Maybe Memories

Sabrina Noor Khalid, is the very first person I ever talked to when I moved to Wharton. She was my first friend, and quickly became my best friend. Outside of my homeroom, as a sixth grader Sabrina made an effort to come and say hello to the nerdy-looking, outcast, new girl. We clicked instantly. And during that sixth grade year we formed a very strong friendship. We snuck out to my school to sing My Chemical Romance songs together on top of the jungle gym, we’ve rolled houses and made pancakes. However, when Sabrina and Kaitlyn got into a fight, I sided with Kaitlyn, my best friend at the time.

That was the first time Sabrina and I stopped talking for longer than three months, but it was by far the last.

The thing is with Sabrina, we can go without talking for months and yet all we need is one make-up conversation to make everything better. After that one conversation, it’s like nothing ever happened. We’re the best of friends again. We agreed that our friendship was effortless, like breathing. It was supposed to be. That the only reason we fought was the reason that brought us together, we were so different but at the same time similar enough. We made perverted jokes, laughed over empty threats of killing our enemies and such things.

Toward the end of seventh grade, Sabrina had broke up with her boyfriend of the past two years. She loved him, that was clear enough. But it was quite obvious they weren’t getting back together anytime soon. She admitted to me that she didn’t want to be with him, that she NEEDED it in a sick way. A way she didn’t want, but couldn’t fight all the same. I tried to help her and when she refused my help I didn’t fail to voice my true opinions, even if they were slightly harsh.

We stopped talking again, and we didn’t start talking again until the second day of eighth grade. She told me all about her year in Columbia, about how she DID have sex with her boyfriend and failed to tell me. I didn’t care too much, because I had a friend back. And without thought, we were back in sync everything back how it was supposed to be. She was my best friend, and I was hers.

But…Jessie came along. Jessie Vanderbilt, is one of my closest friends but she indirectly caused me a world of emotional pain. It was because of Jessie that Sabrina found a new friend, replaced me moved on. It was subtle at first, we would stop talking for a couple hours and then resolve our issue. Issues that I might have well started. I like to debate my friends, challenge their ethics, make them think about he things they say. And Sabrina refused to back down, causing us to but heads.

But one day, we stopped talking. I’m not sure how it happened really, I just know that we did. It was a core feeling in the hollow of my stomach. The feeling that you know you’ve been replaced. And out of all the times for it to happen, it always happens at the very worst time. It was January, the month of Lisa’s nineteenth birthday. Around this time, I always get low, but I ALWAYS had a best friend to pick me up and force me to be happy until I was out of my funk. But this time, I had no best friend; no REAL friends at all really.

I was falling, and I was falling fast. I had changed, hiding myself behind a mask. I wasn’t myself, and if you didn’t personally know me you wouldn’t have known the difference. But the fact that hurt me the most, the people closest me didn’t notice the difference. I stopped talking at lunch because Sabrina was there, laughing with Jessie and Karen; her new best friends. I sat there, staring at the table or the floor. I barely ate, and when I did it was slow and for show. Food lost appeal to me, I didn’t stop eating but it was only because I HAD to eat. I never talked, and when I did I would barely even whisper, when I used to practically scream before.

I had three true friends at the time, two of which I have never met. And yet, I only confided in one person, and one person alone. Tara was the only person I shared my dirty secrets with, the things I was most ashamed about. She tried to assure me, and she did. I waited up all night at times just to see if she responded to my messages. I cried every night, mostly in the shower because I didn’t want my mother to hear my choked sob, even though I didn’t give a bloody piss about her.

I was becoming hopeless, everything I never wanted to be again. It was back to 2005, all over again. My wind was warring with its self, almost sunken completely in depression. One night, I did the one thing I most despised, one thing I promised myself I would never do. I went inside my bathroom, playing My Chemical Romance’s first album, got into the shower with a silver friend. With my knife in one hand, I pulled up the bracelets on my wrist and made the first cut. They say that the first one is always the deepest, but that’s bullshit. I didn’t cut hard at all, barely tracing the blade over my skin. But then I gained momentum. I didn’t do it because I thought I could deal with the pain better this way, I didn’t do it because I wanted to die, and I didn’t do it because I felt sorry for myself. I did it because I thirsted for blood.

I didn’t ever get blood though, only angry red marks. I welcomed the pain every night in the shower, the water burning my skin as I sat down and disgusted myself with my filthy habit. I seemed to be gaining many of them. I picked up smoking back up, and even though I promised never to do it, swallowed about six pills of Excedrin. It was supposed to make me sleep, but it never did. It added to the pain, but made everything foggy. It didn’t help anything, like the cutting, and yet I didn’t stop that either. Not until my friend Tara, made me promise I would stop.

I stopped the pills, but never the cutting. To tell you the truth, I still slip up from time to time. But that’s not the point. The point is I was thinking way too much now. And slowly things failed to matter to me anymore, and they really should have. I would only listen to music that I knew would keep me down because of happy music made me want to vomit. I was drowning myself, and when I had the first dream to truly push me over the edge, it didn’t surprise me.

That was the first time I had a dream where I died. It disturbed me so much, that I wrote a journal about it, hoping to seek some advice or comfort or something. I wanted someone to talk to, besides Tara even though she was helping me more than anyone could. But it wasn’t enough. And she couldn’t do anything about it. Because it was inside my own head that I was falling down. And that dream lead to many more.

Until the thoughts that roamed in there, happened more and more frequently and no longer just in dreams. I looked up the fatality of anti-freeze, sleeping pills, whatever I knew I could get my hands on. I began to smile once, because I knew that an end would be soon. I planned a date and even an outfit. I knew what I was going to do on June 4, 2009 and I was truly going to do it.

I felt horrible about broken promises, but even that wasn’t enough to save me. I wanted to leave, and that was the only thing that mattered. In all honestly, if June fourth wasn’t so close and it wasn’t the five year anniversary of Lisa’s suicide, I would have done it sooner.

I would have gotten into that bathtub, with my bright green skinny jeans and classic Avenged Sevenfold tee, slit my wrist clear up and down and then quickly swallow an eight ounce glass of anti-freeze or something equally as poisonous. I would be listening to “Shattered by Broken Dreams” just like Lisa did, the door lucked so my mother couldn’t barge in and ruin it all. On my bed, would have been seven or so letters to the people that needed them. And there would be NOTHING else.

On June 4th, 2009 I was going to kill myself.

But something happened, Sabrina started talking to me again. And now, its going to sound very pathetic, but hat made me happy. I know that I shouldn’t care about her anymore, she was person that made me feel so low, worthless. She made me realize what a despicable person I am. She made me lay awake at nights asking myself what was so wrong with me, was I really that horrible? Unworthy of her friendship or anything of the sort? But she was talking to me, and for those short conversations we had I felt better.

When I went home and told Tara about what had happened, I was sobbing. Still feeling that hopeless feeling in my chest, that emptiness of apathy. I still felt lost, even if it was getting better. I hate myself for being so pathetic, so happy because a girl I honestly shouldn’t care about anymore was talking to me. But id dint blame her really, even though I desperately wanted to, I didn’t hate her. I hated myself.

I was different, slowly changing. Or changing back I should say. I was getting happier, if only marginally. Because Sabrina and I finally had that famous four hour talk on the sidewalk at the park. We caught up, we were friends again. I refrained from telling her all of this, because I felt so pathetic that she had this kind of effect on me. That anyone COULD have this kind of effect on me. But we were friends, up the same standard before anything ever happened just like always.

But this time, I was no longer blind. I had Tara, Patti and Aiden. The only people who were truly there for mw when I needed it most. I love Sabrina as a friend, one of my very best. But she isn’t number one anymore, Tara, Aiden and Patti are. Because they helped me when I couldn’t help myself, I didn’t see it at the time but they changed me for the better. Helped make me stronger even though I’m still so weak. She is my best friend in Wharton, and I love her like my sister. But when I think of my very best friend, besides Lisa, I think of those three girls who saved me on Mibba.

That isn’t the point though. The point is I was broken, and messily pulled back together. Not very tightly though, for right now it’s one of those moments where I slip through cracks. Dream about disappearing, and for a shower time release. I’m healing very nicely, but I’m far from perfectly mended,

There are still times like these where all I want is to fall asleep and never wake up. Happens more than I’d like to admit.