A friend of mine passed away very unexpectedly yesterday. She was young. She was unique. She was incredible. She lost her battle with her inner demons.

She, just like me, would bottle up stuff until it overflowed, and when it did she would halt contact with everyone. There was no way of knowing if she was okay or not. I figured it was a way of keeping control, like how it is for me, and sometimes she let me sulk with her.

When she passed I realized how many lives she touched... Through sharing my tribute to her. In an awful twist of fate, before even knowing of her death, I had recently been thinking about how others would know if I had died. My parents aren't friends with my friends. I don't have a partner. Only I know how to log into my accounts. How would anyone know?

And as people began to message me about her, and I started to see just how many lives she's touched, it occurred to me that if I had never found out no one would have known of her passing. 

Every time something tragic happens to me, my friends refuse to acknowledge it. It's like, "If I don't see it, I don't have to say anything." It's always made me upset. I don't want an apology or sympathy, I want the acknowledgement, because I'm afraid that if I die, they won't acknowledge my death. I will leave this earth some day and there's a possibility that no one will know, or maybe even care. 

I don't want to die if it means my friends won't care. The fear of being abandoned has extended its talons deeper into me than I have ever thought. There's a possibility that I could pass away and my friends will pretend I did not exist, as if I was just a one-off character in a sitcom of their lives.

That terrifies me.