Not Normal Grieving/Mal And Boo Short Stories

To Mom's Best Friend

Dear Kate, A.K.A Boo.

Okay, so I literally have no idea who you are.

I know you exist. My mom used your name as her password for her computer. Do you even know that she died 3 or 4 years ago?

My mom worshipped you. I read her online diary that goes from 2002-2011 and she would have entire entries dedicated to you, all written like one huge love poem to someone who loved her, just not in that sort of way.

She also talked about her French professor who she had an affair with, but that's an entire, different story. (No wonder she was fluent in French)

She wrote about how you would hold her in your arms as she cried, how you would meet up with her as a teenager to go spin around in the fields and lay on the ground laughing, or maybe taking a walk together, hand in hand. I can almost see you two twirling together in a polaroid picture, like some kind of weird nostalgia.

She had a title for herself, for you, calling herself "Your, me." Like she was giving her entire personality and self to you, which she probably tried to do a couple of times because she didn't want herself anyways.

She hated herself so much that she developed an eating disorder, saying: "If I'm skinny, will you love me?" Whether that was to you or her abusive family, it's unclear. Probably both.

Her heart stopped.

She was rushed to the hospital, and you rushed as well, running to her bedside, probably crying, as you recounted how you had seen an ambulance rush across campus and thought,

Don't let it be Mal, don't it be Mal, don't let it be-

But it was her, and you didn't even know why.

My mom said that you and her drifted apart, that after a couple of years she didn't know who you were anymore. She wanted the old Kate back, but she never got it, and the years where she was writing in her online diary were the ones where she was married to my dad. And then a couple of months after she stopped writing in her diary, she had us move in with Barb, who in a year would become her wife.

And then after that, she didn't get a happy ending, as everything caught up to her.

She had a relapse and started drinking and smoking again. She didn't care if she died, and she used to say that she was going to smoke herself to death, because why the hell not. (Mind you, I heard this for the first time, maybe when I was in 2nd grade.)

I sort of understand why you wouldn't want to be around someone so unhealthy and obsessive.

Even though I've never met you, I'm planning to write a book about you and her.

I hope you like it.

-Martin