(909K)
December 19, 2005
a while back a friend of mine ran away. the night before she vanished, we'd had a long talk together in my kitchen, a conversation in which she told me she was happier than she ever thought she could be, a conversation i left feeling so happy for her and everything she'd accomplished in the last few years. she didn't offer an explanation or tell us where she went; i was left for months and months, waiting and questioning. we are left in that place, so often, with the people we care about. when they abruptly leave us, through choice or through death, what answers do we really have? departure is the extreme matter, the one that breaks the facade of certainty most easily, but the little things people do are oftentimes just as mysterious. do we really know how anyone else works? "table tipping" is a manner of communicating with the dead. here, in a story from half a year down the line, here is the first time i hear from her again, and the only way i can be sure of this is because of her cell phone's registry on my caller ID. here, i'm wondering if there isn't some way we could get such definite answers out of the living.
i don't know that this expresses what i am trying to say even in uncertain terms. the day this happened, i wrote a journal entry that became a livejournal post that was edited into what you will hear. i still don't know how i feel about it. but, despite a few changed details, it is a true story. and here it is.
(For S.)
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