Dating : A Picture Not-So-Perfect Friendship

The Kodachrome image of a marigold blonde with peridot eyes sitting on my nightstand was taken around the time we met, years before the unblemished porcelain canvas of her face had tainted ruddy from chronic alcoholism. The photo depicts a child with a sunny disposition and was still naïve, oblivious to the long-term effects being the firstborn daughter of an addict with manic tendencies would have. Aged 4, she was also too young to anticipate what her legacy might be or fathom certain life milestones such as a first kiss with a boy or graduating cum laude from an Ivy League school. Even capturing a similar picture of her own daughter one day.

But those days would never manifest. Instead, Jen’s life would become a series of empty promises that never came to fruition, like “I swear I’ll never drink again”; an anthology of unfulfilled aspirations that accumulated like the empty bottles of cheap vodka she doggedly tried to hide in the trash.

Although many found Jen irresistible, unfortunately, she herself couldn’t resist the compulsory urge to get drunk or high. To comprehend why the hand of fate had grabbed her so soon, however, is like trying to pick up the shards of glass from those consumed fifths of Smirnoff Jen would leave behind. Just when I think I’ve swept away all of the broken remnants and can tolerate the acute pain of her being gone, I come across random slivers that still cut and cause a dull pain to radiate throughout my body.

Her untimely passing is ultimately a reminder that the double-helix of DNA can be a double-edged sword, acting as a nexus of incompatible traits. The gifts of genetics — intelligence and appearance — can be accompanied by the curse of inheritance — addiction and mental illness. For Jen, heredity was a predisposition for greatness as well as an invitation into madness.

Yet her propensity for keeping secrets was learned, a by-product of Pavlovian reinforcement in which choosing to remain silent equated to not having to acknowledge the existence of a problem. Thus, painful events, like when she was raped at 16, could be aborted from her cache of memories as if they’d never occurred.

And as an implied caveat of our friendship it was understood that being privy to this information meant I was sworn to confidentiality. Disclosure of such detail was just cause for the immediate termination of our sisterhood. Furthermore, Jen regarded such betrayal as a treasonous act. Jen viewed personal relationships as contractual. As hardened as this mentality may seem, it taught me that although family may share blood, this shared genetic pool doesn’t oblige its members to love or help you.

As a psych major, I learned professors and textbooks rhetorically regurgitate “nature” vs. “nurture” argument. But science has shown that the influence of heredity tends to prove more predicative of outcome than behavior modification or environmental exposure. Jen had an IQ of 151; to say she was mentally gifted would be an understatement. Having resided with her grandmother from a young age, she was spared living in an environment of constant entropy that was her mother’s life. Pamela never seemed to have outgrown the nomadic ways of her twenties. After graduating college, she ran away from the discipline that had made her a cum laude student of Amherst in pursuit of modeling, and in turn found the rock n’ roll lifestyle among groups of vagabond beauties who traveled under the wings of their idols, Roger Daltry and Keith Richards and Mick Jagger.

Sadly, Pamela never outgrew this laissez-faire mentality, and when Jen was 3, she was adopted by her maternal grandmother. Whether learned or inherited, Jen seemed to have acquired Pamela’s sense of arrested development, having lived with her grandmother until her death at 32. Although brilliant and charming, Jen could never hold a job for long. The responsibilities of adulthood — rent, cars, food, utilities —were unattainable goals. Fortunately, Jen’s grandmother outlived her and luckily Jen was never faced with the threat of actual homelessness.

As a young child, Jen was still savable. Yet even in the absence of her mother’s routine partying and revolving door of men — some who were just passing through for a night of debauchery or two; others who stuck around, sometimes even for months and attempted to play boyfriend and stepdad — Jen’s adult life would mirror that of Pamela’s. Unfortunately, what wasn’t salvageable was what can only be referred to as “psychic connection” mother and daughter had shared. Neither could be spared of their respective lives of inner torment — or their complicated affairs with pharmacopeia.

Nearly 17 years has passed since Jen’s passing. Occasionally, I still blame myself for not having tried harder to save her. While I’m acutely aware that it’s impossible to save another person from harming themselves, periodic bouts of emotion overwhelm logic and I find myself sifting through my repository of memories, trying to isolate an “Aha!” moment wherein I could’ve played the role of Jen’s savior. I’m still plagued by episodes of “What if?” , scenarios that play like reruns in which I might’ve exercised some heroic measure to keep her from drinking booze or snorting coke or ingesting whatever opiate-based pharmaceutical should could pilfer from a medicine cabinet or convince a doctor to write her a prescription for. Much of our history can be reduced to scenes from our underaged years sneaking booze into concerts in hairspray bottles and begging strangers to buy us liquor while standing outside of 7/11. These still-frame moments of guilt play in a feedback loop. A docudrama about being best friends with an addict based on a screenplay I wish I could re-write.

But to stop Jen from seeking out some form of addictive substance would’ve required an act of Force Majeure. The brain loves addictive substances that trigger the reward circuit in our basal ganglia and create a euphoria that adapts easily, thus making it all but impossible to feel bliss from anything else. Although Jen’s academic brilliance was undeniable, the prefrontal cortex where much of human intelligence is housed had been robbed by impulsivity. A compulsion to use had burglarized a mind where the potential to achieve so much had once resided, leaving behind a structure wired with white and grey matter that had lost its electricity.

Truth was, Jen believed she was destined to die young. At 15, she’d showed me a truncated lifeline along her palm. “See how short mine is? It means I’m going to die young.” Albeit I was convinced Jen possessed certain powers of intuition, I still found her prediction incredulous, regardless of how many times she’d mention it.

Looking back, perhaps Jen feared living more than dying. Maybe this is why she drowned her sense of consciousness in whatever liquor she could get her hands on. Perhaps a need to numb any awareness of her struggle was easier than to acknowledge the sobering fact that long-term sobriety was a fight she’d never win.

Working in law, I should know better than to dedicate my time to speculating as to another’s motives. It’s easy to get lost in the world of supposition just as it’s easy for some to lose their lives with a single sip of alcohol. Regardless of what drove Jen to pursue a life of alcoholism, hindsight is 20/20.

Truth is, I’m still blinded by having lost someone I loved so dearly without having an opportunity to say “goodbye.” In our mid-20’s, Jen had arbitrarily stopped talking to me. No warning, no precipitating reason why. But isolation is common among alcoholics and addicts. While many women in their 30’s nest because of motherhood, Jen’s biological clock was set to consume alcohol instead of a hormonal urge to reproduce.

Hence, here I am, decades later, still looking at Jen’s picture with a certain disbelief. Not as though a photo is predicative or a crystal ball; rather, it’s merely a memento. Photographers capture a moment in time. Sometimes we focus solely on what we want to see. Other times, we’re only shown what another wants us to see.

Fact is, Jen was a girl whose near-perfect bone structure guaranteed she’d never take a bad picture. She seemed to have bypassed the “awkward” transition stage of adolescence into teen-hood. I’d jokingly say that my Bestie was the living embodiment of a female Dorian Gray. Sometimes I even wondered whether Jen had made a Faustian pact because no matter how wasted she got her appearance was never disturbed. Ironically, it was as if the alcohol had acted as a sort of formaldehyde, forever preserving her good looks back in those days.

But as impermeable as her near-flawless façade appeared to be at the time, Jen’s hardcore lifestyle would weather her appearance, causing her bone china skin to crack at an accelerated pace. Being blessed with good looks had morphed into a curse of vanity. Towards the end of her life, being the subject of a photo was something Jen avoided, similar to AA meetings and overnight stays at the county jail.

Sometimes I wonder whether an affinity for the occult might have influenced Jen’s descent into darkness. In high school, she was intrigued by the writings of Anton LaVey. An infamous resident of San Francisco, LaVey, otherwise known as the “Black Pope,” established the Church of Satan during the 1960’s counterculture movement. The Satanic Church, a black Victorian located on California Street, was notorious in local history for hosting parties where alleged ritual practices had occurred.

Jen claimed to have known LaVey (details of this purported encounter remain unknown), who displayed a penchant for gorgeous blondes — Marilyn Monroe, Jane Mansfield — a category of rare beauties Jen definitely fit into. For those familiar with his writings, LaVey’s philosophies espoused materialism and individualism, concepts that are antithetical to Christianity. Perhaps Jen identified with the teachings of LaVeyan Satanism that are premised on egoism; particularly, its use of magic to channel emotional energy for specific purposes. Whether she engaged in greater magic (i.e. rituals) is unbeknownst to me; however, she was a master of lesser magic, frequently using manipulation for her benefit.

At 16, she was acutely aware of the power of suggestion. For example, during high school, while I wore a cheerleading uniform, Jen’s version of a uniform was comprised of a black spandex tank top that clung to her breasts like a spooning lover and a longish flowing skirt that similarly grabbed her hips.

I idolized Jen’s confidence, her ability to captivate an audience by virtue of just being present. To say she was “beautiful” seems too ordinary a compliment. Too generic. Hers was the type of beauty Aphrodite embodied, the kind that made women envious and men begged to be near. She possessed a certain aura, a mystique that was unquantifiable but unequivocally tangible whenever she entered a room. More often than not, her appearance alone assured she would be the center of attention wherever she went.

Her magnetic demeanor and Sharon Tate-esque looks notwithstanding, beneath high-rise cheekbones and underneath dangerous curves existed a state of constant chaos, a seeming juxtaposition of opposites — homeostasis and disorder — that had married and consequently given birth to Jen’s semi-functional dysfunction. Her symmetrical facial features masked an asymmetrical personality of a young woman who possessed a mature sexual prowess coupled with an immature emotional being.

Jen released an energy that attracted people into her stratosphere while repelling them from getting too close. I was the exception to this unspoken rule. Our dynamic was similar to a cation and ion forming an ionic bond, the overlap of our positive and negative qualities having created a molecule that was far more stable when united than the stability of its atoms when separate. Even the energy my mother expended during my high school years to keep us apart (“She’s a bad influence; I don’t want you around her”) would prove futile.

Perhaps it was mother’s intuition but my mom went from adoring Jen as a second daughter to prohibiting me from having contact with her. I can’t say my mother’s sixth sense was wrong, though. Even in our teens, Jen possessed a preternatural understanding of the darker elements of life. She had a propensity for the unsavory, for delving into the aspects of human behavior that while terrifying to watch are often intriguing to witness. Situations most people run from Jen seemed to run towards. She repeatedly exposed herself to hazardous conditions, rarely heeding warning signs and all but ignoring any admonishments after-the-fact.

While an affinity for danger was Jen’s elixir, a need for control would be her poison.

Life with Jen was a game of truth or dare: Always fearing what she might dare me to do, I always opted for truth, a choice that seemed to have less potential for embarrassment than the odds that I’d chicken out from whatever dare she could conjure. In contrast, Jen found dares to be exciting. Such situations allowed her to express her boldness, even heroism. It was also an opportunity to embarrass her competition. One might argue that the such challenges fed her junkie mentality, a disposition that had been awakened by the ninth grade.

As much as I tried to conceal my nativity, Jen could identify a person’s weaknesses with ease. In hindsight, she possessed the skills of a hunter. Like any true predator, she was hardwired with a heightened ability to sense prey.

Growing up in a wealthy area of San Francisco, Jen had befriended kids of famous musicians and tennis players and highly successful business people, giving her unfettered access to just about any substance she wanted. She would brazenly pilfer through friends’ medicine cabinets for benzos and Vicodin and codeine, often rejecting any notion of discretion. Dares were an adrenaline rush, and taking risks was a means of invigorating those dopamine molecules that were otherwise dormant.

Much of Jen’s history is still foreign to me. Despite being a leading character in my life from ages 4 to 27, the details of the prologue to these chapters were foggy, which was apropos given the city where we grew up. Like me, her father was MIA. Our mothers, however, couldn’t have been any different — mine was a conservative homebody, responsible and overprotective, the type who rarely left the house without wearing makeup; contrarily, hers was a free-spirited nomad with schizophrenic tendencies and a penchant for overconsumption, the type who rejected cosmetics, not on principle per se but because it was unnecessary.

Jen and I were a marriage of opposites so to speak, from the start.

From the day our friendship began, life with Jen was an undeniable adventure, a series of strange occurrences combined with happy instances of happenstance.

We met on a tepid October morning. Underneath a veil of fog flirted a cobalt sky, the Indian Summer sun trying to peek through a screen of almost translucent gray clouds. Casting her everchanging moods across its terrain, San Francisco’s weather can be mercurial, even erratic. The day seemed unremarkable, save for the smell of seasoned ground beef filling the school hallways, a scent that confirmed it was Taco Tuesday.

The briny air of the nearby Bay traveled across the arterial Lombard Street and cast an early morning chill over the Marina District. The most coveted neighborhood in San Francisco, its streets are known for hosting aristocratic Spanish-style houses. Tucked in-between Fort Mason to the east and Chrissie Field to the west, a number of these statuesque properties overlooking the San Francisco Bay had survived the famous 1906 earthquake, their redwood skeletons having withstood the ensuing fire that had engulfed much of the city.

Most of its residents appeared immune to the piercing symphony of horns honking and brakes screeching. Living in the quieter Outer Richmond District, I had yet to adjust to the frenzy of buses and foot traffic during the school week. Yet despite the constant bustle, an intrusive silence would periodically invade, a stillness that would catch residents off-guard amidst the raucousness of bars, bistros and boutiques of the neighborhood.

Monday mornings outside of Yerba Buena School greeted us students with pastel confetti and empty Dixie cups. As children, we were merely witnesses to the aftermath of the weekend’s debauchery, privy to the stench of stale beer that radiated from the corner of Fillmore and Greenwich Streets. As teenagers, though, Jen would secure fake IDs, a blonde for her, a redhead for me, for us to gain entry into trendy bars located a block away. Balboa Café, Pierce Street Annex, and Dartmouth Bar and Grill or, the “Bermuda Triangle” as locals called it, was a trifecta that captured lost souls, attracting patrons who wanted to lose themselves in drunken tomfoolery — consuming endless Long Island Iced Teas and “Blow Job” shots while DJs played MC Hammer and Tone-Loc and the anthemic “You Shook Me All Night Long” by AC/DC. The Triangle was the weekend party destination in the Bay Area where twentysomething guys would gladly spend money in pursuit of scantily clad college girls who’d more likely than not wake up either not remembering or wanting to forget the events of the night before.

Jen and I arrived at school about the same time every morning. She was escorted on foot by an older woman whose style reminded me of a model in a Richard Avedon photograph — dark sunglasses that were more Holly Golightly than Jackie O, a Hermes scarf tied around her neck in a bow as opposed to covering her silvery hair, and tailor-fit Burberry trench coat that advertised her leanish physique — a chicness that seemed more Parisian than San Franciscan.

Contrastingly, I’d tried to remain discrete whenever my mom dropped me off in our beat up (“I prefer well-loved,” she would say) Plymouth station wagon. My mother had an affinity for words; a walking thesaurus who’d frequently corrected my English. Semantical preferences, however, couldn’t change the fact its tattered whitish body had been infected with patches of rust from living so close to the Ocean. Like me, our American car was an invader among a passenger drop-off zone that consisted mostly of German-made cars the color of precious metals — -platinum, gold and silver — that were anything but foreign.

Jen wore an apple red sweater and denim jeans. Coupled with her pale skin, she looked Patriotic, as if classmates should be pledging allegiance to her American flag-hued appearance. Before we’d even formally met, I envied her Calvin Klein/Ralph Lauren-inspired style. My mother preferred I wear dresses back then, the type accessorized with ruffles and bows inspired by Scarlet O’Hara and made it awkward to sit. Years later, Jen would tell me I’d reminded her of a Madame Alexander doll her famous Civil Rights attorney grandfather had given to her as a gift. Unlike a Barbie that was meant to be played with, to Jen, I resembled the type of china doll that had sat high on her bookshelf, too delicate to disturb.

While my class and I were busy developing our cursive writing skills and learning how to add and subtract, outside, patches of steel and gunmetal had infiltrated the sky, creating a blanket of stormy clouds that suggested rain was approaching. In the context of Edgar Allen Poe, the foreboding sky was a forewarning; however, even had I’d been readily familiar with his writings back then, Yerba Buena School was located in the safest neighborhood in San Francisco. Despite the arsenal of artillery from the Civil War-era that still resided on the Presidio, once you cross the Presidio Gate, the Marina District has a gated community feel, a vibe far different from the urbanity of Bayview-Hunter’s Point on the opposite side of the city’s limits. Therefore, my familiarity with urban crime was limited to episodes of “The Streets of San Francisco” and headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle referring to the Zodiac killer that my detective cousin Dave was investigating with SFPD.

But in addition to gaining a best friend that day, the term “imminent threat” would also become part of my kindergarten-aged vocabulary.

The octogenarian man arrived sometime during post-lunch recess. The frenzied series of events made it difficult to recognize him as the neighbor who lived on the corner and waved to us. “Morning, Kids!” his wife would greet us, her voice seemingly stronger than her osteoarthritic appearance suggested. I recognized the curvature of her upper spine from afar; her deteriorating posture similar to my grandmother’s caused by Rheumatoid arthritis. The couple acted like de facto grandparents: offering us cookies after school and asking what we learned about in class.

I was too young, however, to appreciate the concept of object permanence. Although I’d hadn’t seen the wife in a while, it didn’t register that perhaps something bad had happened. Out of sight, out of mind.

Following lunch was afternoon recess. Fueled by milk and juice and whatever dessert of the day, some of us built makeshift forts out of cushions while others played foursquare and dodge ball. Reading my Nancy Drew mystery, I noticed the silhouette of a slender man approaching the schoolyard. His pace seemed normal, not hurried or exaggerated like you’d expect from someone yelling, “YOU KIDS ARE MAKING TOO MUCH NOISE!” and toting a weapon. The constant laughter echoing throughout the yard appeared to have triggered him, providing a source of ammunition for his anger. “I SAID YOU KIDS ARE MAKING TOO MUCH DAMN NOISE!” His tone was such of an angry parent’s, an authority figure admonishing bad behavior.

I suddenly recognized the lean wood stature of the Winchester rifle slung around his shoulder. It was similar to what I’d seen on tv and in Dirty Harry movies. A sense of panic propelled through me like a Trentoria train blowing across the Italian countryside. A reflexive scream was stuck in-between my throat and mouth. Similar to a rabbit, I was speechless among the now-piercing screams of my classmates who’d apparently taken notice as well. The man stood in front of the gate, watching as 30-plus kids ran around the yard, attempting to seek refuge in the open space. Blocking the only outside exit, he was strategically positioned in such a way that attempting to get back into the building required having to run across his path.

Although our school had partaken in fire and earthquake drills, there’d been no preparation for when a gunman raids the schoolyard and holds dozens of kids hostage.

“ALL OF YOU, GET OVER HERE!” he said, waving his rifle as a pointer. “Do as he says,” Mrs. Lee began to herd us into a circle, her tone as calm as when she taught about the use of nouns and verbs. I tip-toed towards the group but the clicking of my Mary Jane’s caught his attention: “You with the curls…hurry up.”

I froze.

Our bodies innately produce an abundance of adrenaline when humans face dangerous situations, the hormonal response consequently catalyzing a fight-or-flight reaction. My feet felt paralyzed, as if stuck in wet concrete; my heart pounded so hard I thought it would break free of my rib cage.

“HONEY, I NEED YOU TO MOVE WHERE THE OTHERS ARE.”

I focused on the barrel of the rifle he’d directed towards the ground. I’m going to die without being able to tell mom and Grammy I love them, I thought. Oblivious to the others, I watched for any sudden upwards movement. Or for his index finger to grip around the trigger.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Mrs. Lee wave me towards the group. Everyone stared, just as they’d done on the first day of school when we had to introduce ourselves to the class. I learned then that being the center of attention also meant being scrutinized by others.

Tears formed, stinging my eyes like ocean water when I swam. My chest tightened, resistant to the force of my breaths in and out. What were minutes felt stretched into an hour, my fear intensifying as I tried to anticipate what he might do. I began twirling my pony tail around my finger, which was my habit whenever my mom lectured me to clean my room or do my homework.

Jen began walking away from the group, towards me. Is she crazy? I wondered. In those seconds, my confusion became a distraction from fear. Standing in front of me, her back towards the gunman, she stretched the sleeve of her sweater over her hand and began wiping the tears that were dripping from my chin. Never saying a word, she proceeded to take my hand and we walked over to the group.

For an hour or so, we stood quietly under the watchful eye of the gunman. Every so often he’d mutter something unintelligible, occasionally checking behind him for random passer-byers walking along Greenwich Street or for the building entry door to open. During this time, a car or two had driven by but otherwise, there wasn’t much activity along the block during daytime.

“You OK? We’re gonna be OK, I promise.” She whispered confidently, as though she was practiced at public speaking. While our classmates refused to make eye contact and stared at the ground, Jen couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of the gunman, even though she was only as tall as his waist. I envied her perfect posture, a skill I still hadn’t acquired despite having been enrolled in Saturday etiquette classes at Tiffany & Co.

The approaching sirens caught us all off-guard; particularly the gunman, who turned around quickly, his back now to us for the first time since he’d taken us hostage. A series of SFPD officers arrived, lining up along the fence. One of them shouted a number of questions through a bullhorn: “Is everyone OK?” “Sir, did you hurt any of the children?” The man shook his head “no”, then stared at his feet.

“See, I told you we’d be OK.” Despite Jen’s smile, I felt the acid churning in my stomach. Years later, I’d experience this same sensation when Jen and I played with a Ouija board in her bedroom and witnessed the planchette fly into the air, its trajectory traversing more than a foot. “It’s OK,” she’d also said then, seemingly unfazed by this supernatural incident.

Just as time had slowed when the neighbor had first corralled us in the yard, time seemed to accelerate after the police had arrived and the man was arrested. As an officer carried the now-infamous rifle, the man shuffled his way towards the SFPD car. Turning to face us, he apologized, “I’m sorry. So so sorry.”

In the weeks that followed, the entire student body was subjected to interviews with guidance counselors and trauma psychologists. Details about the gunman’s motivations would emerge among teachers who attempted to remain discrete: he was recently widowed, his wife of nearly 50 years having died of a heart attack. But grief hadn’t been the only motivating factor behind the incident — the neighbor had a tumultuous history with alcohol. Although he’d reportedly abstained from drinking for 20 years, the death of his beloved had subsequently rekindled his love affair with booze.

The irony — I met my first best friend when she protected me from an alcoholic gunman, then lost her to alcoholism later on.

After her death, I would learn of those aspects of Jen’s life she fought to conceal from me. The anguish of those myriad times she’d attempted white knuckle sobriety, a cruelty otherwise known as cold turkey. Her secrets documented in a diary memorializing her final months, pages and pages of incoherent thoughts written by a woman who’d years ago had taken it upon herself to edit textbooks and send the corrected versions to publishers who more often than not adopted her changes, and had an insatiable thirst for reading, having read the works of Shakespeare and Dante and Milton when I had just graduated from Nancy Drew books onto Judy Blume.

The black leather-bound diary was her confessional, the place where she admitted her sins for all to read. Jen never sought absolution, though; rather, she’d chosen the written word as the in which to purge those decades of manic tendencies and express her drunken musings.

It was as if she instinctively knew the end was near — or alternatively, had consciously decided she wanted to near the end — and consequently allowed those darkest thoughts to surface. Her legacy is that of a young woman whose inner conflict would never find resolution — not even in death.

Sadly, she became a prisoner of those emotional and physical environments she had constructed. Like a caged bird, she couldn’t escape what had become her Hell. In searching for some semblance of homeostasis, Jen fell prey to the master predator — alcohol. Booze is a substance that doesn’t discriminate; it has no sense of discernment whether its victims are rich or poor, ugly or beautiful. And for those predisposed, alcoholism is similar to a virus such as Epstein-Barr and once infected, the condition remains dormant. Alcohol and drugs are opportunistic; once finding a suitable host, these substances refuse to let go.

For so long, I envied Jen’s free-spirited nature, how she lived without focusing on tomorrow or the next day but rather lived in the moment. I wished I’d been given the same unbridled freedom. She never had to worry about the constraints of a curfew hanging over her head like the Sword of Damocles. I resented how she got to see The Rolling Stones at Candlestick Park when my mom had refused to even consider the idea. And yet years later, Jen would confess that she’d been jealous of my having a doting, occasionally overbearing, mom. Jen craved stability. Parental love.

I can’t lie — I was angry at Jen for years for abandoning me. Both of us being children who were raised without our fathers, abandonment was our collective Achilles’ Heel, a bond that remained unspoken between us but bound us together.

I still can’t listen to U2’s “Gloria” and not envision us as 15-year-olds singing along with Bono and planning to travel to Red Rocks one day or smile when I stumble across the video for Greg Kihn’s “The Boys Won’t Leave the Girls Alone” and see us on film. Or dancing in a school auditorium in a sort of scene inspired by John Hughes’ “Pretty in Pink.” She gave me the courage to make-out with a bouncer so that we could meet Anthony Kiedis and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and to avoid engaging in activities such as playing with Ouija boards when the risk of provoking bad far outweighs the possibility of conjuring good.

During our final conversation, one of the few times Jen had found sobriety for longer than a few days, she referred to me as her “angel.” I don’t know that I had ever heard her utter this word before in the 20 years we’d been friends. As much as I feel honored that she held me in such high esteem, I can’t help but think that if I’d been a true angel, I would have saved her life. I would have successfully distracted her from booze and drugs for good and re-shifted her focus onto being alive and healthy so that she could see her sister become a grandmother and watch her nieces and grandniece grow-up.

Instead, I’m haunted by the idea that I failed my best friend. The poltergeist of so many “maybe” and “ifs” I’ve contemplated over the years is something I can’t banish.

Yet selfishly, the finality of Jen’s death has spared me the constant fear of waiting — even expecting — that terrifying phone call confirming my worst fear. Perhaps this seems morbid, to feel a sense of gratitude for having lost a person I adored most in the world. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t give to Jen alive and healthy today. But it’s impossible to make a bargain in exchange for making someone else change.

Jen was my protector — and I was someone for Jen to protect. Yet in the end, Jen would realize that she was the person I needed to be most protected from. It would take decades for me to understand that her departure from my life in our twenties represented perhaps her greatest act of valor. She had the foresight to see that the rabbit hole she had stumbled down was a dangerous path with only one way out — death.

During those moments when a memory resurrects feelings of grief, I imagine that Tuesday in October, the ordinariness of those moments before the elderly neighbor held us hostage, kids sharing comic books and comparing ideas about upcoming Halloween costumes — and the extraordinary moment when a gunman waved his rifle towards me and a Marigold blonde girl with peridot eyes rushed to my side to say, “It’s OK. I won’t leave you. Don’t be scared.”