With Love, and Wafflenugget | 3. The Girl That Died
.The text wasn’t just from a friend — it was from a version of me I thought I’d buried
I got the text a few days later.
Somewhere between rearranging sofas, taming hallucinations, and endless, endless rituals to decontaminate myself and my new apartment, my phone pinged.
The words were bright and cheery.
She wrote, “I'm moving to town! Actually! I'm here! Get ready for alllllll the fun!!!!!!!!!”
The exclamation points alone lit up my apartment.
They reminded me of Maura — how she spoke and moved through the world. Her irreverent hope and undying enthusiasm that you just couldn’t diminish, even with the darkest of moods or manifestations of self. This new text and its words held everything I used to be, everything Maura had been, and everything — if I dared to recover and heal — I wanted to become again.
I read the words over and over and analyzed the exclamation points again and again.
Nivia. Nivi. She was someone I went to Middlebury with. Someone who knew me before I lost my memory and mind. She knew the girl who walked across campus with a smile on her face saying hello to absolutely everyone, the one who table hopped at lunch from social group to social group, laughed with her full body, head and hair thrown back, not giving a single damn. The girl who jumped off cliffs on skis and into waterfalls before all the guys and had more invitations on a Saturday night to go party than she knew what to do with.
Yes, Nivi had been my friend at the very beginning of college — before the hypomanic breaks and rage episodes. Before the meds stole my body and sight. Before the suicidality took hold and the electroconvulsive therapy stole my memory and left me ravaged by OCD, hallucinations, and an illness hellbent on ending me once and for all.
I scanned her words over and over again, looking for some clue that she knew what had happened to me: how damaged and dark I had become, how isolated and small. I read them over and over, trying to figure out if she knew that the girl I had been had died. The girl had died.
But there wasn’t one. There wasn’t a single one.
I continued to puzzle over it.
Maybe that’s okay…? Maybe it’s okay that Nivi doesn’t know what happened to me… Maybe this is the chance I’ve been waiting for — my chance to have friends at that empty table in the corner like I’d promised my dad.
I opened my Notes app and began drafting a response. After writing and editing seven different drafts without coming up with one that felt right, I grabbed the box of my journals in desperation.
How in God's name did I use to speak?!
How do I speak the language of ‘young Kate’?
If this is really going to work, if I really want to have a chance to be a friend — to be her friend — I have to speak that Kate. THAT Kate.
I flipped page after page and finally found my freshman-year ramblings.
Today, I begin – Again!
Today is a good day!!
Yes it is!! And yes it will be!
For even if I weep and even if I rage, it is okay.
It is OKAY!!
There is no wrong way to be a human, Kate!
There is absolutely no wrong way to be human at all!
I couldn’t help but burst out laughing as I read my words. What a ridiculous human being I had been. But just as quickly as I was laughing at my old self and how inordinately naive I had been, I realized that Nivi wasn’t speaking the way that she spoke. She was speaking the way that I used to speak and live. She was embodying young Kate, and the walking exclamation point I was that freshman year.
Pulling phrases directly from my neon pink scribbles, I found the words to respond.
“Oh my Golly goodness!!!! You're here!!!! I'm so, so, so, so excited!!!!!!!”
In true Nivi, energizer bunny form, she responded immediately.
“I ammmmm!!!! Want to hang out tomorrow?!!!!”
Before I even had a chance to answer, Nivi’s texts started coming in rapid fire. Fast and quick.
“I’m moving in today!
Do you still have your truck?!
Any way we could get me furniture tomorrow together?!
And you help me move in and decorate my place?! You’re the best decorator I know!!!! it could be so much funnnnn!!”
Slowly, pulling words from my journal pages, I responded in pure exclamation point glory. Little by little, the conversation lit me up.
I was going to get to help someone move!
I got to be a friend!
OMG, I had a friend who trusted me enough to ask me to help her move!!!
She wasn’t asking her dad. She was asking ME!!
HOW COOL IS THAT?!?!?!
We texted back for an hour or so, and after settling on meeting up at 9 am the next day, I realized I was no longer pulling hot pink scribbled phrases from my journal. I was no longer pausing to edit my texts even. No, I was writing and living the exclamation point I used to be, and as I collapsed into bed and drifted off into a deep sleep, I couldn’t help but smile.
Maybe that girl isn’t dead after all.
Yes. Maybe that Kate isn’t dead, after all, indeed.
As always, thank you for the honor of being seen. You are a true gift to me.
Hope to see many of you on Sunday.
With love and snuggles from my two girls,
Kindly,
Kate
Dr Waffle back in business!!
Life is always a mix of dark and light at the same time, but I have to believe that joy always, ultimately wins. Survival is joy.