Understanding Amelia

You’re twenty and this is the second time you’ve left the States. The first time was when you were seventeen on a school sanctioned, two-week trip to Spain over spring break. You and your childhood best friend Amelia decided you had to go. The two of you convinced your parents that it was for educational purposes, that you had always wanted to learn more about the Christian artwork and architecture in Spain— at least that’s what the flier you ripped off the corkboard said. Amelia’s parents agreed as long as her dad and younger sister went too. Your own parents were apprehensive but you were starved for adventure and they could sense it. They saw the slight twitch of your dimples the first time you drove a car, your uncurbed cravings for attention from the worst kind of boy, the haze of an unruly fire behind your umber irises that made them uneasy. You were a flight risk, they knew, especially if they tried too hard to contain you. So they resigned to the idea that academic based adventure was better than whatever else you might unearth at home.

In the weeks leading up to the trip, you and Amelia fought. You had been in arguments before— big ones, ones that occasionally resulted in months without speaking— but this time the silent erosion of the foundation of your friendship revealed itself; the damage too great and too irreparable, the ground crumbling below both of you, the refuge you found in one another no longer safe. There were things happening for her behind closed doors, in hushed voices, in hollowed out spaces that Amelia wouldn’t, couldn’t confide in you about. You were upset with her for the distance you felt, but you didn’t tell her that. Instead, you picked a fight over something meaningless, forgettable. You avoided each other for a week, maybe two. Then Amelia was upset with you for not knowing what was going on with her, but she didn’t tell you that. She went along with the fight, with the following silence. But you wouldn’t have even understood if she told you. You didn’t have the capacity yet to understand. You would not respond in the way Amelia desperately needed someone to respond.

One Thursday, in those weeks leading up to the trip, in Spanish Lit, another friend, Liz, leaned over to you and whispered something. Amelia has red cuts and a bandage on her wrist. Your eyes widened, lips parted. You can’t remember if you said something or if you just sat, empty. Liz made a face, one of judgement, and tears burned the brims of your eyelids. You didn’t understand.

Amelia was happy. She sang songs about fireflies with you in the car. She fell to the floor laughing over burnt blueberry waffles. She danced in the rain by herself without music. She drew murals on her bedroom wall with Crayola crayons. She camped out on a trampoline with you to catch glimpses of a meteor shower. She laughed at her cat, Martin, who loved to look at you upside down. She showed you how to put on makeup and curl your hair and style your outfits, then took silly photographs with you in front of the lime green wall in her sister’s bedroom. She laughed when you and her and Mel woke up in a puddle on the ground of the tent during the eighth grade camping trip. She laughed when she shoved a cupcake in your face at your combined 16th birthday party and laughed again when you tried to throw a cupcake back at her, only to hit the boy you were dating that neither of you ever actually liked. She laughed at her mom who never really got over the divorce, she laughed at her sister who was her parents' favorite, she laughed at you, laughed with you, laughed at herself, at everything, at nothing. She seemed happy. You didn’t understand.

You became judgmental. Upset. Angry, even. Angry at Amelia for lying about being happy, for not trusting you enough to tell you if she wasn’t, for doing it in the first place— you couldn’t even say self-harm, it wasn’t something you were able to acknowledge yet. Angry at yourself for not recognizing what was going on with her, for not being someone she could talk to, at having to hear about it from Liz. But you’d only register it as anger for Amelia. You didn’t know how to identify that the anger was for yourself and misdirected toward her. You didn’t understand. How could she intentionally inflict physical pain on herself, on someone you loved, on your best friend? How could she? Your beautiful, kind, exceptional, brilliant, weird, funny, transcendent best friend.

You reacted. Poorly. Which is a severely gross understatement. On this Thursday, leading up to the trip, in Spanish Lit, Amelia had just gone out to get water when Liz leaned over to tell you her discovery. Fighting tears that weren’t yours to shed, you followed Amelia out of the classroom. She was standing at the drinking fountain. Unassuming and wearing a bright cerulean, long sleeve running shirt pulled down to the middle of her hands. You made your way toward her like a storm, empathy and compassion no longer existed to you. Your breath was hard, unbalanced and uneven, as Amelia looked up at you from the water, her face forming a confused almost smile. You think she might have started to say something, maybe to ask what was wrong, why had you followed her out of the classroom, if something had happened but you can’t recall her words. Then, stupidly, you grabbed her right wrist and pulled up her sleeve with force. All that was there was a doodle of a flower you had drawn on her forearm days prior. Your eyes darted to her left hand, her non-dominant hand. She yanked her arm away, her face contorted in terror— as if you were a monster out of a horror film.

You were a monster.

You won’t remember most of what followed this interaction. Only fragments of memories. Amelia’s face flushing red. Her running back into the classroom, away from you. Fragment. You, standing breathless in the hallway next to the drinking fountain. Fragment. Amelia skipping class in the afternoon. You, asking your calculus teacher if you could leave, so you could find her. You wanted to talk but you didn’t know what to say. Fragment. Finding Amelia in a courtyard near the chapel, on the vacant side of the school. Her eyes puffy, she had been crying. Fragment. Sitting next to her. You don’t remember if you muttered an apology or not. Saying you wished she trusted you enough to tell you. Fragment. You started crying. She started crying and told you it wasn’t something she wanted to talk about with you. That she couldn’t. Fragment. She told you she feels small next to you, you take up too much space and your light dims her own. She couldn’t talk about the darkness, not with you. Fragment. She told you it wasn’t your fault, not directly, but being your friend was a lot for her, sometimes too much. Fragment. You cried harder. Fragment. She cried harder. Fragment. What could you have said? You could not find the words. Fragment. You still cannot find the words.

You don’t remember how, but somehow, maybe miraculously, you and Amelia ended up in a hug, the tears lessening. A temporary mending. With scotch tape and cardboard and Elmer’s glue. It wouldn’t last, but you both clung to the simple possibility of everything— the ache, the conflicts, the things kept hidden— evaporating, as if by magic. Floating away into nothing. For just a while longer, you would hold onto one another and all of the laughter you’ve shared. Perhaps for the sake of the childhood friendship the two of you weren’t ready to let go of yet. Perhaps for the sake of the trip to Spain.

You didn’t, couldn’t understand Amelia’s pain. Not until you turned twenty, when you were on your second trip out of the States. You had been away almost a month, another trip under the guise of education and you were walking along the Seine in Paris. Unknowingly and for years it seemed, an insidious melancholy had been gradually building and started to burn the lining of your stomach, the base of your esophagus, the walls of your throat. It stabbed at the newly acquired folds of fat covering the bottom of your abdomen, the ridges of your lower back, behind your thighs. The onset of the vaguely unfamiliar, impalpable pain. You smiled at your friend, Maggie, who was walking beside you. You seemed happy. You thought you seemed happy. But you couldn’t stop your eyes from drifting toward the dark grey water of the river. It was January and cold and a cyclical thought was beginning to sink it’s talons into the faintly pink spirals of your brain, gripping your attention: Would I try to swim or would it maybe be alright, more than alright, if I just let myself drown?