There are some moments that simply stay with you forever.
A week ago I was sitting at work when my phone buzzed. I looked down and saw a text from one of my best friends.
The moment that I read that text, I burst into tears.
The moment I read that text is one of the moments that will stay with me forever.
Over the 12+ years that we've been friends there have been many moments that will stay with me forever.
I remember sitting in the high school counsellers office with her while she cried and not understanding why she was so constantly upset and why she couldn't just pull herself out of it.
I wanted to understand but I was young and selfish and in my mind, if you weren't happy, you just figured out a way to GET happy.
I remember not long after we finished high school when she came to my house after a doctors visit.
She told me she had a block of chocolate in the car and needed to have a girl talk.
We went to the river, sat at the port and she rolled up her sleeves to show me all of the cuts.
We talked for a long, long time and I went home and cried for an hour or so.
I'm sure she did too.
I remember my first year of uni when she came to my apartment to pick up her car after a lecture.
She had been put on a new medication.
It wasn't agreeing with her.
Her eyes were glazed over, her brow was sweaty, she was mumbling incoherently and she simply wasn't there.
Someone was, but it wasn't her.
My housemate and I, her two best friends, tried to stop her from driving, but we simply couldn't. She took her keys and she drove home in peak hour traffic.
She didn't text me to tell me she was OK like I'd asked her to and I didn't sleep that night until she showed up to park her car again for the next day of classes.
I remember the time her medications got mixed up and she ended up in hospital for my birthday.
I remember calling her on that birthday and her falling into an even deeper depression that she couldn't be there with me.
I remember her own birthday party three weeks later when she told me the only thing that had stopped her killing herself was that someone would have to find the body.
I remember her mother physically having to drag her out of bed for several weeks because she had simply given up.
I remember Easter last year when we were both very drunk and very tired and she told me that she had been sexually assaulted as a child and that she had never told anyone besides me.
I remember the weight of what I had just found out and the gravity of not being able to tell anybody.
I remember that I understood so much of the past ten years so much clearer.
We sat together until 4am, crying and talking and crying and talking.
I hugged her so tightly.
I remember two months later when I got the message that she had ended up in hospital and would probably be there for some time.
No one could quite tell me what had happened and I couldn't quite tell anyone what I knew.
I called my mum and I cried. I told her what I knew and we both cried.
I called my friend every night that she was in hospital.
She didn't want to talk much at all but she told her parents not long after she got out.
There have of course been moments in between then and now.
I remember finding out that she was going to be staying for an extended period in a clinic in Melbourne.
I remember feeling insanely ill and dry wretching in the corner after I first visited her in there.
I remember scrapbooking with her and not wanting to leave my craft knife lying around, just in case.
I remember how shit a friend that made me feel like I was.
What I remember most about each of these moments is just wanting to find a way to let her know that I love her, that we all love her and that we would go to the ends of the earth to make her feel better.
What I remember most about each of these moments is feeling hopeless as hell because there just wasn't a way to get that through to her.
I remember a lot of moments about our friendship, but last Tuesday I was sitting at my desk and my phone buzzed.
I looked down and saw a text from one of my best friends.
The moment that I read that text, I burst into tears.
The text told me that a paedophile had been put in prison.
I cried for releif, I cried for exhaustion, I cried for love for my best friend.
I cried because finally the person who had made all of those moments I remembered happen, had finally been brought to justice.
I know that the sentence doesn't mean that the moments will stop, in fact I'm certain that they won't.
But what I was crying for was the validation, the notion that this is a step towards healing, not only for my friend but for everyone who has been there for her for my moments and for all of the others.
That moment of validation, that moment of healing, that moment that I read that text is one of the moments that will stay with me forever.
xxx
SJ
