Name a Hard Time and How It Changed You

Lessons Learned

“You have reached the automated voice message system of…” there goes that voice mail again. That monotone voice that could drive a person insane. Five times, I’ve called five times, but still nothing. Worry didn’t even compare to what I was feeling. I was feeling scared, hopeless, and apprehensive, the list goes on and on. Hurt and misery weren’t even the beginning of what I was about to face, but through my miseries I found unbelievable discoveries in myself and life.  

It was the seventh grade when I met my best friend. She had blonde hair, blue eyes, and a smile that could hide the darkest things.  We were so young, naïve, and thought we knew everything about anything. Uncontrollable laughter and radiating sunshine filled our friendship, in the beginning, but as I got to know her I realized not everyone is on as solid ground as they make you want to believe. She was trying so desperately to make it look like she was okay that eventually it all just exploded. Like when a duck looks so peaceful on top of the water, but you can’t see the struggle underneath to stay afloat. She was already drowning.

I tried so hard to block the ending of our friendship out. Pretend the memories never happened, lock the door and throw away the key. I didn’t want to remember the bad times and I didn’t want to remember our friendship in the way it ended because it was so much more than the bad times. She truly was my best friend through the smiles, laughs, and tough times but eventually you just can’t hold it back anymore. It’s eventually all going to come raining down, maybe a day from now or maybe three years from now. There was one night in particular that I’ll never forget. Maddison, my best friend, was supposed to be staying the night but her blonde, bubbly self never showed up. All day I had a terribly outrageous feeling sitting in the pit of my stomach. I called her cellphone over and over with the feeling that something was not right growing stronger. Six times, I called six times and on the fifth ring she finally picked up.

Immediately a wheezing and whining sound interspersed with violent cries sounded through the telephone. Sobbing filled the everlasting silence that I wanted so desperately to break, but my words seemed to fail me. Choked out syllables broke the silence like a sonic boom. Her breathing deepened but took on a whole new level of rasping, scraping, and ragged tortured noises that formed in the back of her throat. I could practically feel her lips trembling with each breath of air and outtake of not formable words; I thought someone had died from the way she was crying. The problem was somebody did die; it was Maddison, almost literally but all together metaphorically. Her mind had become violent, the insecurities she tried so hard to hide had finally eaten her alive. The pain pounded her head into confusion until she cried her very last tears. Everything was a sharp as the knife that had almost taken her life. White padded walls, nurses, and therapy was what she saw for a while; it drove her past insanity. When she came back I didn’t even recognize the best friend who used to laugh and smile. It was just darkness, complete utter darkness.  She drove straight into the head of the fire and she wasn’t coming back, the worst was yet to come. Like an earthquake has aftershock of a consistency of smaller earthquakes until it’s all destroyed and done, so did this friendship. After everything we’d gone through together, all the stuff she did that would scare anybody else away, I stayed. I couldn’t leave her. The girl who needed somebody more then I needed myself, one day she decided she was done with me. One day my best friend decided she hated me. She told people I was terrible, that I did inappropriate things with guys, and did drugs. I’m not sure where this all came from. None of it was true, but for some idiotic reason everyone decided to believe those things. Her and her new “friends” would call me and angrily shout mean hurtful things at me for weeks on end. She wanted to fight me and I was never sure why. It was like she had stabbed me a hundred times and then acted like she was the one bleeding. The worst part was that everyone was helping her while I bled to death. All in the blink of an eye, my best friend decided to hate me, and that was that.