letters to people I grew up with #1

Taryn, you were weird.

In first grade you tied the ties on the back of your little girl summer dress to the narrow part of your desk chair and the janitor had to cut them off to free you as you started to have an anxiety attack.

Taryn, your father owned a candy store but it was in a different town, so it wasn’t as cool as it might’ve been. I’ve still never been there.

Taryn, in second grade after recess sometimes you thought there were bees in your bright orange hair. You would mash your hands at your head to get them to leave.

Taryn, I felt like an outsider, too. I felt that I had more sympathy for you than the others. You might not have noticed. It was better to be alone on the playground than to be with you.

Taryn, you had a temper. I remember you stomping around with your books in your arms and I’m not sure if that’s a memory of you or something I saw in a movie.

Taryn, in fourth grade we both took the “becoming first time big siblings,” class at the hospital. We were the oldest children there. You were shocked and upset when the teacher showed us a book about the baby’s journey and there was a picture of a baby in a mother’s stomach and the baby was naked.

Taryn, you were held back in kindergarten so you were a year older than the rest of us.

Taryn, in fifth grade when we all learned about our changing bodies in front of a projector screen and they asked who knew stuff about periods already you made us uncomfortable when you told us that you already had your period and that you and your parents, “talked about it a lot.”

Taryn, in sixth grade you transferred to the public middle school. Taryn, your twenty-five Lutheran school classmates worried about you out there in that big sea without us to protect you. We knew we hadn’t been very nice to you, but in our hearts we knew that you were better off with us.

Taryn, I heard you wrote, “hell hath no fury like Mrs. …” on a chalkboard after an argument with a teacher, and that you’d started carrying around books about witchcraft. Taryn, your former classmates wondered if your parents had made you this way. We wondered if it was all that talking about your period and if there were other things your parents did with you that ours didn’t.

Taryn, we we went to high school together but I have no memories of you there. I had to look up your obituary to make sure you even went to my school.

Taryn, I was going through a rough time when I was twenty-three, too. I had dropped out of college and I was very unhappy.

Taryn, my mom was working the night they brought you into the hospital. She didn’t treat you and she couldn’t tell me why you were there because of medical confidentiality.

Taryn, this is the first time I’ve thought of you since my mom told me that despite the best efforts of the people who treated you over the next few days, your suicide was successful.

Taryn, I don’t know why I’m crying as I write this or why I even remembered you these several years later.

Taryn, I went back to school and moved out-of-state and I’m much happier now.

Taryn, I know you don’t care. We weren’t ever friends.

Taryn, thank you for being the weirdest girl in our class so that I wasn’t.

Taryn, I know this is for me and not you.

Taryn, the people throughout my life that I felt like an outsider around didn’t think I was an outsider. I was the only one who thought that.

Taryn, I’m so sorry the same wasn’t true for you. Even though you were an outsider at our school, you were OUR outsider, and we felt a loss without you.

Taryn, my younger brother graduated high school today. I wonder if yours did, too.

Taryn, I hope your brother is doing well. My brother went to a different high school than any of us, so they don’t know each other. Maybe they would be friends if they did.

But probably not.

Taryn, I’ve stopped crying now and I’m going to go to bed.

Goodnight, Taryn. And goodbye.