"How does it feel to be drunk?"

[askygoneonfire]

 ..."How drunk?"
"Good and drunk"
- Holiday (1938)

"Yes, I very much need a drink. Will you buy me one Fred darling?"
"Sure"
"Only promise me one thing. Don't take me home until I'm drunk. Until I'm very drunk indeed"
- Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

Got a message tonight, from a girl I was friends with at school. It said "have you heard about Lucy? xx"

And I knew, immediately, that she had killed herself.

And she has, apparently.  I say apparently, I've managed to work out that it was somewhere between the 16th and 18th of December.  The funeral, Tumblr tells me, was on the 3rd of January. Nobody told me.  Told us.

I can't find an obituary. I can't find a mention of it on the facebook pages of mutual friends.  I have messaged her sister and her best friend. Begging them to tell me if I have misunderstood.  I sent those messages about 2 hours ago. As time goes by I realise that I haven't.

I knew she was having a hard time, she also has cyclothymia, but she'd had them before and she was posting on twitter again a bit at the beginning of December.  I thought just last week that I hadn't heard from her/seen her online for a while and maybe I should send a message. But I could only think of trite bollocks, so I didn't. Forgot about it.

We were close as close can be in school. She drifted away from me and the friend who messaged me tonight when we went to upper school.  She got into Wicca, we got into indie music.  But a couple years later we got in proper contact again. And then, after 4 years of uni we properly got back in touch and had a catch up.

Then I got a phone call from her about 6 months later; "can I come and visit you in Brighton?"
"of course!" I said, "when?"
"tomorrow?"
"......Yes! of course!"
And she came and told me she needed to run away. And we ate pancakes at Becky's house even though I don't like pancakes and we went out gay clubbing. And she drank Becky's absinthe and threw up in the sink.

A couple of years later, same phone call, same answer. And she came, and we drank and we saw and we did.  And it was good.

She was the only person I knew, for many years, who adored Spaced as much as I did. We used to quote it to each other all day at school the day after it was shown. It was always during Food Technology lessons that we got down to it.  Years later, I quoted Spaced to her again, and she got the reference immediately.

She wanted to be a medical illustrator.  She was turned down a little over a year ago.  I asked her not long ago - last month maybe? - if she was going to try again to get on the course and she said yes and that she felt she'd improved dramatically since then so it was for the best she had been turned down as it focused her on improving her drawing.

She turned into the adult I expected her to.  Free willed, spirited, vague and passionate in the same breath. A fashion butterfly, an artist in all the ways she told me she would be when we were kids, and we camped in her back garden. 

She is the reason I read Terry Pratchett.  At school on World Book Day we had to dress up as a character from a book. She dressed up as Magrat. She was the very embodiment of her.

Last time I properly spent time with her we went to Tate Modern. And then to the pub.  It was a good day.




I'm sure there's been a misunderstanding and she's just run away to Paris again.

Comments

[alien_zero]

Sounds like a very interesting person.

:(

[forthwritten]

Oh, I'm so sorry. She sounds like a wonderful, fascinating person.

And what a shitty way to find out.