This morning I suddenly thought about the small fragments of memories I have from my homeroom class in NZ, when I was around 11 years old. It’s sad and funny how childhood memories hit you sometimes, when you clearly know they’re there, still living in the past. Every time you think about it, something shifts, whether it’s your feelings towards it, or additional details that might have happened, but there is no way for you to be sure. And you don’t know why it suddenly arrives at your mind either, perhaps something in the multiple dreams I had prior to waking up triggered it. This time I thought of a significant occurring that I’m not sure why I haven’t thought about a lot.
Mrs. Matheson, our homeroom teacher, let us sit around a circle, all of us little girls on the blue-grey, clean and comforting carpet. I think we saw a video of this exercise being carried out or something, and she wanted us to try it too. I think the exercise was that we would go around in the circle and all had to say something that is our fear, or something that’s bothering us, or get something off our chest, something along those lines. I didn’t have serious problems back then, I was mostly a carefree and nervous child, always being the new kid and resorting to comedy or randomness to make people think I’m strange or funny. This was before things like my mother falling ill or the christchurch earthquake happening. so I said, I’m not very confident and I wish I had more of it, I lost confidence after moving around a lot. I said, I used to be so confident and brave, like when I entered a biking race despite having no idea how to ride one. (The teacher had to drag my bike and I across the grass. But I was happy and didn’t care. I had a mince pie, my favorite, in a brown paper bag before the race. I wasn’t nervous at all.) Everyone else said something around the same seriousness. Then it came to kate, who was an awkward-feeling tall girl with wispy blonde hair, almost transparent and a very pale and mole-like structured face. She doesn’t seem to have close friends, and is always excluded from things even though e don’t voice it. I remember I abandoned partnering up with her one time and went to talk to the cool girl emma who I’ve only befriended the night before in the boarding house, staying up past lights out and watching forbidden videos. She said I was funny. a
Anyway, kate was always a bit of a loner in the school and I felt bad for her sometimes. I did talk to her, I think. But what she said at that moment shocked us all. She said she had always wanted to kill herself, and had tried to do it. I can’t remember if she was crying. The strange silence that slammed down on us weighed a ton. Nobody knew what to say. Mrs Matheson probably offered some words of kindness. It was too much for our small minds to register. I haven’t even thought about the concept at all in my life at that point. I have never really said the words ‘commit suicide’ out loud before. They felt weird coming out of my mouth, some foreign concepts that would only make sense when I grow older. That’s how I felt when I told genevieve, my one best friend, about this. But she took it so casually, I felt strange. After kate’s turn (maybe the girls around her gave her a group hug, I don’t remember clearly but I would hope so) aisha had to speak. But instead she was crying, so red in the face, and shook her head like she wanted to say so many things but couldn’t say it out loud as it was too painful. This accentuated the depressed tension in the air and we all felt exactly how serious these situations were. I wonder what her pain was. She was a quiet girl who resembled an armadillo or ant eater. at least in my memory. She was nice and soft-spoken. I think this experience stuck with me cause it was one of the first emotional shocks that hit me like a flash. It was like it catapulted into the awareness of ‘grown-up’ feelings. Not everything is bright and sunny now. The identity of being a child is rapidly washing away, day by day. We started to develop a consciousness and individuality that comes with good and bad experiences. For some reason, its always the bad ones that stick with you. A trauma in your life is like a bruise. black and blue and purple and grey, swirling and twirling underneath your skin.
In that same class I remember sitting next to this girl, courtenay, once. Even at that age I felt her popularity in our year. She was stunning, smart, talented, athletic, funny, and kind to everyone. I remember her shining laugh, her naturally icy blonde hair swishing neatly in her ponytail. At the time, she treated me like a good friend even though I was a weird kid. She laughed at my jokes, and I felt special being acknowledged by such a perfect girl. It was not even jealousy, it was just awe, you could feel her refreshing vibe as she walks in the corridor. Even after we all got into the same high school, and she, of course, floated right into the popular group, she still smiled at me whenever we pass by.
Then I left because of my mum’s illness and the serious christchurch earthquake, and I heard the news of courtenay suddenly passing away from meningitis. It was… the strangest,most surreal feeling, especially since I was so distanced from nz. It was shock for a long time. I wasn’t even close to this girl, but her smiles and laughs etched a little deeper in my memory when I heard about it. I felt so sad, and I feel so sad every time I think about it. It was grief but… I didn’t know her well enough. Is it possible to grieve for someone I didn’t really know?
Anyway, it was huge news and spread across the area, articles came out about it, and people started spreading awareness on meningitis in honor of her death.
It is just so surreal imagining the bright life ahead of her, she’d be unstoppable by now. Her Facebook page still floods with people saying ‘happy birthday’ and ‘thinking of you’. I am glad she lived a good life where so many people had been touched by her presence, I was one of them. On the last post she posted - it was a photo of her lying in her hospital bed with her hand over her face - she commented ‘I don’t think I’ll make it tomorrow I can barely walk without fainting,’
The world is full of sudden tragedies. Nadia, my flatmate, said her neighbor died yesterday, and she didn’t know how to feel because she didn’t know her well. I didn’t know how to feel like this either. all the deaths I heard of I felt like it was surreal. I’d feel down, death is such a strange concept even though it happens so often. When my best friend’s grandma died, she called me all sobbing and I didn’t know what to say. There isn’t much to say because that’s just it! death took that person away and we’ll never see them again. You can only let the griever know that you’ll be there for them no matter what. sending love. they’re happy up there. blah blah blah… it’s all so helpless. there is nothing to combat it. This reminds me of the ghibli film Tales From Earthsea, where eternal life and the value of life is discussed. “Life without death is not life! Refuse death, and you refuse Life as well!” …even when I heard of celebrities dying from suicide etc.. I was very saddened by it… it is strange to wrap your head around the concept of death when you are alive.