Thousands of Miles Away

I suppose it started about this time last year. The winds had finally decided that it was winter and boredom set in during the frantic wasting of my school holidays. Though we had exchanged IM addresses long before, it was in a TinyChat that we actually found some common ground and started to talk. The conversation carried back into the Skype window and we began to talk regularly. We were friends. This was at a stage of my life where I trusted no one. I'd been left too many times to bother sharing my feelings with anyone, even if I thought they might care or be able to bear the burden. My life was reasonably good though. She had it a lot harder than me. A hell of a lot harder than me.

It was a tragic time in my life, I turned my emotions off for so long and pretended to be happy. It wasn't until late September did we truly start talking. I felt guilty for not talking to her sooner. My life was going downhill and spiraling out of control and I had no way of stopping it. She was there for me when no one else was and I learned to trust her, though my emotions were still tightly sealed in a forgotten box under a bed of secrets. I knew something bothered her, but I never asked, I figured if she wanted to open up to me, then it's her choice and I wasn't going to force things from her. She made my life better, but my life started getting worse and crashed into a dark abyss once my father passed away in the middle of August. That was a day I'd never forget and she was there for me.

It was a shock to me too. I got home from school and our friend Joe said that there was some terrible news. They invited me into a group conversation and told me. The news of her father's death destroyed their relationship, though it strengthened ours. It wasn't until I had held her hand through the dark months that followed that I felt I could actually begin to tell her things. I felt I could trust her, though didn't know if I could burden her with the knowledge that I was not as happy as I seemed. I didn't hide it as well as I thought though, and another friend guessed the secret one day. So then the secret was out. I could tell people. I told her part of it, the part where I wasn't as happy as I seemed. I'd been betrayed once in the past by someone I trusted and my self-worth was based too much on unrealistic academic goals. She understood. Over time we got closer still and I felt myself opening up more and more to her. Eventually we decided that a letter was in order, and exchanged postage addresses.

After we exchanged our postage addresses, I received a lovely letter from her about two weeks later. It made my day and for once in my miserable life, I felt wanted. I felt needed and I felt weightless. Nothing was going to bring my mood down. She had hand crafted me a little turtle with a tag and all. His name is Raff and he helped me sleep at night. The terrifying nightmares stopped for a while and I knew I had someone who I'd care for way more than I could ever explain, way more than I ever anticipated. Her letter was what made me feel comfort. I knew I wasn't alone. I felt it was necessary to send her something back. I sent her something special that she could hold when she was sad and missed me, or needed someone if I wasn't there. I sent her a charm. Each charm stood for something, but I never told her.

That charm was special to me. It sat on my desk during exams and prevented a breakdown walking home after the terrible ones. I wore it on a necklace until Christmas, when she sent me a proper necklace, with a heart pendant composed of cyclic arrows. I have taken it off about three times in six months. In return, I sent her another handmade turtle- a companion for Raff- whose name is Opa. However, what exams did spark off was borderline anorexia. I teetered on the edge of an eating disorder over my whole summer. It was partially her strength and love that stopped me plunging too deep. It came to a head in a storm one day, standing in the Pacific Ocean. In an instant, I felt all of the negativity drain away. I fished into my shirt for her necklace and held it in my sodden hand as I stood there with the waves and thunder crashing around me. I felt the spines of that heart dig into the palm of my hand. I realised that it is up to me to create a world I am happy in. I suppose it was all of those months of friendship beforehand that lead up to that moment. That's all anything is really; changing lives in small steps.

What I never told her, the girl who lived thousands and thousands of miles away from me, was that the charms represented much more than just something to remember me by. They each represented something she would find or have whether she wanted it or not. One was my trust, which I compared to the key charm. Another was my love and care if something ever happened to me, which was the heart with a key hole in the middle. The last charm, the ring, stood for what I knew she would find soon enough whether she had been looking or not. That was love. After I received her second letter, it was set in stone. This girl who lived so bloody far from me truly cares about me and truly doesn't want to lose me. Opa and Raff are both put in a safe place to this day. The year of 2011 has still been rough for both of us. She, with her exams and extremely difficult classes compared to the USA's standards. Then there was myself, with all my depression and sleeping problems. I never slept well. At times I didn't want to be lonely; she would fall asleep in a Skype call with me or stay in a Skype call with me until I was passed out into my world of dreams and nightmares. I had the biggest crush on a girl named Skye. She was amazing and had the cutest smile, but she was teetering on the edge of bisexual and straight. We were close, but not in the way that I heinously thought. She thought of me as a sister and nothing more. Closure wasn't really needed after that. It wasn't long until I let go of her and forgot about it. I knew it would never happen. Again, this girl who lived on the other side of the world was there for me more than ever after that. It was in late February or so that I gave up on trying in school and eventually dropped out. That's when my life was about to get worse, until Katie came into it. That's how everything works; changing lives in small steps whether you expect to or not.