Goodbye My Jillie Bean

 I'm trying to do some college work today. I finished and submitted two assignments yesterday. I was on a roll.

I woke up this morning to a text that one of my besties died last night.

So I'm trying to be productive now that I've been crying and talking about her with some mutual people all morning long.

It's not working.

Productivity is a nice goal, but fairly unrealistic at this point.

So here I am.

Writing here instead.

Because this is the place for pain, loss, and personal writing. Where I can put stuff on 'paper,' where I have always communicated best - much to the consternation of those who have to deal with me in person.

Where I can say that the only super-deep friendship I have made as an adult is over - due to a death that was the result of many life choices that I wasn't present for over the twenty years we'd 'lost touch'.

You know how it is. The partner they were with when you knew them is no longer their partner, so you are now cut off because you originated with the ex-partner, and now here's you: excommunicated.

She reached out to me three years ago, and we spoke a few times. But we were clearly in different places in life by then. The communication died off inevitably.

Four months ago, she reached out again.

We spoke at length. She had terminal health issues. She was aware she was dying and tried to make light of the repeated hospital stays. She hoped to make it to her 45th birthday on October 1st so she would outlast her mother, who passed at 44. I was around then.

She died last night after many subsequent hospital stays. 

I saw this morning, looking back over our current text thread, that it was four months to the day since she first reached out this time.

She did not outlast her mother.

She, too, made some of the same choices her mother did. She, too, left minor children behind. She, too, is gone at 44 because of the self-inflicted destruction of her own body due to inner turmoil.

I mourn the person I knew. 

The amazing, wild child, tougher than carbide, tender as a whisper, who was honest to an absolute fault, had the love and adoration of every animal she ever came across, as well as deeply entrenched places in the hearts of the friends and people that she left behind. My daughter's childhood IRL Disney Princess.

We never took pictures. All of the pictures I have of her from healthier times belong to other people. 

I only have the picture she sent when we reconnected four months ago.

She doesn't look like the woman I remember. 

She thought she looked great, but that's because she saw herself every day. She looked like life had taken a big fat bite out of her ass, rode her hard, and put her away wet. 

I know that sounds harsh as fuck, but if she were here, especially in retrospect, she would not only agree, but use that exact phrasing to describe it.

Her unflinching honesty was one trait that never changed. Ever.

I thank the Universe for my time with my Jillie Bean. I am grateful for the time, the memories, the love, and the laughter. 

For me, there will never be another you.

As I wrote on your FB page this morning:

You were always a free spirit; now you are unshackled. 💔

I'll talk to you soon. And I know you'll hear me.

Love,

Your Aria