today i cried for taryn because she is gone. she is gone forever and it's something that i can;t accept and i don't think i ever will. the only other person who has died that was close to me was my grandmother. and even she was not close to me. she lived far away and i never saw her. and when people get to be her age you know their time is almost up. you don't know the time nor the hour but you know you have to prepare for it. but with taryn it was so different. it could have been any one of us in the car that night. it reminds me that i am not immortal. i thought i was. i keep thinking about what i would have liked to accomplish by the time i am 30. but what if i don't make it till then? what if this was my last week to live? everything i did and said would be what people remembered me by. the last time i saw her was on friday when i sat with her at lunch. she was talking about how she hated shoprite. so normal. so everyday. how could any of us have known that was the last day we would see her? how could she have known it was the last day she would live? how could her friends in the car have known they would be who she spent her last hours with? i keep wondering what her last words to her family were, what she was thinking seconds before the accident, if she knew she would not make it. it just doesn't register in my brain.

today it was very dark in school and it was okay to get up and leave the classroom if you felt you couldn't take it. in psychology it was very silent and still and miss micc was searching hard for the right things to say. she said something that really got to me. she said "even if you didn't know her, it breaks your heart." and it really does. my heart is nothing short of broken and i cannot imagine how her family and friends can even find the strength to breathe. when i went to her house last night and walked inside i thought, she will never walk in here again. when i saw the pictures of her i saw how human and vulnerable she was. when i lit a candle i hoped she could see it.

i found it very hard to concentrate today. i keep hearing her voice and seeing her face. they decorated her locker. they put pcitures and flowers and near her locker there was a very big poster that everyone can sign. i sgined it. at first i did not know what to write. i felt very corny. but then miss micc came up behind me and told me to write what i feel because that's always the most beautiful. and i did. and they were not just words on a page but i honestly meant them. and after that i cried.

i've never written a note to someone who will never be able to write back.

at the end of the day i went back to that poster with allison. they had posted the newspaper article about her there. how many times have you seen that and never thought twice? seeing her pictures is what bothers me a lot. she is so alive there, she is forever captured in time, happy and innocent. how could she have known that we would look at the same picture and cried over it?

i think of how normal she was and it makes me think of this one time at work. one of the people i work with is a volunteer for the ambulance. one day he said, after you see people die, you realize we're nothing more that delicate machines. he is very right. underneath the skin we are all the same and there's nothing shielding us from anything. she will never come home again. she will never come to school. she will never graduate and get married and do all the things you should do before you die. why should i get to do all of those things and she shouldn't? i keep planning what my life will be like in 20 years. i bet she did that too. but what if i don't make it till then? we aren't guaranteed anything, we just think we are.

and here i am, 16 years old, and i find out i don't know anything about death when i thought i knew it all. it such a short and final word. it ends everything and there is nothing after it. i have never been to a funeral. i am going to one wednesday. i do not know how i will react when i see her. someone who i talked to and saw in the halls now lying there unable to do anything. i just can't absorb it. the thought of a person who was alive and breathing only a few days ago never doing anything again is just foreign to me.

i really feel for her family. i feel for the holidays which are forever ruined and the constant reminder of their loss. there are so many things that remind you of someone. it's just so disturbing, looking into her room as she left it last, knowing her life was cut short. it is such a shock, i don't even know how her family finds that energy to breathe. why do people have to go through this?

today i realize just how much people mean to me, even if i'm not best friends with them. i realize the love i have for people. death has never been right in front of my face like this, and it makes me love all my friends and family even more. i know i don't tell people i love them a lot and maybe i should more often. if tonight was my last night i would want everyone to know that i love them and that i'm forever grateful for everyone who's ever helped me and for all my friends and family and for anyone who has ever done or said or thought of doing one nice thing for me, ever.

it isn't fair that this had to happen. and they say everything happens for a reason but i cannot see the reason in this. and i knock religion a lot but i believe in heaven and i believe she can see all of us now. i'm sure she never knew this many people were affected by her. she has changed the way i think about my life and i will never forget her, ever.