By Anonymous
She was 23 years old. She had been clean for a long while and was enjoying her new life. We had been inseparable - best friends since we were children. She held my hand in the psych ward and wrestled a box cutter from my hands while I laid on my floor, sobbing and wanting to die. She was the only person who understood me. She put herself in harm’s way for me many times. She was my soulmate. And yet, all of these things were not enough to convince God to leave her with me. Sometimes we just don’t have the answers - and while it isn’t okay, it has to be.
She did not love the drugs more than she loved me. She had a nasty demon that held her by the neck, promising her an escape and then entrapping her in a prison. Her death was the only thing that freed her from it. And while I thought that was a strangely beautiful thing, people continually told me how awful it was and how I should be livid with her for the rest of my life. I wasn’t angry, though I really tried to be. I was happy that she was finally the beautiful angel I’d always seen her as. And that was okay.
The stigma attached to death by OD often prevents survivors from healing, because they can’t talk about it. She was trying to protect me. That’s why she didn’t tell me she had relapsed. People told me to be angry about that, too - but I wasn’t. People told me I was passively making excuses for her - but I wasn’t. It was the truth. Those people were the ones who were making excuses for how they thought I should feel. Not me. I was allowed to feel however I felt. And I needed to find a safe space to talk about her and the life she lived without people invalidating my pain because she was an addict.
When she died, she probably threw up. She probably asphyxiated as oxygen fought to make its way to her brain. That brain was full of songs, and jokes, and poetry. The concept of her autopsy mortified me. I wanted to find the person doing it and tell them that. I wanted to burst through those doors as they tested her body, trying to find out what kind of poison had taken her life. I wanted to yell, “where are you taking her after this? What are you doing? Why won’t she wake up?” And “Move the hair out of her eyes, she hates that feeling!” I wanted to scream, “Make sure you turn her on her side when you cremate her - that’s the only way she can sleep!” But I couldn’t. None of those things mattered anymore. But it was perfectly okay for me to feel like they did - because they DID, to me. She was not a number to me, and she was not a statistic.
She was not the devil. She was not a lost cause. She was a person who once gave the shirt off her back to a drunk girl who had lost her own and walked her into her hotel, freezing in a sports bra. She was a person who once took me to a buffet on a whim, an hour from home, because I was having a hard day. She was a person who saved a stranger’s life in high school because she recognized their self harm scars - they looked like her own. And anyone who demonized her for her addiction was as wrong as they believe she was. She was my very best friend. And now she is my favourite angel.
