We weren't the best of friends, we didn't talk for hours, we didn't share secrets... No we didn't text all the time, no we didn't laugh at each others jokes. But our Characters did. You were her friend, if you could even call them that. You were the one piece of kindness she saw in that barbaric world. You made sense to her. You also had a bad side, you scared her, she was always afraid of making you mad...but she regretted ever hurting you, she never wanted to see you hurt, she never wanted to make you sad, she would have done everything in her power to not fight you.
She liked you once, until she realized you liked another. She wanted to help you get with the one you liked, even if it meant ruining the relationship of another. She would have given anything to be closer to you, to have been able to tell you how you made her feel. But then the game was over, and the imagining ended.
Months have passed since I last saw you, years in the alternate reality since our characters last spoke. She was heart broken and betrayed, and she screamed for you to help. But help never came. I was too afraid to look strange, I was too afraid to look like I was trying to hard to be your friend...so I never added you on social networks. I never asked for your number, because we rarely talked. You never seemed to want to. You were close to my best friend, and through her I lived out the life of being best friends with you, and that we would talk all day and text... I thought maybe our characters could see each other again, that some thing could start up.
It was only a week ago that my Imagination thought they would meet again, it was only a week ago we all decided to restart the game. Only three days ago you called my friend and said you would join. I thought we could start over, that maybe this time I'd be able to be friends with you, real friends, texting friends, friends who talked, friends who hung out, friends who drank together, friends who laughed together. The thoughts kept rolling through my imagination, the thoughts of being a family again were so exciting...
I couldn't have Imagined this.
The call came, another in the family of friends, another who's character connected with mine, another whose friendship was closer with me in real life. He called, the look on my friends face went blank. She handed the phone to my other friend, his face fell to disbelief. You were gone. We were panicking. We were trying to find a way to figure out what happened. We only just spoke to you! I tried to find out when, who knew, how to prove it wrong. You couldn't be gone, never...and the fact that we had no idea how, why, the fact that no one would talk to us...
I couldn't have Imagined this.
In seconds she came, she overwhelmed me, took me over, I was in shock, but she was fully aware. She cried, she shook, she hugged the others there. Suddenly she wasn't a character any more, and she was all powerful, all consuming, all devastated. And in that moment I wasn't just mourning you...I was mourning him as well. I was hit by the loss of two, and i was flung into a brick wall. She wanted to scream, she wanted to go out and **** things, she wanted to **** herself and respawn and do it again, she wanted to fight, she wanted to find the body you both shared and bring you back to life. She wanted to trade herself for you, if not him at least you. And then she was gone, lost in my thoughts, lost in my imagination.
And now here I sit, in shock once again, I want to be alone, but I want someone with me in my loneliness...I want to cry, to scream, and yet here I am silently writing with only the sound of my fingers typing echoing from my room. I'm cold, my head hurts from all the chaos in my head.
Then it struck me. You weren't really dead. I could bring you back to life, I could honor you, your memory, your imagination.
I could keep you alive some how, by writing about him, for he was you and you were him. And in that thought my mind was calmed, my heart was lifted. And thats where you find me now, writing...
keeping you alive.
Today I found out one of my good friends died. We used to LARP together, are characters bonded in a way we couldn't. After I got the news, this is how I dealt with the loss.