There is a very troubled 15 year old girl out there.
She is the life of the party and soul of her softball team. When she was a kid, she wanted to be a baby-sitter her whole life; she loved kids that much. She’s whacky and a chatter box and will be anyone’s friend that lets her.
What’s troubling her, then? She has her family, she has her friends, and everyone loves her; she was even in the homecoming court. What makes her life hard, beyond the normal high school drama and all-too-common body image issues, is how she’s coping with the deaths around her.
The first set of deaths were truly horrifying. The gruesome murder of that family rocked the entire community, but she actually knew the victims. She would frequently walk down to their house to visit and play. It took her a week to recover enough to go back to school. She’s seeking counseling, still; a year later.
Much less immediate to her was the very recent death of a friend’s mother. Another gruesome murder, this time the woman was shot by her ex-husband. It’s actually a murder/suicide, but it happened on the other side of the country.
Didn’t go to school for a day.
Who knows, maybe she’ll skip school tomorrow. Make it two.
There is a considerable toll that death takes for the young, for those who have little experience with it and hadn’t ever really considered how short their own life could be.
Mortality is a hard thing to swallow.
Murder is even harder.
All of the people in this world that have been taken from me passed – naturally? I suppose you’d call it; most from old age, who went silently in their sleep, and a few from freak accidents. No one brutally murdered anyone that I knew.
So, maybe she can’t help it. Maybe there is no real coping mechanism for having someone rip a person out of your life, let alone four times over. It just scares me that she is hiding from the world like that. She’s focusing on herself; how she feels, who’s going to get murdered next, how that would affect her, is she next… and who could blame her?
Those are tough things for a 14-15 year old to be going through; but then, her friends are more deeply traumatized than her. They must be. One lost her whole family and had to spend time with their murderer, the other was finally going to see her mom again- then she was dead. What she is going through pales to what they must be going through, but she has no thought of them. If she did, she would be putting on a brave face and trying to help them get through their pain.
The reason why she is so affected by these things- her beautiful, kind heart and endless empathy- is exactly why she would be the perfect person to help them get through it. She understands. She loved them, too. She is horrified and scared and doesn’t know what to do. You don’t need an adult who isn’t going through all of this to explain to you how you’re feeling, and you don’t need to talk to a brick wall. You need to talk to the other people involved; you need to discuss what you’re all going through. You need to find closure and come to grips with the world around you, and you need your friends to see you through to the other side.
Her parents obviously don’t agree, as they continue to let her skip school and sulk. They would rather see her fall to pieces than have to be “the bad guy”.
