In 1993 a friend from high school committed suicide. I had been out of touch with her for a couple of years, although my sister had remembered her and passed the news on to me.
Our relationship had always been weird. She's insist on dancing with me at mixers and such, and danced slow songs like slow motion fast songs, with dips, twirls, and everything. It was cool. We were pretty good friends, at least most of the time. After graduation, though, she was usually "just going out" when I would call. So I eventually stopped calling.
After I heard about this, I thought I was handling it okay, but as it turns out I was worrying all of my friends by appearing so depressed, and they had no idea why. I had to deal with whatever feelings I had for her, and writing this story helped out a lot.
I've always felt, however, that the story was very hackneyed and cliche, very much black and white, no middle ground kind of stuff, but I don't really know where else to go with it.
Mark Kinney / alberich@iglou.com