Self Help

Hands down: Dashboard and other confessionals

To save you from forming the incorrect assumption that my life completely revolved around boys in highschool, I would like to briefly interrupt this story to tell you about my dearest highschool friend, Isla.

Isla was born into a devout Christian family that lived in the middle of nowhere. From the time she could sing showtunes (approximate age: 4), everyone around her new she was different. She was precocious and unique and would tuck every item of clothing into something in her outfit. Take a moment to imagine this get-up of track pants tucked into socks, with a sweater tucked in to the pants. One of a kind. 

We met in the first week of ninth grade when one of my friends literally ran into her and mistook her for me. I was nearby and saw the whole hilarious spectacle unfold. We became fast friends. Having both been outsiders in our small schools, we were looking forward to making the most of our new surroundings, using highschool like a year-long social mixer. We were both boy crazy, loud and outgoing.

The first time I visited her house we made McCain frozen garlic fingers, watched 80s movies and stayed up all night talking and laughing in her basement, nestled underneath layers of blankets and sleeping bags on her family's futon. A beautiful friendship was born. 

We had the kind of friendship that can only grow out of the awkward, hormone fueled shit-show that we call adolescence. I felt like no one understood me like she did. We spent hours writing notes to each other, writing in our secret code (every even line until the bottom of the page, and then start from the top again writing on the odd ones). When we weren't together, we were taking mental notes of everything to relay to each other when we were together next. We knew every detail of each other's lives, every thought, every feeling.

Isla was the middle child in a family of three girls. For years their mother had been sick, no doctor able to give a conclusive diagnosis. Most doctors suspected that the most likely cause was Multiple Sclerosis, though it definitely was not a textbook case. Her mother's illness was unpredictable, and because no one could confidently diagnose, she was treatment plan after treatment plan. She would disappear into her bedroom for weeks at a time, her family creeping quietly around the house like mice. Then, on a new medication, or unexplainable up-swing, she would be feeling better, laughing and dancing around the house with us, taking us out to shop. Her mom was amazing, a one time model and newscaster, she was full of personality, great advice and funny antics. But the dramatic changes in her health made it impossible for Isla to count on her. She could never be sure if her mom would be there as a shoulder to cry on, or locked in her dark room, not to be disturbed.

Isla put on a brave face, but we all knew it was a real struggle. Because her family lived on the farthest outskirts of our town, not only did her mom's bad health mean she needed quiet in the house, it also meant Isla was stranded in that quiet house unless someone was willing to come get her. Her father worked shifts in a car factory and her little sister was too young to be left alone, so Isla often had to miss out on the simple fun of being a teenager to care for her family instead. It was harder than any of us could have imagined.

Still, she discussed the situation at home, unless she was complaining about not being able to go out, the kind of gripes any teenager has with their parents.

I was one of the people that Isla was close to, and so she confided in me. I tried my best to be there for her, to support her, but usually I didn't know what to say, so I would distract her instead.

We were both highly sensitive, in the shameless way that you are when you are a teenager and then become very embarrassed about later. We felt like the weight of the world was carried on our shoulders, like nothing would ever be as dramatic or mean as much as it did that moment. We were fifteen.

The best thing about Isla was that she was so quirky, so one-of-a-kind that I felt like I could always be myself around her. No one was sillier, more dramatic, than Isla. She was whip-smart and fascinated by the most obscure things. Most of her reading material was way over my head, most of her favourite movies I'd never heard of. But she was more than happy to open that world to me.

I remember we loved the movie "Empire Records", and there was a scene in that movie where the group of friends holds a fake funeral for one of their friends, complete with a eulogy, while she lays there in silence. No one could be sure exactly why we felt this was a good idea, but one bad day, when I was sure whatever had happened was the end of the world, Isla decided to cheer me up by doing the same for me. I guess everyone loves to hear great things about themselves.

So I lay on the carpeted floor or her bedroom, my body slanted to accommodate the width of her bunk bed. She grabbed a hugely oversized fake flower off her shelf and folded my hands gently over it. The lights were dim, the room lit only by her rainbow Christmas lights along her bed. Definitely appropriate. Isla delivered my sullen eulogy until we were interuppted by her mother hollering from the kitchen, telling us our chicken fingers were ready. How dramatic.

For you to truly understand how inseperable we were, I'd like to illustrate with a short anecdote. After finishing ninth-grade math with less than stellar grades, Isla's mother forced her to take math in summer school. Being the loyal and often anxiously paranoid friend I am, I begged my mother to join her, not only in an act of solidarity, but because I was afraid the 60% I'd earned would cripple my success in the coming years. It's only now looking back that I realize how truly weird this was. 

So off we went to summer school, sacrificing two whole weeks of our hard earned summer to devote to re-learning the concepts we'd talked through the first time, when we'd been more preoccupied with the boys beside us than decimals and integers.

There was only one problem.

It didnt take long for our classmates to find out that we weren't attending the class because we'd failed, but actually out of our own almost-free will. We were about as popular as lepers in that classroom. Even our teacher seemed repulsed by the idea that teenagers would take summer school when they hadn't failed. At one point we were chatting happily after finishing our seat work before the rest of the class and after Isla let out a laugh just a tad too loud, the teacher asked the class to, "Put up your hand if you want these girls to shut up". Yes, that really happened. And for the record, they did put their hands up. All of them.

By twelfth grade we were seen as a package deal. We'd had our fair share of arguements and almost-fall-outs, but we always stuck by each other. She was the very best friend a teenage girl could ask for. The kind of person who is always on your side, even when you are wrong. Isla always made me feel that it was safe to be myself, and I'd like to think I did the same for her.

I wish I could tell you that she'll be my first kid's godmother, or that I stood beside her when she got married this fall. But the truth is, I haven't seen her in almost five years. She was accepted to study Theatre in Toronto, and I lost her in the sea of art types. We haven't been close since then. Still, I think of her often, and when I do, I smile at the wealth of memories I have of us, growing up and becoming the people we were meant to be. Together, and apart.