OH HOW DROLL (Coping with grief)

Two deaths near me five in the area.

 Two suicides and three unpredictable events. 

I went to my first memorial service, people always say,

"Lets hope it's our last". I've started to think about the other ones I'm likely to attend in my future. 

Its been difficult to look my friends in the eyes since I sat in the pews of a church looking at a slideshow of a girl that used to rat out her little sister for using the family computer when she wasn't supposed to. Its been difficult to think about whether or not I want to live to see their deaths and its even harder to think about how selfish that statement really is. 

I think it's hard in general to be around my friends since I've began to process that they're gonna die. If our conversation gets too deep I've opted to fall asleep or swallow my tears, but swallowing your tears hurts and I feel like a dark purple bruise is forming on the inside of my throat. I feel swollen.

When swallowing hurts too much I look at myself in the mirror and wonder if It looks like I've been smoking. I wonder how many minutes it takes the red in my eyes to fade and then I remember that when I smoke my eyes stay white. When I think of that I reflect on Halloween, when my best friend and her boyfriend walked into her house with bloodshot eyes and dilated pupils. I remember her mom saying that she looked tired, oblivious. After that I imagine what the last time I'm around those two will be like and I direct myself back to mirror. 

"I look tired."

I tried to get out of the memorial service, I was scared and I cried so hard the day or so before that my skin broke out. The same day that we went to the service we also had also bought tickets for a concert that night. We saw east coast break-core band, The Garden. Loud fast music that takes your mind off the fact that hours before you watched the whole marching band cry on each others shoulders like helpless infants. 

When I was at the concert I bought a thong with one of the bands logos printed on it, I showed it to my boyfriend at the time who that same morning had replied to my three paragraph long rant with 'I'm really sorry, that sucks'. In that menial teenage moment all I wanted was to be some prolific partying sex symbol in his pubescent all beholding eyes.

"That kinda reminds me of Eli," he said giggling. Eli was his best friend who was similar to any given male character from the film Superbad. He was a porn obsessed, dirty minded, chubby kid who was always kind of afraid of me. 

"It reminds you of who?" I said feeling the dread of the prior morning.

"I don't know it just feels like something Eli would like," He said not gauging how incredibly mad I felt in that exact moment. 

"What the fuck A*****, you're girlfriend buys a thong and you say in reminds you of Eli?!" I stormed off and bought myself a diet coke. 

 It was probably for the better that he never knew how mad I was at him that night, we wouldn't've had a good time. 

A month ago I passed one of the people I went to the service with, they were sitting in one of the less occupied hallways of my slowly rotting high school sobbing. They were much closer to the family then any of the rest of us. I knew them since elementary and I pondered for a moment whether I should turn back around and comfort them. 

I kept walking.

During lunch that day I bought myself a can of diet coke from the drug store next door to my school. I didn't drink diet anything before this but now I do, I'm not sure why. At the church I took a diet coke out of the coolers full of sodas and sparkling waters. I drank three diet cokes at the service because I didn't know what to do with my hands if they weren't holding anything.

Ill keep drinking diet cokes even though they have no substance, and i broke up with my boyfriend in October. I want to see my friends the same way I used to and I hope that the bruise in my throat clears. 

-CRO