11/20/16---Kerra---

My oldest best friend is someone who I share many good memories with.  She is someone who I haven’t seen in years, but I feel like I am with every day because of how she used to know me so well.  I was almost closer to her than I was my intermediate family, especially during the summers when we had nothing better to do than to bike rides throughout our artificially sunny neighborhood.  Maybe I see the sunlight as something in my memories as artificial because as a child I hadn’t experienced other things that could make me feel happy, like adolescence.  This friend of mine was one among some others, but she was probably the closest.  She lived across the busy street that the block of my house was adjacent to.  Growing up, living on one side or the other of the busy street was a big thing.  It determined who you went trick-or-treating with on Halloween, most of the time (one year I went with them and I scratched myself on a bush and needed to get a band aid from someone’s house).  I lived on one side of the street, my best friend the other.  She lived on the same side as a lot of the other kids in my class, I lived on the same side as a lot of the kids in the grade under me.  Hanging out with the kids in the grade under me was like being in a parallel universe, because the two groups didn’t talk to each other that much.  During the summer, part of the time, I would spend the hot days playing Tetris, or swimming in the neighborhood pool, or doing random, stupid, crazy things, like sunbathing, or running in the rain to find out where it started and where it ended, with the kids in the grade under me.  When I was alone with my best friend, Kerra, it was just as fun, because I could do whatever I wanted, and be myself, even if it meant being a pain in the ass, sometimes, or out of control with energy that was tapped from the knowledge that I could do whatever I wanted.

Kerra’s bedroom was awesome.  She had a four-poster bed and a plastic blow-up ottoman that me and my junior high friends valued greatly when we hung out in her room on Friday and Saturday nights, during the school year, or any night or day, during the summer.  I remember her closet was something that amazed me because it seemed to contain more space than it really did; it was filled with dolls and childhood things and other random stuff.  I remember the desk/table with a mirror that she would sit at when we were alone to put on makeup to cover up her acne, before we went out to visit people, on our own, in the dark.  A number of times my mom told us not to do this; she said she didn’t want us wandering the neighborhood late at night, but we did it anyway, and a couple of times we got caught, and I got reprimanded, but going out at night with Kerra was still something I loved to do.  I remember walking the almost mile, all the way from the beginning of our neighborhood to the other, but on her side.  We would walk at night when it was dark out, and the danger that lay before us, as we were only twelve or thirteen years old, was what provided the energy and fun for the night, as the possibility that something might really go wrong never approached our experience.  We would grip each other’s arms on our way to go visiting, until we got to the friend’s house, hung out and talked, and left.  The most fun was our way there and back.  I remember little snapshots in my memory of such fun things happening on our walks, like when Kerra would randomly fall/trip over something on the sidewalk, or when we would cross the house with the statue of Mary in the window, glowing with lights around it. 

Other fun stuff happened with Kerra.  When I was alone with her, her brother, and sometimes her parents, we would have a ball.  I remember her having a hamster (or was she babysitting the class hamster?  I remember when I babysat it I had never been more amazed) and we would play and mess with it; one time I threw it from the top of the basement stairs to the bottom (I’m pretty sure there was a pillow at the bottom of the stairs).  The thrill of my life was having a sleepover at Kerra’s house.  I remember one time stands out in my mind when we slept in a room in her basement.  I went kind of crazy that night.  Her dad suggested McDonalds, but we might have had something else for dinner, as they lived only a few blocks from McDonalds and we had had it a million times before.  I had some of the fits of energy I often had as a child/preteen, and I took the cover of a lamp in the room and started to sing/chant like an American Indian.  I can’t remember if I used the cover as a drum or if I used it as a hat.  Anyways, Kerra and her brother got a kick out of it.  It was one of those moments where I showed my fits of energy and they just watched, and I felt loved, and okay with everything.  Late that night when it was just me and Kerra, we practiced our dance moves, some of which Kerra at one point in her life would do in front of boys and then tell me about (I always felt like she was kind of more mature than me, but we still stuck by each other through all of the shit and ignorance that portrayed itself through the people and scenarios in our class.  Sometimes I felt bad for her and her insecurities, as she would be there for me when shit happened).  That night we stayed up late and talked about the kids in our class.  Gossiping used to be one of my favorite things to do; it was a habit that I often initiated while with Kerra and other girls in my class, and didn’t kick until I realized that people probably would find out about it eventually.  But being a preteen is all about being ignorant to the necessity of maturity, so we talked and gossiped until we fell asleep. Sleepovers at Kerra’s house were a ton of fun, as they were when she would sleepover at my house.  I remember one time she was over at my house and my Uncle Neil was there, and fits of energy were shared when me and Kerra would throw my Raggedy Anne doll across the room and pretend/ say that it was because of a tornado.  One sleepover in my upstairs bedroom I slept on the floor and lined my place of sleeping with many of the beanie babies from me and my sister’s collection, and my mom made blueberry muffins in the morning that Kerra raved about.  At another sleepover we pulled out the bed from the sofa that was in our living room and watched the movie Grease and wore baby doll pajamas that my mom got us.  And at another sleepover, Kerra, me, and another friend of mine made ice cream sundaes, and had a water balloon toss.  Yup, sleepovers were some of the high points of our friendship.

Halloween of sophomore year, things were different.  We had both found different clicks, different friends, because we went to different schools.  Kerra went to a Catholic all-girls school, and I went to a co-ed Jesuit Academy.   It was around that time when I started my experience of clinical depression, but I tried to hide it behind the relationships that barely lingered still amongst my grammar school friends.  Kerra invited me to a party that was to take place at her house on Halloween.  I wore the pants of the girl that at the time was my best friend; they were sand/khaki colored Abercrombie pants, a size four I remember; the size sticks out because that wasn’t my usual size, I used to be smaller.  Maybe at the time that was my weight, but I remember my first pair of Abercrombie pants being a size zero.  When I got there I met for the first time one of Kerra’s new best friends and I felt jealous, just a bit.  We hung out in her kitchen, and I sat at her kitchen table with some other girls, and there were bowls of chips on the table.  Later we went downstairs, and more people started to arrive.  One of Kerra’s new friends, who I had met before, maybe a few times, who was pretty but had acne, came, even though she wasn’t invited.  I saw her in the basement and said hi, and it may have come off in a snotty way, because of the identity crisis I was going through that I sometimes feel that no one will ever understand, even God.  This identity crisis is something that did, does, and may forever make me feel like a freak because I couldn’t understand myself, I didn’t have a base that I could hold on to, except for family, which I feel I have lost almost completely.  I know teenagers go through that thing where they have to find their own way, but looking back to what I used to think to myself to be able to get along with the everyday, makes me want to cringe and disappear forever.

Anyways, back to reality: Kerra’s mom ordered pizza and soda (or ordered pizza and bought soda?  The soda aspect of the night reminds me of chilling with my A-Care homies, just buying a 2-liter of RC from Maple foods and hanging out).  At one point, I sat in a chair, looking out of it, probably really sad and depressed, and my other former best friend asked if I was ok, and I think I just shrugged or grunted, or something else unproductive.  When Kylie, a red-headed girl from my grammar school arrived, I ran up to her and hugged her; we hadn’t seen each other in a while.  That was one of the high points of the night.  At one point during the party, I saw a boy that used to go out with Kylie (I think off and on, I don’t remember if during that time they were an item) walking down the stairs.  I saw him and the energy that glowed around the situation of the party.  For some reason I have this memory thing, that might have been a dream of mine, where perspectives are switched, and I am seeing myself from the top of the stairs, where Kylie’s boyfriend/old boyfriend saw me, for the first time in a long time.

Later during the party, me and another girl that I went to grammar school with played Hungry Hungry Hippos, and we both got a kick out of it.  Some people played strip poker, me not being one of them.  If I remember correctly, one of the naked boys ran through the house, naked; either that or he just said he’d do it.  Later on we went outside.  I sat in her driveway as others talked.  And after that it got boring.

Claro que si, Kerra was my best friend for a long time, up until the time of my mental breakdown in sophomore year.  After that point, for a while, I felt kind of hopeless, but I do have good memories of me and my old best friend.  I wonder what good memories she has of me. 

“That’s how it’s supposed to be- living young, and wild, and free.” – “Young, Wild & Free” -Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa- Mac & Devin Go to High School