When I was little I had this friend who I had at a couple of my birthday parties. He lived pretty close to my house, and sometimes I'd walk over to his house and play on his swing set with him. I'd known him since we were literal babies. I continued to know him until I moved away at 13. We rarely ever talked as we got older, and I wouldn't have said he was a friend when I was 13 just because we hadn't interacted in years. But we still saw each other at church and around town, although we didn't go to school together. We followed each other on Instagram and were friends on Facebook, but other than that, we almost never acknowledged the other's existence. Several years passed by after I moved and I had all but forgotten about him. I'm sure he had all but forgotten about me as well. Last year, in late September, he died. Drug overdose. He was 18, I had just turned 19 a month prior. I think about him a lot now. Why did he do it? He had just graduated highschool; he had his entire adult life ahead of him. He was not unhappy, from what I know. He just did what his friend convinced him to, one time and one time only, but that one time was all it took. I was not real friends with him. I didn't really know him. But I did. We stuffed birthday cake into our faces and laughed together. We sat next to each other on the swings. We probably stumbled around together on our chubby toddler legs and giggled at each other and stole baby toys from each other and made each other cry and built towers with blocks together. We were present in each other's lives for years. And now he's gone. Really gone. And I don't know how to feel. He was a complete stranger to me as we got older. But I wouldn't think this much about the death of a complete stranger, would I? Am I truly grieving for him? Or is it no more than a fact I have a hard time believing? I don't know what I feel. I don't know what to feel. How can you possibly know how to feel about the death of a complete stranger you knew so well?












