I find myself, a bit over two years later, after losing Natasha, ready to share the trauma of the last few months of our friendship, where I realize that perhaps my role in her life at the time was to be a comforting hand, a gentle soul to walk with her through to the end. It wasn’t the role I wanted or the role I wish I had, but it feels as if that was what life handed me anyways. We had planned to live out our lives together, as a different type of soulmate, one of understanding that feeling of being alien, being too much, too soft, too feeling, in a world that values only intimate type of relationships, my family and I were ready to embrace Natasha into our lives. We dreamt of her moving here to join me for morning coffee everyday after Joey would go to work. To toil away in a studio together, creating in our own messy world that would include so much laughter, so many tears, so many dance parties that the world would deem terrible, terrible dancing.

There were so many plans and when she left my house in June, we knew this had to happen but towards the end of that summer, something dramatically shifted. Suddenly she was in a deep despair, deeper than when she was deeply betrayed by the person closest to her that she never ever expected to betray her and be purposefully destructive with her heart a couple years prior. And while that is not my story to tell, since she was very guarded about that part of her life, I wish to touch on the deep impact we have on others lives. We had spent a year and a half working through a lifetime of trauma. Childhood traumas, betrayals by friends, when we had betrayed ourselves, betrayals we never expected, nothing was too much for us to talk about with each other. Nothing ever made us look at the other like they were too broken. We held each other through things that had never been spoken aloud. We wrote them down. We made images expressing things that were just unable to be uttered. We created a story with it.

There was a deep sense of relief to had found a friendship, that we both struggled through our lives to find, that we felt whole in.

And then, I remember it clearly, a day I broke down and told her how scared I was for some health issues I was having at the time, auditory hallucinations, constant migraines, visual hallucinations, and I was terrified I had brain cancer. She listened as I told her all of this and then when the fear became too overwhelming for me, I changed the subject and made a joke, as I do, to lighten the mood. But her response was out of character, she didn’t hold my fear with gentleness like she had done every time before and started lecturing me on what it means to be a good human, questioning if she was one and subsequently if I was. That was the moment that everything turned with her. We worked it through and I reassured her that I loved her and that her having a “freak out” did not freak me out. But more was happening behind the scenes than she was telling me at the time. From that moment on, it was a two month decline and her feeling endlessly guilty about her lack of gentleness during that time.

She was questioning her heart, her soul, her place on this earth. She was honest about her ideation but also that she was going to therapy and checking herself into the hospital when needed. I would check in constantly, often to silence, or her saying she was incapable of love, that she didn’t know if she ever truly loved anyone ever on this earth. It was isolating to be with her in this space. I constantly go back and forth on the ways in which I walked with her during this time. I encouraged her to reach out to people that were closer to her, physically, but for many reasons that were hers and were valid, she didn’t feel comfortable doing so. I didn’t want to be another person who betrayed her by going against her wishes and the only person I knew how to reach was one that was a huge source of pain for her.

It felt as if no one else existed in these moments and that potentially anything I could say or do could be more detrimental. It’s two years later and yet, time for me is still stopped in September-November of 2019. So many people have told me to let go of the guilt but I do not think it is something that is possible for me, nor would I want to. I don’t hold it as a punishment. It lives in me and forever has changed the course of my soul and the way in which my brain works and how I approach friendships now. Guilt over this doesn’t mean I am not simultaneously healing while grieving, or knowing that I was doing the best I could with the information I had at the time, but how do I not feel guilt over being the one walking with her through the end of her life, even if I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time? That, that is the source of the guilt, I didn’t know that’s what was happening, but now I can see that. It’s guilt for not seeing it at the time.

There’s a lot of trauma I’m working through over her life and subsequent death. It has stagnated everything else. Being able to even comprehend the loss of my grandmother-my mother figure, and the loss of my dog-my first baby.

Others talk of Natasha’s presence in their daily lives, how they still feel her around. But I don’t. I did at first but I often wonder how much of that was my own subconscious needing to hold on to her because of the feeling of failing her, of trying to ease the overwhelming guilt. I don’t feel her. I’ve tried to connect and there’s just silence. Maybe it’s the weariness of my soul. Whatever it is, it’s lonely.

Natasha had a painful life. I feel it’s important to recognize that. I know we all want to feel better when someone we love dies, about the goodness of the life they had, and while she certainly had beautiful moments and connections in this life, because she was beautiful and endlessly loving, she also had a lot of people around her that traumatized her from a very young age and didn’t hold space for her pain or beauty. Trying to silence her, constantly. She had people telling her she felt too much, was too much, taking advantage of her endless capacity for love and deep deep wanting to be loved, wholly, in return. The parts of her life that were magnificent was hers. Her creation. She believed in the goodness in everyone. She deserved so much better.

I remember how when I received this text, after months of her being convinced she didn’t know how to love, I smiled and felt a sense of relief. I thought this was a corner being turned. I wish that were true.

<3
Katelyn