Erika

3rd grade to 2011

(I meant to write this up in January 2014. Something must have happened and I just never got to it again. But here is what I have in my mind now after the past 4 years of processing and grieving and rebuilding.)

Erika was my best friend from third grade. She knew things about me I told no one, not even Stacy my other best friend who I think I might have been a little in love with.

Erika was a rival for the affections of my first real crush.  We never really talked about it after he moved away. She saw what was actually happening in my house and was the first to point out it was abusive. I asked her if what my bro and my father were doing was abuse and she looked at me in shock like she couldn't believe I had to ask. We were in her upstairs bedroom doing our hair with those crimping curling irons. Then she said, Yes it definitely was.  It was the moment I started looking at my childhood from a completely different perspective.  I started no only to see things as what they were, and that they were not normal or healthy, but I also started to see what I needed to do to survive it.  I started to think about my future as escaping from it, and less about what other people wanted from me.  I think I took a turn in my path that I wouldn't have taken if she hadn't pointed this out to me.

She was also the first person I told when I found my father's porn stash. It was not a stash of naked women. I stole the Playgirl book and took it to her house. She ended up pasting some of the pics on her wall. We kinda laughed about it. I figured dad was a closet gay man and that explained so much of his relationship with my mother. It was totally asexual as far as I could tell. I don't think he ever really was attracted to her sexually. Maybe at one time because she did get pregnant when I was really young, around 4.  She lost the baby. She told me later because of endometriosis.  It could have also been because of alcoholism, or if she wasn't drinking yet, maybe it contributed.  Unexpressed grief really fucks a person up.

Erika and I spent a lot of time together in 7th and 8th grade over in her neighborhood. A lot of time around water. We waded in the Grasse river and found rock bass, baby pike, crawfish.  There was a part of a concrete damn, only about 10 feet tall, that had a break in it.  We used to jump off this big boulder in front of it and ride the current down the river.  Obviously we worse full clothes and shoes.  It was a lost of fun.  There was also a place called 'the foot bridge' near Center St that ran parallel to a railroad tracks.

I remember once year we met a couple of boys when I was with her and another girl. I decided to play a prank on them because on of them was in my homeroom and obviously didn't recognize me. I whispered to her to tell them I was deaf and mute. She pretended to use sign language and talk for me. They totally fell for it. The following day on Monday I told Tammy to tell this kid that I was joking and not mute. He was so mad at me. But he never forgot who I was. lol

I loved her family. Her mother used to sit with me at the kitchen table when she was home and tell me stories about her family, the farm she grew up on, and her early life before Erika was born. She was the best source of sex ed I had growing up. Better even then the school lessons from a former RN because she was so frank, and not afraid to talk about homosexuality, or other messy relationship stuff that teachers weren't supposed to talk about.

Erika and I talked about ghosts and magick a lot too. She told me about the ghosts that were in her house. The house was below a steep hill. I used to climb down a steep trail that led behind the library and parking lot and down into her back yard. Apparently the parking lot behind the corner building was once a graveyard because when they paved it over they missed two of the gravestones that were in the trees and right on the edge of the hill. Both dated around 1850 or so. She saw strange lights, heard rapid talking and whispering. We used a OUIJA board a couple of times. It actually scared us and we stopped.

I felt safe at her house and tried to hang out with her as much as I could. My mother started to discourage this in 8th grade. She didn't like the people Erika hung out with. I found out later that some of those kids were drug dealers. And at least once was a rapist. He messed with a friend of hers while she was drunk. Erika witnessed another incident with a different guy when she was at a party.  8th grade was really messed up for some of her friends and herself. That was when she dated that jerk that left bruises on her.  I told her to dump him. She did eventually.

I lost touch with her in 9th grade. I was in after school programs and building my resume for college cuz that was my ticket out of Massena. I wanted to be gone so bad and I knew that getting into a school out of state, or as far away as possible was my chance. I got accepted to Mt Holyoke but didn't get to go because Mom said she didn't have the money to send me. Found out later that was a lie, but can't do anything about that now. My suspicion was not only did she want to control me so she had to keep me close, but my bro didn't want my parents spending too much money on me. He had way more control over my life behind the scenes than I realized at the time until much later.

I found out later that she had cancer.  She got addicted to pain meds and in her late teens-early 20s, she developed a meth addiction.  She told me a lot of these things later. Including the abortion. She was really in a messed up place. But she managed to pull herself out of it. This would have been around the time that I was dating Dave, and changing my major to Journalism after my identity crises at SBU.

We started writing to each other in Post Office mail around this time too. I have kept all of the letters. There were times when I didn't write her thinking I would let the association die out and I feel guilty about that. I needed her letters as much as she needed mine. 

She last called me on the phone about 2 months or a little less before she died. We talked about the holidays. I was pregnant with Bri and she sent me a blanket in the mail with blue lace on the edges and covered in zoo animals. I still have it.  I don't think I'll give it up even when Bri grows out of it. Some of her last words were Take care of that little baby.

She overdosed in January 2011. I had Bri in February. She would have been born on Erika's birthday if my labor had progressed normally. I went into labor on the 14th and should have given birth on the 15th or 16th. Erika's birthday was the 16th.  Bri was also three weeks early, and blond with blue eyes.  Sometimes I wonder if she isn't hanging around Bri and checking in on her. Some of the similarities are uncanny.

A few months ago I pulled Laguz in one of my meditations and I was reminded of Erika and her connection to rivers and our time together as kids.  She appeared in the meditation as if to comfort me and say hi.  I cried because I had forgotten, and I should honor her as one of my ancestors, one of my spiritual family. We had the kind of relationship where if I was depressed or she was depressed we could feel each other even from 5 states away. She was in Indiana.

I re-read all of her letters and it reminded me about aspects of myself that I had forgotten. In one letter written around the time we both had just turned 30, she wanted us to promise to travel somewhere like New Orleans and do something nuts when we turned 40. I had just turned 41 when I was reading these letters again. A lot of crying followed.  I remembered my own strength, the optimism and hope I had had as a kid. She reminded me of my strength of will, my ability to just decide to do something and then just go ahead and do it. It's an aspect of myself I haven't explicitly acknowledge in a while, and even forgot I even had.  I have been so passive in my teaching career, in letting other people's wills and opinions push me around.  I settled for less than I was capable of and less than I deserved.

I wonder if that's part of what Loki is also trying to help me with. I wouldn't be surprised if the two were working parallel goals for me. And Erika definitely had that trickster sense of humor. God, she was funny.


Erika is one of those people who helped shape the trajectory of my life. She once told me that I was good for her to have around. She wanted to keep me away from the abusers and the drugs and by doing so kept herself clean. I had a horrible desire to destroy myself. A tremendous level of self-hatred and suicidal thoughts since I was maybe around 5th grade. She kept me from jumping off the cliff until I was older and developed enough to come up with a plan for escaping my abusers.

I guess I didn't quite function the same way for her.  But maybe it was beyond my abilities. I don't know.