Alyssa

Today would have been Alyssa's 31st birthday. I can't imagine her being that old or the person she would have become. In my mind she is forever 17. She is forever taking her grandmothers convertable without permission and driving us around with too much makeup and time. She is forever laughing off heartbreak and breaking hearts. She was my absolute best friend but that doesn't even describe what we were to eachother. We were sisters, maybe not of blood, but of heart.

She set me loose. For so long I had been a tiny introverted mockery of what I am today. Because she let me have fun. She taught me how to laugh at myself, how to make mistakes, how to gracefully step away from a situation. She was wild. Crazy sometimes. She had emotions and wasn't afraid of them.

We made notebooks filled with cut out pictures of the decor of our future homes. We were going to get married to wonderful men, have beautiful children, and raise them next door to eachother so that our kids would be best friends too.

It was so childish and innocent and sometimes I curse the days and months and years that made us grow up and make the mistakes that we made.

I am still sad that she is dead. That she will never see my children and the life I have built. I will never meet her children, her husband, see her grow old. I am still angry sometimes that I am doing this without my one truest friend.

On this one night every year I let myself fall apart for what we lost. The innocence, the joy, the fun, the tears, the hugs, the yelling, the laughter. This one and only night I let myself remember and grieve. And then tomorrow, tomorrow, I will let her memory fly with the angels for another year, to visit me again, in other times, to remind me, occassionally, to hold on, love well, and enjoy the ride.