Cry Evry Time

There was a challenge floating around to make yourself cry in one word. My word is this;

"5ever"

Now this stupid corruption of 'forever' probably brings a few other people to tears for it's sheer ridiculousness. For me this word stings for a different reason, and requires some explanation.

I went to a tiny school for students who didn't exactly fit into the public school mold. We were smart, but everyone had some sort of learning difference. From anything from ADHD, to Aspergers, we had it all. These differences were manageable though. We were first and foremost a school that dealt with learning problems, and not behavioral problems. There was a lot of awkwardness, and strangeness abound, but we were a tight community. The school had fifty something students, grades six through twelve. Instead of by age, students were divided into groups based on emotional, and educational maturity. That meant that it was very likely that there could be as much as a three year age difference between some students in the group.

I started attending this school in sixth grade, and in the seven years I attended that school, I met more bright, and incredibly creative people than most people get to meet in a lifetime. Among those people is someone who I will, for the sake of anonymity, call Mary. Mary was always a deeply creative, and clever person. She was prone to contemplation, and had a soft spot for heavy metal. She volunteered at the aquarium, and had stories of how the octopus would try and escape, or how the penguins were jerks. She was the kind of person who literally tricked her parents into taking her on a trip to Brazil on an expedition into the amazon. She had told me she wanted to be a marine biologist someday.

Mary was the person who I would distract in math class, with plans of modifying t-shirts into beautiful dresses. She was the person I used to argue with about her Dungeons and Dragons racism. She was the kind of person who I didn't talk to much, but when I did, it was always about something interesting. Like life, death, and the nature of marijuana. In my junior year we were part of the same group. I had stumbled upon this now infamous copypasta that had been floating around the internet for awhile now:

"A gurl was walkin2 skewl wit her bf n they were crossin da rode.

she sed "bbz will u luv me 4evr"

he said "NO..""

da gurl cryed N ran across da rode b4 da green man came on the sine.

boy was cryin and went to pic up her body.

she was ded.

he whispered 2 her corpse "I ment 2 sey i will luv u FIVE-ever..." (dat mean he luv her moar den 4evr)

xxx~*...LIKE DIS IF U CRY EVRY TIME...~*xxx"

She found this absolutely hilarious. Whenever I would see her she would grin at me and just say "5ever" and I would know exactly what she was talking about. This stupid, jumbled mess of a story had, in my mind, become intrinsically linked with her giggle. Whenever I think of this meme, I think of Mary.

Last winter, Mary took her own life. She was seventeen.

I don't know the details. I didn't want to know. It was hard. We were part of such a small community Losing someone we all cared about so deeply was crushing. It didn't feel real. It still doesn't. In my mind we are both still in high school, talking about about drugs, t-shirts, and the universe. But we're not. I've moved on, and she didn't. Through sheer cosmic irony I do "cry evry time". I think of her laughing, and then I start laughing, and then I remember that she's not here.

And I cry.

Sometimes I still dream of Mary. I'll dream that she's alive, and her funeral was just an accident, and things will go back to how they were. Then I wake up. In one of our longer conversations I told her that I liked to think that people who are friends in one life, tend to be friends in their next. I don't know if I actually believe that, but I like to think that it's true. I hope that one day, somehow, I will see her again. It might not be in this lifetime, or the next, but one day I hope we get the chance to make that t-shirt dress together. Whatever happens, Mary will occupy a very special corner of my heart, and I will miss her 5ever.