In the Summer of 2022, my best friend committed suicide less than a mile away from my home. This was one of my first glances into loss. This loss stung in such a confusing way because she had left when we weren't on speaking terms. I didn't know she had died until a month later. In retrospect, I realize we had stopped being friends over petty high school drama. However at the time, it felt my world had been crumbling to pieces and she put the icing on the cake. I had experienced my first heartbreak and the anger I used to cope refracted onto my image of her. My pride was bigger than my body and I refused to accept her apologies. A few months later she took her own life.
Teenagers often form bonds with those who feel their same pains. The things that choked me at night did the same to her. We were one in the same, but a part of me always felt if one of us caved into our urges, it would certainly be me. It still rattles me that she beat me to the punch. This piece begs the question, what if it were me and not her? What if I was the martyr everyone swore they loved so deeply that they ignored her while she was alive? What if I was the romantically dead girl who's sins had been erased and absolved post mortem? What if I had accepted her, despite her wrongs?
One drunken night, not long after I learned of her death, I fell asleep in a bed she once laid in. I woke up in the middle of the night, still in a stupor, and seen her in the corner of the room. I used various shades of green to mimic night vision, because despite the pitch darkness, I knew it was her.
Let this work be a commentary on pride, spite, and anger. These vices are like fucking an ex boyfriend - it's never worth it.
Mediums: Canvas, acrylic polymer.