I just wrote this email to my friend, and it was so important that I decided I could do it no glory by trying to retype it, to say it again, in different words, because it would never mean as much as it did the first time the words came from my soul.
So here it is. In all its glory, or whatever it has.
~Anne
You know, I was watching TV today. Well tonight, really. I was watching a TV show and well I guess I was realizing that when things change they can never change back.
I've always known that about some things, like school, and boys, and what a person looks like.
But it never really hit me that when EVERYTHING changes, it can never change back. I'll never be as close to Rebecca as I was in 9th grade. You and I will never be as close as we used to be in eleventh and twelfth grade. We'll make new friends, different friends, maybe even better friends. Things with Brooks won't even ever be the same for you guys, I mean, they might be better than before, but they will always be different. We can't take back the past. We can't be the way we were ever again. Matt's never coming back. That's how it really hit me. I was thinking, you know, these people on the TV show I was watching were breaking up, and then there was a preview of next week's show, and the people who broke up were getting back together again. And what I thought was, it doesn't happen like that. Just because you realize you made a mistake, like not saying goodbye when you would never see that person's face again, there is no going back. Life isn't like TV. You never can say goodbye again, not the same way. Things can't go back. I can never sit in my living room, on the couch, watching spongebob and waiting for Ben to call me, or wondering what time I'll go over to Trevors, or even to Moses'. Not like before. The moments of the past have left forever. There's no recreating, and if a person would even try it would just get so fucked up it wouldn't be worth it. And I know that's true with Ben. Maybe I'll call him tonight and tell him that, tell him not to call me again, or maybe I will just forget it and do nothing ever. It's true with my sister, too, whom is in jail now. I'll probably never be friends with her again, like I was for a whole... hm... what was it, two years of my life? I won't ever have a sister like I had for that small amount of time. I didn't before. I don't now. You know, I'm really jealous of people who can have a relationship with their siblings. I didn't have one with my sister for 16 or so years, and then I finally did, and now I don't again. There are so many people out there that have that relationship, that don't know how special it really is, maybe until their sibling dies, or something. But I don't have that... I don't have a sister and she isn't even dead. She's worse than dead.
And it's true about everything else, you know? I mean, the past is dead. That's the truth of things. All of the things we used to do for fun, for relaxation, for anything, it's all dead. We can't go back. We can't see their smiling faces anymore. That's the truth of life, that as each day goes by, the yesterdays die. I guess all we can do is wonder about tomorrow. There's no use dwelling on the dead, right?
But it's never that easy. I can't ever forget that the last time I saw Joe alive, he was sleeping on the couch. I never said goodbye to him, he never said goodbye to me. The last time I saw Matt Bradford was for about two minutes at KR days when he poked me in the stomach and we walked different directions. I don't even remember the last time I saw Milczark. I mean, maybe it was the party we had for him before he went to basic, and I only saw him for an hour most, and I had no idea that the next time I saw him in ML he would be in a casket. How are we supposed to know these things? How were we supposed to know that these would be the last times we'd ever have a chance to say everything in our hearts about them? It is hard to say goodbye to yesterday.