Amy

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."
— Anaïs Nin (The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1)

Her name was Amy and looking back now, I realize I still can't quite put it all into words, what this woman was/is to me.

I was fresh out of my teenage angst years and bearing into my early- twenty angst years when we met.  I was living in Washington with my brother and his family, sent there by my parents in anticipation that I would get my act together.  I did not live up to these expectations.

I met Amy at school in a psychology class, which is somewhat ironic looking back.  She was seven years older than me. Very much her own person.  In dress, hairstyle, speech, she was just cooler than the rest of us.  We became friends, somehow plotted to move in together and then really did.

We lived together only, maybe, five months before my parents dragged me back home.  Our time together was at its worst destructive and at its best enlightening and stimulating.   Let me just say that if at the time I could have been Amy, I would have.  She was everything I wanted to be.  She had a painful past that added to her depth.  Meaning, she took that pain and she talked about it, wrote about it  and lived it out in a way that compelled me to do the same.  She was intelligent, funny, witty and above all deep.  It truly was the deep cry of my soul that was attracted to her.  I soaked up every word she said when we'd talk, which talk we did, late into the night in a manner which eventually came to be remembered as 'porch nights'.  I even read her diary once, when she was gone.  I don't know if she knows that. I truly wanted to know everything about her.  She fascinated me with her wisdom and clarity.  She was what anyone would call, 'an old soul'.  And I wanted to be that with her.

I went home and we fell out of touch but have since reunited.  In those years of absence, however, she still somehow lingered because what I saw in her gave me the guts to pursue my own depth, my own writing and my own despair.  Knowing her helped me to embrace what was already inside of me but which I had denied for years.

 Some experiences can not easily be placed into words.  They have evolved into feelings or even knowledge not easily expressed, the facts merging with myth in such a way that it is still all true.  And some people are equally indescribable, the words not enough or somehow right to capture the soul inside the body.  

Linking up at Write on Edge.