As young girls, we were inseparable companions, teammates, and partners in crime. As grown women, we are strangers to one another, virtually non-existent in each other's eyes.

I mourn the loss of my friend Sandy.

Sandy and I were like two peas in a pod. We were both rambunctious tomboys, tearing up the softball field and competing to see who could be the dirtiest by the end of the game. We spent countless days and nights having sleepovers and play dates, prank calling our school friends, and waiting in her front yard for the decipherable jingle of the ice-cream truck, waiting curbside for our Fudge Bars and Drumsticks. It was an idyllic life for two young girls, and we were the best of friends.

Fast forward 15 years, and those nostalgic thoughts are nothing but distant memories. Sandy is no longer the jubilant girl with the sweet dimples, and life is not so innocent as it was then.

No one could have guessed that the young girl who grew into an intelligent and talented teenager would eventually veer off course. But, like so many impressionable teenage girls, Sandy fell for the wrong type of a guy, a guy who ripped her self-esteem to shreds and manipulated her every thought and belief. The visual effects alone that occurred in Sandy after she met this boy were apparent; drastic weight loss, bleached hair, pierced belly button, and over-tanning. She did this to look good in his eyes, and to keep his eyes from looking elsewhere. Not that it helped; he wandered to this girl and that girl anyway, knowing he could get away with it, because Sandy always took him back.

It's just a phase, we all thought. She'll see what a jerk he is eventually, and she'll leave him!

Oh, how we all hoped she would leave him. But she didn't

Years later, after we have both finished college and begun our careers, Sandy and I are complete strangers. Mutual acquaintances are surprised to hear that we no longer speak. In fact, we haven't spoken since high school. Out of devotion to her now-husband, Sandy doesn't correspond with any of her old friends. While that bad boyfriend turned into a worse husband, Sandy turned into a lonely housewife, waiting for her husband to finish his second jail sentence so that they might have some semblance of a normal life together. What a lonely existence it must be for Sandy.

I've never mourned for a deceased person the way I mourn for Sandy. Because when a person dies, those surviving them at least have memories of a good life to hold on to. The cycle of life has been completed, and thus we can celebrate both their life and death. But Sandy isn't living; she is only alive. She is merely going through the motions, feigning happiness, but suffering with misery at the hands of her controlling and dangerous husband.

I used to fear for Sandy, but now can only pity her. I pity her choices, and the path she chose to travel in her life. I pity that she can not have more respect for herself to get out of a bad situation before she is too late. I pity that, when she does physically pass away, I will already have mourned her for far too long.

Learn more about this author, Jamie LB.
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