A Brave Girl.

Yesterday I learned that a friend of mine died, she had been suffering for many years, gripped in a mad dance of addictions, her abused mind wouldn’t allow a space of peace.

 

When speaking to her in the past many years, she would go backwards to a place in time.  She was the girl that would dare to do things just for shock value, and giggle at your expense, with a twinkle in her eye and a mind that was never still, she was bright beyond, athletic and in love with hockey, so social with a friend on every corner, boys and girls both clamored to be in her presence, for where she went excitement followed.

 

What happens then to a girl with so much, what makes it all turn and take a severe left, what puts out the twinkle in her eye, and little by little she became homeless, the lady on the streets who slept under overpasses, what goes so wrong? 

 

How is it possible to live so many contrasts, it seemed like she experienced all walks of life in this one lifetime. 

 

She went from the most popular the most likely to succeed, to working in neonatal nursery's with the teeniest of babies, a nurse that lovingly cared for others, she excelled at hockey at time when women were first making inroads there.  She was the first to give you what you needed, always.  She was generous even when she had nothing left to give, but to share past memories.

 

What happens that dashes all of her dreams, crashes all of the hopes, and leaves you literally homeless?

 

We talked once about her life in a moment of clarity, and she herself said that pain and pain alone has been her greatest enemy.  Pain or perhaps it was the fear of feeling and getting lost in the pain, so instead she became lost in the haze that covered the pain. 

 

I knew she was a walking talking suffering wound in search of and forever plotting out the next fix to cover it up, like band-aid or pill that magically doused the fire within.

 

Self -inflicted is what I have heard of her illness, that she inflicted this damage on her body and life, that she is the one who controlled that. 

 

Surely that is wrong, for who in their right mind would choose something so hurtful to herself?  Why would you want to lose so much?

 

Was it her intentions to live this life?  Was it a conscious effort to do so?  Are addicts grown out of simple desire for the item they are addicted to?  Like if you eat too much apples you become addicted?

 

What I am more and more convinced of is that the mind is the one addicted, not the body.  The body just happens to be along for the ride.

 

What happens to the soul, when the mind seems to take over the drivers seat? Where is it then?  Does it sit back behind the drunken haze, under the seeping wound, just waiting? 

 

Waiting until the body and mind fall and are rendered useless.

 

Was her life all for naught?  Or was it a life that her soul got to experiences a volume of human existence?  As you look upon her life it was filled to the brim with both the darkness and the light, the brightest and the darkest, beauty and the beast, loving and hating both inside and out.

 

It was truly an amazing life, one that only a few would have the courage to live.  Her stories were enough to scare me like watching and knowing a walking story of intrigue.  What will happen next?

 

If this is the earth school and when you die it is graduation, and when you get to the other side and have a review of how it all went, her review will be a grand event, her learning was far and wide, her review test will be in volumes not in pages.

 

I hope her souls journey was exactly as it was designed, that she met and did all that she was set up to do, and that she passed with flying colors.

 

I will remember her always as one who lived, lived in a large way whether it was surfing in Hawaii to flying around Alaska, to hanging our dirty tights on limb after unsuccessfully navigating a stream in our church clothes, even being homeless in Alaska.

 

To me she is a little girl who lived a life that few could live, a brave girl.