Some days I can make it through ok- I think about her but it doesn’t derail me. Other days, like today, I think about her constantly, its like something is gripping my heart and I can’t breathe right. On these days, I’m always on the brink of tears and every little thing sends me down a spiral of depression. These days are bad.

I called her a little earlier this afternoon. Left a message saying that I was thinking about her and getting ready to mail off her Christmas gift (she was visiting her boyfriend’s family out of town on the real Christmas). She of course didn’t answer, but this was the first time that I actually thought she might answer… (call #5)

Some of the reason that I am having such a rough day today is because of this holiday. New Years. We’re supposed to look back on the past year and then look forward to the new one coming. I’ve always been very reflective on this holiday, assessing my life and the things I’ve done in a year. I usually make a plan for the coming year and attempt to be intentional in my life. All this is severely marred by the absence of Sylvia. We’ve done this together. We’ve usually been together, talking these things out. Now she won’t talk to me at all. How can I think about anything other than that when I think back on the past year and look forward into the new one?

I have been such a mess this past few days. Absolutely nasty to be around. I know what it looks like from the outside, I can just imagine. I have barely showered, rarely smiled and have been incredibly grouchy. I want to kill people. I am so annoyed. I am missing my friend, hating my life, generally miserable and on my period to top it off. I did venture out to return a few things at Target. Passed a guy that I used to have a crush on and reached for my phone to text Sylvia. She is the only person who would know that story. She was there for every minute of it. So I texted her:

Remember that guy Darrin that I used to have a crush on when we did middle school? I just saw him at Target- very cute but so cocky! Remember? (text #5)

Well…I’m gonna try to think past this mess during my New Years Eve and Day. It is still my life, whatever is left of it. I am leaving town in a few hours. Gonna get in the car and drive. Racing towards the coast in an effort to do what has always consoled me in hard times: sit on the beach. Yes, it will be hard because it was usually with Sylvia that I fled to the beach. But years ago, before I had a best friend, I drove to the beach alone to find peace. So I’ll welcome the new year like I have in the past: on an adventure to find peace and figure out how to live a better life. I will grieve my best friend and miss her. And hopefully, just hopefully, I can move a little bit forward in my grief and confusion.

As much as I hate that this is still happening at the beginning of a new year, maybe it is good. Maybe I can wrap up some of the misery I feel and things will get better in 2009. Here’s hoping…

Which is also why I moved as much of heaven and earth as I could get my hands on to plan something great for her birthday. She didn’t want a big party or a thing with friends. She wanted to go on a trip and we wanted it to be special. I worked and worked to find a place that we could afford, which was hard since neither of us had income due to our full-time student status. We were thrilled to score a cheap flight and condo in St. Thomas. I’ve always done special things for Sylvia’s birthday. It was always so fun to surprise her and make her laugh.

As I listened to my parents “whisper” in the kitchen, my Mom told my Dad that this was all going to hit me again hard in July. I believe she meant when my 30th birthday rolls around and I have no best friend to celebrate with, much less anyone to plan something for me. She kept going on, I think she said something about Sylvia “owing” us or some protective crap like that, and then my Dad made a few truly whispered comments and it was over.

July of course is far down the line of worries I have for a year without my best friend. There are so many other things that I have to get through before I could make it to July. I’ve made it through Thanksgiving and Christmas. Tomorrow is New Years Eve, another holiday that we have spent many together. Then comes every day in January, every day in February, every day in March, spring break that we had planned to spend together, every day in April, every day in May, her 31st birthday, every day in June and then, July. In reality, my 30th birthday is 191 days away…but to me, it might as well be an eternity away. How can I make it through all those days without her?

PS. I came very close to yelling out, “Mom, I can hear you”, but then, what really would’ve been the point? Everything she was saying is true and it is not a surprise to me. In fact, most of me thinks that she wanted me to overhear her…her way of communicating to me that she is grieving too.

The night before last I got incredibly drunk and very very emotional. I believe at one point I sobbed, snot and all, on my little brother’s shoulder. I was a mess. Shit, make that: am a mess. However, the next day with a horrendous hangover, I was not that surprised at my horrible behavior. Even worse, I thought it completely rational. I was using the Level 2 defense mechanism of “acting out”. History has shown me that I struggle to deal with very very hard things. I do my best to intellectualize things in a way that is manageable. Sure I’d love to climb in bed and never get out…well at least not until she comes to her senses. But since an extended stay in bed is not that realistic and would most certainly drown me in the most inescapable depression, I have to use other mechanisms. Even when I am talking about it, thinking about it, writing about it, reading about it, exercising about it…you name it, I still can’t process this pain in a way that makes it manageable. It tends to ooze from my every pore. Enter drugs and alcohol. Just another avenue for me to express and experience this pain. And express it, I did.

Today and for the next 18 days, I will be studying obsessively for a monumental exam that I must take on January 17th. This will allow me utilize various defense mechanisms, mainly repression. I desperately need to forget this horrible part of my life, to truly believe that it is not happening. I can keep *accidentally* getting drunk after the big test…but until then, I have got to do nothing, nothing but prepare for it. The absence of my best friend has already marred my Thanksgiving, Christmas and is scheduled to cast a dark shadow on my New Years- it cannot touch my success on this test. Cannot. Cannot. I am looking forward to 18 days of thinking only of this test and doing whatever it takes to prevent Sylvia from creeping into my emotions. Sure, I’ll blog about how I’m doing and I’ll check her Facebook page 3 or 4 times a day…but I will not slide down the spiral of the situation. I will cling to my defense mechanisms.

I’ve also been trying out humor, suppression, intellectualization, isolation…oh yeah, and DENIAL! The best part about defense mechanisms is that they are a healthy form of coping. Not healthy, like we’d choose situations that make us use them. But healthy in the sense that they are strategies that help us to process a new reality. So many things that happen to us are bigger than we can process without a long process. Defense mechanisms, in all their variety, help us to process little by little to a point that we have fully processed an event (assuming of course, that we don’t get stuck at the denial stage).

Back to studying.

Sure, you have fights and misunderstandings. Sure, you may want to hit them, yell at them, scream, scream, scream. But you don’t want to seriously hurt them, the kind of hurt that really hurts.

I’ve been thinking about this over the last 35 days and especially as I’ve been reading this story from the Attack of a Redneck Mommy. It started out as a normal tragic story of losing a child and trying to get another one. But this tragic story has an even more tragic twist of a back-stabbing best friend. The hurt of all hurts. This story involves the best friend causing the worst pain to someone fighting to make a child their own. This is a case where someone was able to truly hurt the one she loves the most (or the one that loved her the most). It is tragic.

And for those of us who have truly been stabbed or left by the ones we love the most, it takes us directly to the source of our pain and reminds us. It hurts. How could the one person who claims to love me the most, hurt me so colossally? Why? How? How does she sleep, how does she look at herself in the mirror? Does she just not think about it? Does she somehow feel justified in her actions?

I know this is what Tanis is asking about her ex/friend the Dragonlady. And it is definitely what I am asking about Sylvia. How do you hurt the ones you love the most?

At least not until now…

Will someone please tell me what is going on?!!?!?

My brother just had a baby…a little boy. After 27 hours of labor, she popped out a 9lb, 8oz boy with a severe conehead.

Sylvia is the only person I want to call. She is the only person who knows what this really means. Sure, I’ll call family and other friends…but how do I reach her? If I email her or leave a voicemail, I am guessing she will delete it. If I text her, I’m guessing she’ll see it, but that is all that will happen.

Oh my heart hurts. Will she ever talk to me again? I am contemplating calling Sylvia’s mom to ask her that question. This is all just so out of the blue…still. Everytime I think about the sequence of events, I am just flabbergasted at how this has gone done. What could she be feeling that would make cutting me out seem like the right choice? How does she deal with it when I try to contact her? Is heart so hard on this issue that she deletes things without registering what’s happening?

I’ve just become an aunt. My best friend is the only person that I want to call.

Plus standard: I love you and miss you.

Twitter would have been perfect for us. In this video, the voice points out that just knowing what our friends and family are doing at random times helps us feel connected and part of our lives. Most of our lives are hidden from people that care.  Sure, the video points out, there is email and blogs and phones and texts- but life happens in the time between blog posts and emails.  This is where Twitter comes in. Its a chance for us to update the people who care on the little things and at the same time keep up with them.

Oh Sylvia, this is where we lost it. We were so just to living miles from each other- we shared our lives but mainly we were living our lives together. Try as we might, we couldn’t figure out how to do this in new cities, with changing lives and no face time. Every time we talked about it, there were so few good strategies to make it better. Even if we were big phone talkers, we were aching for the daily details that we missed via phone calls and emails.

Twitter! How did we miss it!?

Over the last few