innocuous. Tenuous. Ous. Ous. Ous.

Ali has not yet told me what her mother did to drive her out of the house and into the home of her girlfriend. She has not told me because I have not asked. Her grandmother had a pulmonary embolism in Boston a few weeks ago (it’s why I posted the ever is forever poem), and that was the first time she’d seen her mother.

Relationships are an odd thing, whether observing the tenuous relationship with Ali and her mother, or reading postsecret obsessively, or even exaiming my own weird relationships. A very odd thing. And I know relationships work both ways, but sometimes, sometimes you have to let go of old relationships that are still hurting.

I haven’t found a space to fill Kate with yet, and I’m coming to the conclusion that I never will. I will never be 17 again. But I think, at some point during the month of March, I gave her up, let her fall into the past. I sent her a Christmas card, she never wrote back. Such is life. It is done now. I am moving on and going forward.

I am letting go of far too many others, others who have been clinging on for far too long. There is Lorlei and she holds to me and I hold to her out of obligation. She is 22 and finding out how hard it is to be pregnant and single. Then there is the possibility that her fiance could just run at any point he wishes to, leave his child behind and just disappear back into the Netherlands. Countless fathers have already done it. This little boy would hardly be different. But I have known Lorlei since I was 14, at 14 I turned her in for her attempted suicide. She still doesn’t know how close I came or the bitterness of my high school and early college days. I dont’ think she will ever know.

Linda does know and it is Linda that I want to write to the school and tell them that despite 4 years passing, she should not be allowed there with children. She should not be allowed to take their secrets and keep them. I don’t want to play the what-if game, but how differently would my life have turned out if I got the help I needed at 16 (16!) instead of waiting until 20 and a suicide attempt?

That I have also come to terms with, pieces and shards of my history. Yes, it was a suicide attempt. No, it would be useless to call it something else. I attempted suicide and successfully failed — the immortal words of Kate. Those slivers of her I keep and hold and treasure.

There are others, others I won’t name. Some of whom exist here, in the realm of the internets. Some of whom I am far too passive to name (why I am passive about THIS I’ve no idea — in high school I was getting really good at telling people to fuck off).

I don’t know what the point of typing all this out was. Perhaps to vent. Perhaps to say that as people fall new ones fill their places. I’m not sure where Ali fits into that, whose ‘place’ she has filled, but she is here, in my life, and I am so grateful to have her.