Subjects I Dont Usually Talk About

I got some bad news over the weekend. A girl that used to hang around in our ‘gang’ in college died of bowel cancer last week. I only found out on facebook having lost contact with her pretty much during my university years about 10 years ago. She was only 28 years old.

When I was in college we spend an inordinately large amount of time hanging around in the kind of common room area, where there was a couple of tables pretty much devoted to those students that came from my highschool. We played a lot of cards during free period, breaks and lunchtimes and I dodged my history teacher whose class I had more than likely skived that morning (she was gutted that I still managed a B in History A-level despite my attendance record).

There was a group of guys I hung out with, most of whom I am still best friends with today, other of which I have lost touch with over the years . We affiliated ourselves with a group of girls because of the mutual benefit of appearing less socially awkward by having friends of the opposite sex. One of my friends still goes out with one of those girls 10 years later.

One thing we would do was to meet up in town for our regular jaunts to either Visage or Beyond Beach Babylon or whatever other nightclub happened to be letting in underage drinkers. In those days I used to take £20 out with me and get thoroughly sloshed on Caffreys (it doesn’t taste like proper beer) and Southern Comfort (it doesn’t taste like proper spirits) in the Welly and Flares and still be able to pay for my club entry and a taxi ride home.

This particular girl was one of the group I hung about in. She was one of the (if not THE) friendliest and smiliest people I ever knew. The type that are actually 100% nice. You know them, there aren’t that many around.

She was the kind of person who would be extremely upset if she ever found out that she had offended someone, and would be completely incapable of ever bitching about anyone behind their back (there are very few women who fit in that bracket). She always made me smile whenever I spoke with her.

She was also a little more troubled than your average teenager (not that you would know if when you first met her). She had a form of manic depression which only really seemed to manifest itself in public at times when she had alcohol. Even a bit of alcohol. She would get upset and drunk really quickly. I forget how many times we must have carried her out of places, comforted her, bought her coke and told her it was vodka and coke, defended her from over-aggressive revellers or bouncers.

She wouldn’t remember what had happened the next day and would see alcohol as her only escape (causing her to drink more).

This problem led her on to incidents which I am not going to go into. She ever showed evidence of this to anyone during her everyday life. She was polite, pretty, fun to be around, well loved.

I noticed she had about 280 friends on facebook – I don’t think I know 280 people! It just goes to show the impact she had on the world. I scrolled back through her profile and saw that she was still posting humorous updated about losing her phone in the laundry, even when she was in hospital.

Her premature death shook me a little. Out of the 30 or 40 people I counted as my acquaintances and friends at college, she is the third to have died. One through a car accident and two through cancer. All of them people who I admired in some way. Added to that, my housemate Mark who helped bring Lucy and I together also passed away prematurely.

But I knew this girl a little better than the others and it all seems a little more unfair due to the sadness I know she had during her life.