Nicole

Nicole was the first love of my life.
She died a couple weeks back of a drug overdose.
I don't have any profound thoughts on it.

I hadn't been in touch with Nicole in over ten years other than once running into her and her then husband at the supermarket and a couple years back I had coffee with her after her father died.

I was not in touch with her during these last few years of heavy drug use. I don't know of her having such problems earlier in her life, other than drinking more than your average high school student when we were kids. She had a very high tolerance for the booze, which at that age made it seem like less of a problem though it should have alarmed us.

She was sweet, happy and very easy going. In hindsight, she was more than easy going; she was following the path of least resistance, rudderless, whether it led to harm or health. I broke up with her, more than once, as I felt like I was becoming an asshole controlling type since she never stood up to me.

At the funeral they played a photo-montage of her and I found myself getting angry. People were speaking and I felt myself getting angry. Passive suicide makes me furious. To live or not, that is a decision to make, not something to leave to chance. I can understand suicide but I can't understand this.

At the wake there was a video another friend of Nicole's had shot in high school. There she was; flirty, silly, happy but ready to do something, anything, ready for fun, abuse, danger, love, whatever. It was a state she was supposed to outgrow like the rest of us. We were supposed to sit for coffee again and reflect on old times. She was supposed to return my calls or accept my countless invitations to go here or there or just to chat on the phone. Her masters degree and her natural intelligence and how much we all loved her should've pulled her through. But they didn't and she is dead. Fuck.