Every now and then - especially when I come to a milestone - I go through these phases wherein I just so depressed. Completing yet another semester is one of those times.

I’m so lucky to have been given the opportunity to follow my dreams, but sometimes it’s incredibly difficult because I don’t understand why I’m still here and my best friend isn’t. I did just as many stupid, reckless things as she did - hell, I talked her into most of the craziest things she got into. It’s all so unfair that Jessica’s life was cut short. I know that car accident changed me forever. I’d experienced many deaths of friends (there used to be a saying that if you were from St. Albans you didn’t get to live to be 25), but hers was different. It all just seemed impossible. She was the kind of person who had fire in her veins. I had resigned myself to living out the rest of my days in the same small town where I was born, but she wouldn’t have it. She didn’t care what the cost, she was bound and determined to do whatever it took to get out of WV and live near the beach. It almost happened for her, too. We were 22 and she met these people who lived in Tampa, FL. They all got along, so she decided to move down there with them until she was able to get established. She was over-the-moon about the move - to have a fresh start away from the mountains that she found so oppressive and the abusive boyfriend she could just never seem to break away from completely. While she was getting everything set up with her new friends in Tampa, they decided to spend the day at the beach since she was coming home the next day to pick up the last of her things. I spoke to her to congratulate her again on the new, amazing journey she was going to be starting, and an hour later her friend caused a 7-car-pile-up and she was dead.

This song always reminds me of her because I think about her often. I wonder what she’d be like if she would’ve come back to WV the next day as planned. There’s a rumor that her ex-boyfriend was going to surprise her at the airport and propose - would she have said yes or continued her life in FL? Would she have finally found the satisfaction that always seemed to elude her? What would I be like if she was still around? Would I have slowed down and decided to get serious about my life or kept up the same reckless behavior that killed her?

I hate that someone who had such a passion for life is gone. I hate that her life was taken just as she was finally getting all she’d worked for for so many years. I hate that she’s missing out on everything.

Sunny days seem to hurt the most.
I wear the pain like a heavy coat.
The only thing that gives me hope,
Is I know I’ll see you again some day.

Finding myself living in S. FL, 10 minutes away from the ocean is it’s own special form of cruel irony. I never wanted to live here. This was her dream, so I’m trying to make the most of it. God knows she’d be pissed if she had any idea the amount of time I spend inside instead of out, experiencing all living down here has to offer. I should probably do something about that.

Bear with me, these next couple of may be rough.