with drugs and alcohol. I don’t remember where his mom was, but his grandparents were kind and raised him as well as they could. Randie couldn’t seem to get his life on track. He was a good person, worked hard. I remember he was a manager at Bojangles and had to be at work at 5:30 every morning, which he did without fail. He had dropped out of high school and dabbled at getting his equivalency from the local community college. But do you know what I remember about him? He always went out of his way to make me feel loved. I never had to ask for alone time with him, without his friends. I never had to beg for his attention. He WANTED that. He wanted me, the real me. He wanted to love me, the real me. And then he left. He moved to Maine. And my heart broke. I don’t know that I ever fixed it from that. He tried to stay in touch with me. But I saw how much better his life was in Maine without me and thought it was best for everyone if we forgot each other. But I have never forgotten him and now I realize, I pushed him away. I broke my own heart and stuffed the pieces in a box and closed the lid.
After that I ‘met’ my now ex-husband, Jason. Then, just a significantly too old boyfriend. I was 15 and he was 7.5 years my senior. It didn’t bother me then, but now it sure does. During this same season of life is when I met my very dear friend Laurie. I met her just before Randie. She moved to my high school because of some problems with some girls at her previous high school. Unfortunately, there were some girls who were mean to her at my high school too. And she eventually dropped out. But let me tell you why. Laurie was kind. Laurie was loving. Laurie was so beautiful on the inside that she radiated from the outside. She had lost her front tooth in an accident some time before I knew her (6 months, 6 years, I can’t remember). She wore a retainer with what looked like a piece of metal that basically kept the space for a new tooth she would get one day. She was so self conscious of it. But I never saw it. The men who loved her never saw it. And alas she found herself at war over a man name Ronnie Holden. Randie’s ex-girlfriend Kelly wanted him. She was beautiful. She was Barbie doll thin. I liked her OK, until I spotted her with Ronnie one day skipping school. Her friend, Danielle, threatened to ‘knock my teeth in’ if I told Laurie. I was SO confused. I didn’t know what to do. Laurie asked me what was going on with Ronnie and I kept telling her she should talk to him. Danielle still knocked my teeth in. I learned that day if it isn’t knocked out, you just move them back into place and eventually they heal. But does the pain? Does the emotional pain of being treated that way by others ever heal? I don’t know. I hope I never make anyone else feel that way.
Well, Laurie and I moved past Ronnie and Randie together, or so I had thought. She started dating a new guy, sad to say I don’t recall his name. She became pregnant soon after. They were too young. They were both broken, they couldn’t make a go of things together, so she moved back in with her parents maybe 20 miles from where I lived. One day, while at work, a woman working at a salon next door to my parents business was chatting with my coworker (Jason’s brother) while we all smoked cigarettes outside. She was telling him about an accident on Guess road which is the road that you took to get from Laurie’s house to mine. I told her that Laurie was my best friend, what had happened? I still hear her voice like it was that day and it still takes my breath away. She looked me in the eye and said ‘she was killed, honey.’
I am not sure I have ever moved on from that moment. It’s like time shattered into pieces and froze and hung in space. And a piece of me is still there, still stuck in that moment, unable to process what she said. I called her house and a friend of her moms answered the phone. I still convinced that my friend was not dead, I asked to speak to Laurie and she said she’s not here and I said ‘but she’s alive, right?’ and she said ‘no sweetie, no she’s not.’ She and her sister were driving in the car with Ronnie and he jumped in the drivers’ seat while their babies were strapped in the back. Laurie and Stephanie were desperate to not have Ronnie drive off with their babies. They did not have seat belts on. Ronnie ran off the road and overcorrected, hitting a truck head on. Laurie and Stephanie were killed instantly. Their babies survived, but not without injury.
I wonder what would have happened if she had not died. Would we have lived happily ever after? We will never know. I have lived trapped with the pain of her loss for 20 years. Wondering what could I have done differently to prevent it. Should I have called her more? Should I have pushed her not to see Ronnie more? I should have been there. But I wasn’t. And even though I know it was not my fault, my heart cannot let go. My heart cannot say goodbye to her. My brain is still convinced that if I figure out what I did wrong, I can prevent this from ever happening again. If I do everything perfectly, if I make every ‘right’ decision, then everything will be fine.
But what does that mean? To do everything perfectly? That is total nonsense is what that is. You can’t do anything perfectly. What is perfect? What ruler are you using? Is there a gold-standard? NO. All you have to do is what feels right at the time with the information you have before you. There are no take backs. There are no do-overs. You must suffer the consequences of your actions. This is the life I live in my head. And I only realized yesterday, that I never let anyone in on that life. I live it completely in solitude. Scared, sad and angry.
I married my ex, Jason, when I was only 22. At the time I felt so old. I felt like I was going nowhere. I had graduated college and was working at my parents fish store. I graduated with a 3.79 GPA with a BS in Biology from UNC-CH and was basically doing nothing with it. I had applied to graduate school for genetic counseling, but it was uber competitive. All of the amazing young women applying had graduated from prestigious universities with a least cum laude. Done immense volunteer work, were just all around AMAZING women. I didn’t get in the first time. Or the second time. I decided it was time to do SOMETHING so I married my fiance after constantly putting it off. With one months’ notice, it was to be just us, his brother and my best friend. Last minute, we invited our parents. His mother feeling snubbed, did not attend. It was a day full of love. Even so, we were not a good match. We were both broken, possibly beyond repair. And we certainly were not going to get better together. So I left, I packed up my two dogs and moved to Greensboro, where I finally started my graduate program in genetic counseling.
I moved 5 times in the next 2 years, each time getting rid of more and more of ‘me’ and I thought I was becoming the person that I wanted to be. But it was all fake. I was becoming the person I thought other people wanted me to be. So much so, that I honestly don’t know who I am now.
Once I met Calvin, I realized I had no idea how to do anything perfectly. I sunk into a depression so deep that I still wonder if I’ll ever completely be out of it. But one thing is for sure, I want to get better. I want to be better. I want to stop pushing people away every time I get scared of losing them. But how?
I am currently facing my chance. My one chance at a do-over. My one chance to move on with my life. I’m struggling with many of my relationships. Multiple people have told me or behaved in ways that led me to believe that they think, I think I’m better than them. It’s hard for me to believe I could be better than anyone. I must be projecting all of my worth on everyone, trying to convince them I hold value. I have placed all of my value in my career. The only problem with that is that every bump in the road is an insurmountable obstacle. Because if I am not good at my job, what am I good at?
This is how I will always remember my Laurie.
MumGene 