Pure Childhood Friendship

 

Song: Queen: Those were the days of our life http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDUmT3wm-0A&ob=av2e

I think I talk about my love life allot in here, because to my friends and family I act like it doesn’t really get to me that much.

But After reading countless Entries on here about boys – I thought I better talk about something else.

In 2008 my best friend from High School Jess, just 10 weeks after she found out she had cancer, she died. At 26. It took me almost 2 years to come to terms with her death. There is not a day or event that goes by where I don;t think about her. Thankfully it no longer makes me sad. For those two years when I thought about her, it was more about the things she was missing out on. It was only because for a number of years our friendship had been in a dark patch. We both lived in other parts of the world. She had left New Zealand at 18 and had lived in London. When I arrived in London at 23 we saw each other a few times, but after one night out where she was so drunk she had me so concerned for her. At high school she was a size 10- but the person in London I was greeted with was a size 30. I had always been the fat one, but when she saw me for the first time in 5 years I was at my thinnest since high school, and also I was dating which I had never done. I knew there was something deeply and emotional wrong. My friend was so lost, she drunk herself into an unrecognizable state – her ‘London’ friends and I locked ourselves in another room to escape from the violent drunken rampage she was on. After that, we barely spoke for 2 years. We both tried but, it just got harder and harder… we reconnected a year before she got sick, at a time when she was moving back to New Zealand, and I was making plans to live in the UK with Mark.

From there is was like she was back to her old self, she confided in me, and I her. I forgotten how much I loved her, and how much I loved our friendship. When she died, it was a total shock.. at times I still don’t want to face the truth that she is gone. I manage to pretend that she is just overseas.

Through the powers of face book, my childhood best friend from 6-13 tracked me down. We had drifted apart as teenagers, but has always kept an eye on each other, she even worked for my Step Father for a big as the office manager. Jolene, is in almost every childhood memory I have. She told me she was coming to Sydney for a job interview, and wanted to see me, I of course said yes. She was just as amazing and warm as she was when we were kids. She told me she had a little boy who was 2, and met and feel in love with a nice farmer. She was trying to follow her dream of working with horse’s. Something from even as a little girl she had wanted to be.

You see her mother was so young when she had Jolene’s older brother ‘Josh’ at 16 and I think Jolene came 2 years later. Jo’s dad was a bike, and much older then her mother. I think for years she tried to make it work, but she soon saw that she needed to set routes down for her kids.

I remember as if it was yesterday, my step dad was going for a run I think, (we lived on a hill) and at the bottom of the hill there was a private road with factories and only 3 house’s that were council owned. I was on my pink BMX bike, Ivan was running behind me, and I saw outside her house, playing, I think, by herself. I looked at her, and she looked back at me.. I must of done something like smile, but then again, Jo had no fear. Although I was not shy, I could never talk to a stranger let alone ask to play with a stranger. What ever I did in that moment, that little girl who I think had been playing alone for months by herself, took that chance, and said ‘ Hoy’ ( a kiwi way to say hey you)… She yelled it again, and I think I stopped my bike… without missing a beat she had introduced herself and told me how old she was and everything, My step dad Ivan has caught up (he was with the dog) she asked a question.. and I don’t know how she did it, but she asked she she could get her bike and come for a bike ride with me. Ivan said yes.. the next thing I remember was thinking she was so brave and fearless, she yelled back in the house MUM I am going for bike ride I’ll be back soon. ‘ her mother running out tell her not to go far’… she of coursed showed off to me. She rode with no helmet (my mother made me wear mine), and would put her feet up on the handle bars.. to which I desperately wanted to do, but Ivan told me no..

From that moment on, she was my BFF, She came from a life that I new nothing about, I was an only child living in a house where my mother laid out my clothes, I was still playing with Barbie’s, and watching cartoons. Jolene even at 6 just knew more of the world then I had. Of course she had seen more. She always had a boyfriend.. even at 6 or 7 WOW.. remembering that now but yes she always did. Her mother worked allot and so she was home alone allot. And she had never been on a plane or to a restaurant or anything that I had at the tender age of 6 already done a million times.

She was from the other side of the tracks, she tough me about sex, smoking and boys.. and I took her overseas, introduced her to the right people and told her that she didn’t have to end up like her mother. That if she wanted to work at a vets and be around horse;s she could do it. While I went to private school, she was went to a very bad public one. she got in with bad crowd, no matter what.. our friendship never ended like most teenage girls would.. in a cloud of a fight. No we always counted yourself as friends that just grew apart.

In November only a few months after we reconnect she told me that they had found a brain tumour.. it was making her go blind. And they were going to operate in 2 weeks to stop the pressure.

In one moment I shut off from the situation. I didn’t know how to respond to her news. She had written me an email and told me of this news. But the thought of watching another friend die, was just to much for me. I wanted to pick up the phone but just couldn’t bring myself to. Instead, I replied with loving words. I send her a get well gift. But I couldn’t ask her anything.. because I didn’t want to know. I wanted to ignore that she may be dying.

The surgery didn’t go as planned, and she text me to tell that when they went into remove the tumour there was to much bleeding. So they wanted to wait a few months before going back in. Again, I offered support, but still couldn’t bring myself to ask her questions.

I know that she is due to go back in this week, and then to have radiation. Although she has told me that the tumour is not cancerous, I still fear the worst.

I need to stop dwelling on my own fears and man up. I need to do this because what if I do lose her, what if everything I wanted to say to her get cut short because I couldn’t.

Death scared me. And losing people close to me breaks my soul more then I can bare. I am fearful because we Jess died I put up this fake strong women act, but inside a part of me died with her. And it took 2 years to give new life to that part.

If I was to lose Jolene, who to me is a part of my childhood, my pure soul.. I don’t know what will happen to me.