September 22, 1993

I was back at the counselor’s office today, my weekly appointment.

“How are you feeling today?”

“Sad.”

“Can you tell me why? What’s making you feel sad today?”

“Tomorrow is the anniversary of the accident. It’s been five years and I still can’t shake it. I still get sad and I still cry sometimes when I think about them.”

“Can you tell me about the accident?”

I told her but it was hard. I cried right there in her office. Five years…but it seemed like yesterday. I had graduated high school and moved out. I was living on my own with some roommates and working a lot, so I didn’t see my group of friends as much. I got a call. There had been an accident. They were dead. I tell the counselor…

“My first boyfriend, the one I had given my virginity to, and one of his best friends died in a car accident. They had been drinking and were driving too fast on a curvy road. As they went around one of the curves, they were over the center line. A car was coming from the other direction. It was a head on collision and they died instantly, both of them. I’ve never quite gotten over it.”

We talked for awhile about my group of friends, about how much they meant to me. They were like a family. I had lost my stepdad, my mom, and my sister and brother, since they lived with my mom. I was living with my dad, who I barely knew. I found a support system. I created a family and suddenly two of them were gone. Too much loss in my life in a short space of time.

My counselor decided after these two talks that there was not a particular trigger for my depression. It wasn’t situational, it was clinical. She sent me to the psychiatrist associated with their office. He could prescribe something to help.

“Why now? Why am I depressed now that my life is good?”

“I don’t know but I’m going to help you find out. I’ll see you next week.”

It somehow helped to talk about it. I remember feeling more loss for my cute, country boy than for my first. I think it’s the what might have been feeling. We dated briefly. I was too consumed by thoughts of my boyfriend in the Air Force and couldn’t allow myself to fully open up to this new man in my life. I always regretted that. We were good together but my mind and heart were somewhere else. What if I had been his girlfriend then? Would things have been different? Would he have been drinking and driving? Could I have stopped this whole thing from happening? He didn’t have to die. They didn’t have to die!

I’m crying again as I think about it. I’ll go to the cemetery tomorrow. I always feel silly sitting there but also oddly comforted. I don’t talk to them as some people do, except to say I miss them. We truly were like a family.

I remember watching St. Elmo’s Fire with all of them. That was us! We were that group of friends that helped each other through all of life’s twists and turns. We were there when things were bad and always ready to celebrate the good times. We loved each other, we dated each other, we broke each others’ hearts, but we never left. Through it all we were together. There are two lines in the movie that hurt to hear anymore…

“I always thought we’d be freinds forever.”

“Yeah, well forever got a lot shorter all of a sudden.”

Forever. Have you ever thought about how long forever is? It can be a lifetime but it can also be only a moment. Hold on to your forever. It just may be shorter than you think.

I listen to the St. Elmo’s Fire Soundtrack sometimes and remember them.

The theme song says…we laughed until we had to cry…

Now’s the time for crying.

Just me…Marissa

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