i drank what?

I’ve been thinking about what to write for five days.

Five days where I’ve hugged a lot of necks that I haven’t hugged in far too long. Five days where I tried to fill my mind, my house, my car, my everything with the music she liked to dance to. Five days where I’ve cried more than I expected to in the first week of 2012. Five days where I’ve told every single friend or family member that I’ve talked to that I love them and appreciate them. Five days of thinking, of wishing, of mourning.

I want to talk about mourning and about grief. And I want to talk about Miss Esme Barrera and what her life meant to me, what her life meant to others and what her life can mean to anyone who ever hears her name.

Esme and I were friends. For a short period of time a couple of years ago we were very good friends. I would drive over to her house on Jefferson and I’d pick her up and we’d go cruisin’ or to a coffee shop or a bar or a show. We’d listen to music, we’d talk about work and school and her health, but mostly we’d talk about boys. Boys we had crushed on in the past, boys we had crushes on presently, boys we’d kissed, boys we’d wished we’d kissed, boys she dated (I’ve never really dated anyone, so I just listened during these moments), boys she had realtionships with.

And when we talked about those relationships ending, she would cry. And I would hug her in one of my signature hugs, but not too tight. Esme was fragile. I recall her crying out in pain once because I squeezed too tight. But that’s how I always felt: I loved her so much it hurt. 

Once, when I had to move out of a house I was living in, Esme exclaimed her sadness over the fact that she had just signed a new lease with her friend Spike (not that she didn’t want to live with you Spike! She loves you so much.), because it meant that we were *this close* to being able to be roommates.

I’m not sure how it happened, but we stopped hanging out one-on-one. I would never say that we grew apart, but rather that our worlds expanded so much that we somehow couldn’t find the space for each other. It was still a homecoming every time that we saw each other, starting with a big hug (not too tight!) and a mini dance party. But she had gotten involved in Girls Rock Camp Austin and had made new friends through that, and I had gotten involved with the Austinist and made new friends through that, and in betwixt and between, we stopped finding the time. Which is totally normal.

But saying something is normal doesn’t make it feel any better.

I mourn for these last couple of years when I could have been closer to Esme. I mourn for all of the times that I could have fought harder for that relationship and didn’t. I am grieving what could have been, which is difficult because what *has* been is so, so wonderful, for both of us. I feel like over the last couple of years that I have finally found my place, my pack, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. But I wish that Esme had been a bigger part of it. We still g-chatted on occasion, still sent texts (but very rarely). On one occasion, our girlfriends gathered a large pack to go see STEP UP 3-D in the theater. I found an email from her with an October 2011 date regarding what I thought she would like to see at the Austin Film Festival this year; she said she wanted to “dabble.” I had never responded. I’ll never forgive myself for that.

Which leads me to three days ago, when I found myself questioning whether or not I had the right to be in as much grief as I was.

This is what I want to talk about. I’ve heard several people say that they feel guilty for feeling as sad as they do; that they somehow don’t have the right to grieve the loss of Esme. It took me these last couple of days to come up with the right words to express just how wrong that is.

This is OUR loss. Everyone of us.

It’s a loss for her family, who knew how incredibly special Esme is/was.

It’s a loss for her close friends, who were just another branch of that family tree, one that Esme liked to climb out and swing around on.

It’s a loss for those of us who loved her, and got to tell her that, but didn’t dedicate the time to her that she deserved.

It’s a loss for those who never met her, because she touched every person she came in contact with, and they’ll only be able to know her through remembrances.

It’s a loss for our city, who has never seen a better human being tread its streets.

It’s a loss for those who live somewhere else and didn’t get to share this city, and everything she loved about it, with her.

It’s a loss for the children who will never get to hug her again in all the classrooms she would have entered.

It is a loss. A terrible, terrible loss for all of us.

And I will grieve for all of these things, including the feeling that I wasted the opportunity to have her as a bigger part of my life.

I know that in times like these, it’s hard to know the right way respond. The truth of the matter is, there is no right way. There is only what you feel, and sometimes people are afraid that expressing those feelings will lead to judgement from others. And sometimes it will. But who cares? I understand that grief is a very personal thing, and that a lot of individuals will want to be very protective of their grief: this is MY grief, and you can’t possibly understand it and you are not allowed to take part in it. It’s fine to feel that way, but it doesn’t invalidate that those who were not as close to Esme have feelings of their own. Feelings of sadness and loss and heartbreak and fear. I just want people to be okay with feeling all those things and not to doubt that they have the right to feel all of it, and deeply. While it may be more painful and more close for some, it exists for us all in many different forms.

Now, what are we going to do to make sure that Esme’s legacy of radness lives on? There are so many things that we can do. I personally am doing some letter writing to try to establish a fund for GRCA. My dream is that little girls can learn to rock in the name of Esme for as long as possible. Even if it is as little as a small donation to Esme’s memorial fund, or just offering a kind word to those who knew her, I think that a bit of kindness would honor and extend the impact that she had while she was here. We’ve already seen so many people spring to action for Esme, and I truly hope that wave continues. What we do with her memory can affect people for generations to come.

Regarding the picture above (a MySpace message. MySpace!), I spent Monday morning going through all of the old text messages, Gchats, facebook posts, emails and myspace posts that we had shared. This particular one is something that I will hold in my heart forever. In case you didn’t know, Esmers LOVED hot toddies, and I very clearly recall the occasion that followed this message. We went to Spiderhouse and sat in a booth (I think we were with her friend Jess) and we drank those toasty beverages and talked about boys and giggled and were merry. But what really hits me is that she wanted to drink that first hot toddy of her winter break with me, because she thought that I ruled. And she wanted to make sure that I knew that she thought it was special. I hope that she knew how much she ruled. I hope she knew how special she was. I hope she knew how special she made others feel.

But this is what I mean, we should be striving to let the people in our lives know how special they are to us and how much we think they rule. And we can do it now not just because it’s an awesome thing to do, but because it would honor Esme.

The last time that I saw Esme was completely by chance. I had gone to see a movie on Christmas Eve Eve, and that movie made me very sad. I decided that I wanted to drown the movie out of my mind, so I headed to my favorite bar, Liberty.

I never drink by myself. I can’t remember the last time I drank by myself purposefully, but for some reason, I just felt that I needed to at that moment.

I had been sitting at the bar proper for maybe 20 minutes, when who saddled up next to me but Miss Esme and her sister, Marlene. They were on their way to the airport to catch their flight to El Paso for Christmas. How lucky am I? I got to spend an entire hour with one of the most adorable people on the planet right before Christmas and I had her pretty much all to myself. I can’t even remember what we talked about, but she used the term “Precious Broments” at one point, and I couldn’t resist updating my facebook status with those words, and tagging her along side me. She played music on the jukebox, and Sweet Joe made her one of the tastiest hot toddies I can ever recall drinking, UNCLE BUCK and THE TOY were playing on the TVs.

It was, indeed, a Precious Broment.

While we sat there, she kept singing this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmxT8vfBrq0

Too much of everything and everyone is amped: the way that Esme lived her entire life. Some much of everything and always amped for all of it.

There is more to say, there will always be more to say, but I’ll just sign off with something that she’d often say when we parted.

See ya, babe.