Amanda-Faye Jimenez Instagram – I don’t have a map–paper, digital, celestial–that has a single road that doesn’t lead back to Jenny. Before I knew her, I didn’t know it was not only ok to be unique, but was preferable. No children’s book or song could reassure me of this like the sight of her at freshman orientation with her cropped, bleached hair and oversized red satin shirt. We were 14 and no one I knew looked like that, nor anyone in the group of girls whose rapt attention she held as she spoke, smiling warmly.
I wasn’t ready. I didn’t seek her friendship for a whole year. I don’t remember how it happened, but it was certainly based on mutual roasting. She was a brilliant artist, accomplished student, beautiful, magnetic, but she never took herself too seriously. As a friend, Jenny never held back from telling you exactly what she thought, but she was also incredibly nurturing.
I’m trying so desperately not to make this about me, but grief does that, you know? And the plain fact is that there is no me without her. I have over the years come to joyfully accept the knowledge that the inverse isn’t true, because there has to be people who are naturally one of a kind, no bullshit, to teach the rest of us how to at least try. She taught me.
What was supposed to happen was whatever put us on a path of mostly texting on special occasions, birthdays, a random thought or meme, was going to melt away. Because it’s not just that the roads lead back to her–she’s been in every mile marker, and a friendship like ours is a destination. We are maybe 45 years old and we are laughing on porches how we used to laugh on rooftops. We go on vacation together. I have inside jokes about her with her son, Paul. She says something bitingly hilariously true about me at my wedding. And it’s teen girl friendship, the purest, most potent, perfect thing in the world, all over again except we are grown enough to know not to turn away when things get hard. Ok, maybe it wasn’t going to be THAT easy, but it was going to happen for sure, I know.
Jennifer, my heart is completely broken that I won’t get to you again this time. I love you and you are more magical than I can write, but I’ll keep trying. | Posted on 08/Dec/2022 22:51:42
