blue tracery of veins
my body divided
a knife, a sword
a blade undecided
not chosen
in time
a moment frozen
in mind
a subliminal message
but you are not mine
all these fated meetings
not leading
to a lifetime of love
not lasting
in the role where I am
not starring
but rather feel as though
I'm starving
not your choice
not your plans
just your luck;
just your chance.
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imagine me against you girl against the world. fighting to be free of the chains that never restrained us, the bindings that never bound us. the unrealistic inventions of a tattered shattered mind. don't mind me, this is only the start of another lonely morning who's lost his heart. i twist the blinds to let the twilight shine through, there's more of me now but less and less of you. drowned in disguises, you wear masks of many layers, and protest mock denial for one who cannot be your savior. a plea for salvation is better left unsaid, i bang my heart and force the start of an action that's only in my head. this isn't about you girl, nor me, nor him; but my happiness starts where your loneliness ends. the beige of an era unborn consumes me at times like these when I don't care enough to please
myself. in this hell where he'll not dwell
i can still see you silent on that sandy beach. so near to my heart yet so far from reach.
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I saw my first ghost last night. Although my mother and I have been ghost hunting for about five years now and we've caught dozens of disembodied voices on our digital recorders and several semi-apparitions in photographs, and experienced numerous freaky sensations, neither of us have ever seen a ghost with our eyes. I've always said I never wanted to--and now I know why.
My mom is down from Jersey for the week visiting my grandparents. I drove up to Port St. Lucie from my apartment in Boynton Beach to spend the night with her here last night after work. We went to sleep around midnight in the queen-sized bed in the darkest guest bedroom to ever exist. I had taken Benadryl as per usual so I passed right out. I was laying on my back around 3:00am when something woke me. To my left, standing right next to my side of the bed, was a black shadow that I instinctively knew was a man. Thinking I was dreaming, I just closed my eyes and drifted back to sleep. Moments later I heard something move and when I opened my eyes again the figure was still there, only now he was leaning right over me, mere inches from my face and breathing the loudest, heaviest, raspiest breath I've ever heard, in and out, in and out. I could hear the sound his breathing made, but there was no hot breath on my face like there should have been. It frightened me so bad that I jumped, startled, and in that instant he disappeared.
"Mommy!" I whispered.
My mom woke up right away, half delirious. Since I was half delirious myself, I couldn't really explain what had just happened. I think I said something like, "Someone's over me." She quickly comforted me with half-awake logic and reassured me that I was just having a bad dream.
...But was I?
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My horoscope for this week has now become my New Year's resolution.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In the original Constitution of the United
States, adopted in 1787, each black slave living in America was counted
as three-fifths of a person. Seventy-eight years later, the Thirteenth
Amendment conferred the missing two-fifths on all who had up until then
been regarded as partial humans. I predict that a comparable milestone
will come for you in 2009, Taurus. Where in your life have you been
marginalized or perpetually unfinished? What fragmented role have you
been compelled to play? What situation has prevented you from being all
you can be? You will have an excellent chance of completing the circuit in
the coming months.
Source: Free Will Astrology
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Cara Lynn Lyons
6lbs. 8 oz. 19"
Danielle's sister gave birth to this beautiful, healthy baby girl at 2:17am this morning. How freaking precious is she? More pics to follow...
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Sometimes I think I should just create a whole different LiveJournal dedicated to moments and memories and messages from Danielle. Because she's been dead six months yet she still keeps popping up everywhere. Carol Lynn Pearson says that the more you acknowledge and record synchronicities in your life, the more frequently they'll appear.
Lately I've been writing a series of hubs on quote tattoos but kind of ran dry after the first three installments. So a few days ago I dredged up some old notebooks. I have been an obsessive, compulsive quote compiler since I was thirteen. I have three journals filled from front to back in miniscule handwriting with quotes and lyrics and poems from 1996-2000. One has angels on the cover, one has fairies, and one has butterflies. When I opened the butterfly book to the inside front cover I was unexpectedly bombarded with Danielle's handwriting. Unexpected because although we were friends for many years, I thought I'd found all proof of her existence in my life when she died. She had written things on those first pages like, "Tolerance will help you through anything" and "Butterflies symbolize flight & freedom, hence, the sky's the limit" and "When the road ends, the ocean begins" along with the date 12/24/96. Another set of pages in the middle of the book say her name on one side, surrounded by words like knife, lighters, sex and drugs, and my name on the other, surrounded by poetry, movement and making out. It was interesting to find, comforting and chilling at the same time.
Then I started going through the angel notebook, which I began in August 1996. I definitely did not expect to find her anywhere in there. I had a vague recollection of us sitting on my bed while she doodled in the butterfly notebook, but I already knew that the handwriting in the angel book was all mine. Then I started reading the quotes I had written one by one and came to the most important part:
Another year is gone, another chapter in our lives has passed. Now it's time for us to turn the page onto another chapter in the book we call our lives. Some of us will go our separate ways, but we'll always have memories to cherish forever. --D.B. (Danielle Babo)
That was immediately followed by a poem I had copied down, the one that begins with, "Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep..."
And immediately after that there was another quote of Danielle's: Even though we may physically depart, we always have our memories to hold at heart. Don't worry, things will be okay, just hold your breath and wait another day. Every day that passes brings us closer to when we'll finally meet again. Just keep the faith, my dear friend. --D.B.
Everything up until now has been a synchronicity, a dream, an omen, but if a message from a place I can't visit and can't even see was indeed intended the written word would absolutely be the right way to reach me.
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1. WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother's & father's middle names)
Blank Edward (my mother doesn't have a middle name, at least not on her birth certificate; my grandma has no good explanation for that. when pressed for a middle name, my mom would use Joyce, since that was her godmother's first name)
2. NASCAR NAME: (first name of your mother's dad, father's dad )
Stanley John
3. STAR WARS NAME: (the first 2 letters of your last name, first 4 letters of your first name)
Pojacl? Although if we use the last name on my birth certificate, it would be Majacl!
4.DETECTIVE NAME: (fav color, fav animal)
Blue Puppy
5. SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you live)
Marie Port St. Lucie
6. SUPERHERO NAME: (2nd fav color, fav alcoholic drink, add "THE" to the beginning)
The Green Baybreeze
7. FLY NAME: (first 2 letters of 1st name, last 2 letters of your last name)
Jala
8. GANGSTA NAME: (fav ice cream flavor, fav cookie):
Mint Chocolate Chip Chocolate Chip
9. ROCK STAR NAME: (current pet's name, current street name)
Max Meadowlark hahaha nice
10. PORN NAME: (1st pet, street you grew up on)
Jake Morgan all the way, baby. Believe it or not, I've actually used this combination as a pseudonym in the past.
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"This beer tastes like Quagmire."
--Danielle, on Miller High Life
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I really must have been black in another life because the projected election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States as I was watching MSNBC at 11:00pm tonight brought tears to my eyes (although I'm sure my affinity with African-Americans has little to do with it). I didn't even realize it was happening. One minute I was flipping between CNN, CSPAN, MSNBC and FOX, and watching the countdown until the West Coast polls closed at 8:00pm their time, and not ten seconds later there was a breaking news alert and there was Obama's name blazing across the screen!
Danielle was asking me earlier today why everyone, myself included, cared so much if he won, especially when she knows I typically care very little about politics, and if it was solely because he was black. Of course, it's an historic accomplishment--I heard one of the newscasters say that 232 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed, we have finally elected our first African-American president. But it's so much more than that. Not only is it a Democratic victory after eight obscene years of George Bush madness, but it's a symbol of hope.
I will admit that I don't know much about politics. All presidential candidates make promises, and maybe in the end nothing will change, but at least with Obama being elected there is the chance of change. Currently, the total electoral votes for Obama on CNN are 338, a number I cannot remember seeing in my lifetime, and I am so honored to be alive to see the tide of an entire country finally take a turn for the better.
"Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
--Martin Luther King's final speech, given the day before his assassination
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"Wanna feel rich? Count everything you have that money can't buy."
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I am ending this journal with the same words I started it with, January 21, 2002: I am moving to Florida on a whim. An ache. An impulse alone.
Just kidding! I'm not really ending this journal, I'm not sure I could ever do that, but we are moving to Florida. I am returning to the place that was the first precursor of my ultimate undoing, the calm before the twenty year storm. Like if I could go back to the time the road forked, maybe I could rewrite history.
Just kidding. Destiny doesn't need to be rewritten, it happened the way it happened, once and only once. I wouldn't change a thing and even if I wanted to I know you can't change one thing without changing everything. But I can control my future, I can choose to sacrifice a mediocre nine to five for the greater love of and commitment to my family, I can choose to keep my grandmother company as she starts her radiation treatment, even if all I can do is drive her to and from the hospital, read her a book and hold her hand. This isn't wanderlust but wanderlove.
We have enough money saved to last us for 2-3 months until we can find work, which hopefully won't be too difficult during this time of economic devastation. We have a binding, blinding love and a mutual desire to experience and succeed even if we fail.
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"Dear Lord, you've done took so many of my people
I'm just wondering why you haven't taken my life.
Like what the hell am I doing right.
--"My Life" Game ft. Lil Wayne
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| 2008-09-15 07:15 |
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| Public |
| wanting |
| dreams |
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I had a dream last night that I was pregnant, six weeks along. Early on I went for a sonogram and they found I was actually carrying twins, but the smaller twin had ceased to thrive, the larger baby had received all the nutrients. I was admitted to the hospital so they could do a reduction and remove the little baby, but surprisingly this didn't upset me too much, I was just grateful that I still had one on the way.
The dream went on forever, from six weeks to three months to five. I could feel and see my belly getting bigger, the waistband of my pants were too tight, and I was excited when Danielle and I had to go shopping for new clothes.
I woke up delirious at 3am with my hand on my stomach. Empty. It took a second for me to understand that there was no baby in there, and then I cried and cried (but not on the outside) because I don't know what the word is for missing something you've never had.
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Sometime last week I got a very thoughtful email from Adrienne asking how I was doing and when we were going to get together for Picture Day #2. (Adrienne has like five volumes of photo albums from middle and high school that are organized chronologically and I want like every single picture in there.) She mentioned that she recently realized that the old, sleeveless pink top she wears to bed had originally belonged to Danielle and had been passed onto Adrienne in high school during a random spontaneous moment in Danielle's bedroom. When the origin of the shirt suddenly dawned on her, she said it was haunting, but in a positive way.
When I wrote back I told her that I knew all about Danielle synchronicities, and that I'd been seeing butterflies everywhere. I don't think I've mentioned it in any of my memorial posts, but you know how everyone has a thing, like a symbol or a sign or an interest that defines them that they never grow tired of? Well butterflies were Danielle's thing (I just mistyped that sentence a second ago and wrote 'Danielles were butterfly's thing'). It was a childhood preoccupation of hers that never waned, along with the color purple. She had butterfly pillows and curtains, when we were picking out her bedroom wallpaper in high school she decided on clouds, she had the tattoo and the stickers and tiny image with wings that accompanied her signature. The poem on the back of her prayer card was about a butterfly and the flowers her family sent to the funeral home were adorned with fabric butterflies fluttering on little sticks. Cheryl broke one off and took it home with her before they closed her daughter's casket the next day.
Several days after the funeral I had trudged out the front door at my parent's house and came face to face with a butterfly resting on the railing of the porch. It didn't move when it saw me, just stayed and stayed and stayed. I immediately took it as a sign, a cosmic little hello coming to me from the other side of heaven. In the decade I've spent at my parent's home in rural South Jersey I have never seen a single butterfly, not even in eleventh grade when Danielle and I bought a butterfly and hummingbird feeder and hung it out my bedroom window. And now I was seeing them everywhere. In fact, just that morning I had been getting into my car to leave for work when a monarch butterfly danced past my face and landed on my Danielle's car (she normally is gone by the time I get up, but she was staying home from work that day so her car was still in the driveway next to mine.) It landed on her passenger side mirror, a foot away from me. I was wondering if all these appearances were a fluke, just a matter of being in the right place at the right time so I decided to stay. The butterfly sputtered around and around but refused to leave the mirror, and I told myself I would stay and watch it until it flew away. But it didn't go anywhere, not for five minutes, not for ten, and eventually I had to leave for work.
I told Adrienne about what I had experienced that morning, and how aware I was of all the synchronicities I'd been experiencing lately. And then I realized that she might not be familiar with the concept of synchronicity, and thought it would be a good idea to elaborate. And then I remembered where I first learned about the idea of synchronicity, or meaningful coincidence: in a book by Carol Lynn Pearson, called Consider the Butterfly. The synchronicity regarding the synchronicity hit me so hard I stopped typing and actually took a moment to soak it all in.
Driving home from work an hour later, I was idling at a red light when I looked up at the back window of the car in front of me and was greeted with a jeweled decal of a purple butterfly.
That night I retrieved my copy of Consider the Butterfly from the bookshelf and flipped randomly to a space in the middle of the book. The section I faced was titled Death and Beyond. The author speaks primarily about her daughter, Katy, who she lost tragically and unexpectedly due to an unnoticed brain tumor that had been growing silently and struck without warning, taking Katy away from her in one week's time. She was twenty-three. Within a few more flips I came to this passage:
I stepped out on my deck to look at the stars and consider the butterfly. The butterfly ring I had bought to symbolize who I am. The butterfly dance I had done in multicolored scarves and tights and leotard in a personal growth seminar. The picture of the woman with huge butterfly wings under the word "LIFE" that is framed on the wall of my bathroom. The light blue butterflies that were embroidered on the edges of the filmy white scarf that Emily and I bought to cover Katy's arms in the coffin so the IV punctures would not show. The stunningly beautiful butterfly that landed on the railing of my deck a couple of days after the funeral and stayed and stayed and stayed... The coincidence of the butterfly that landed on the railing of my deck a couple of days after Danielle's funeral, and the butterfly that landed on the railing of the author's deck a couple of days after her daughter's funeral pretty much punched me in the stomach. And then I read the final thought: Butterflies, I know, are believed to carry spiritual messages between the living and the dead, and the Greek word for butterfly is the same as the word for soul. The butterfly is the only creature that changes its DNA in the process of transformation; the one that flies from the chrysalis is not the same being as the one that entered.
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DREAM 07:07:08 Before I fell asleep last night the Primetime Crime documentary I was watching mentioned 1998 so when I settled into slumber I was catapulted back into that year. January 3rd, 1998, ten years ago, she had turned sixteen on New Year's Eve and we were celebrating at Jerry Byer's in Matawan.
It's time for the candle ceremony and I'm seeing it as clearly as if I was really back there in that moment. I'm sitting in the same spot on the dance floor where I had perched to take pictures of the other fifteen candle lighters -- Liz, Rachel, Jess, Sean, Brent -- and Danielle turns to me and says, "My sixteenth candle goes to my best friend in the whole wide world, Jaclyn," and she smiles at me just like she did back then, in that other moment ten years past that was so much like this beautiful one I'm living now with the exception that the first one was real and this one here, this glimpse I've been granted into the not so distant past, simply isn't.
I know it's not a trip down memory lane or a recollection that will warm me upon waking because after she finishes her speech about how even though I'm moving we will still be friends for always and nothing will ever change that, I get up to light my candle and give her a hug, and everyone claps, and in the three steps it takes me to reach her the fancy restaurant with it's purple helium balloons falls away and is replaced by the funeral home. Cheryl and Lynda are sitting to my right, dressed now in black and crying, and I'm next in the long line of mourners come to pay their last respects. So I continue the walk I started ten years ago and she is no longer smiling or laughing or looking at me and talking, she is still in the bottom of an endless coffin that swallowed too many beautiful, young girls before their time. I lean over the edge to say goodbye but my reach exceeds my grasp and I trip, I stumble over a massive pile of lamentation and my foot gets caught on regret after regret and then she is gone and then so am I.
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Amber's brother, Ben Selkow, is apparently a musician and he has a website. And on his website there is a blog where he talks about "Amber's Song". The blog entry includes a link to his MySpace music page. I guess around May 8th he finished the song in memory of and dedicated to his sister; it's the first song that plays when you go to his MySpace. In a situation like this songs of this type can run the risk of being corny, or tactless, or they miss their mark or mar their meaning. But this is actually so beautiful.
Amber's Song
...listen...
She was a star no one could hold, cut to the heart and out of control.
Right from the start she broke from the mold, she was the greatest story never told.
When she was gone, we stayed at home, watching her story unfolding...
Shooting stars - where do they go when they lose their glow?
Shooting stars – letting them go is as hard as holding
Who could've known they'd find her alone, under fallen stone.
All they saw were bones.
(When) the reporters were done, and the mourners were gone
We were alone as she was…
Shooting stars - where do they go when they lose control?
They fill their arms with something to cope with a world so broken
Shooting stars – letting them go is as hard as holding...on
Hmmm - It's as hard as holding
All of you mothers, all of you fathers, tell the kids you love them.
All of you sons and all of you daughters, love is all that matters…
She was the sky, lightning and thunder; no wonder the universe loved her,
And so did I, I loved her so much, I wonder if I said it enough,
Shooting stars - where do they go when they lose their glow?
Into the arms of comfort, alone in a world so broken.
And here we are, waiting at home with our arms still open
And now we know letting them go is as hard as holding.
Shooting stars they get so far, 'till the world starts calling
So what do you call a shooting star, when the star starts falling?
So what do you call a shooting star, when the star starts falling?
I only cried once for Amber, and it was after the memorial service that didn't make sense. I blocked it out and blocked it in but tonight it's impossible not to relate, not to mourn. We were complete strangers caught in some freakish time-space rift that caused us to travel the same path years apart. Every single step was identical except for the last. Same pain, same punishment...different price.
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This is the first picture I ever took of Danielle. It was sometime in the beginning of eighth grade at Sayreville Middle School, 1995. We weren't friends yet, and I don't remember taking it.
 But she was friends with Toni, my BFF since Kindergarten who was more like a sister to me. We grew up down the street from one another. 
Toni, Danielle, Dave TutroneThat spring Toni began bringing Danielle around Morgan, where we lived. We would hang out with Joey and Steve, two neighborhood boys who were about our age, playing basketball, or a very chaste version of Spin the Bottle, or crossing the drawbridge to the bay and climbing the rock jetties. One day, convinced that Steve and Toni were going to kiss, we left them alone at the dead end on Morgan Avenue, wandered back up the street and had our first conversation. I had never really noticed Danielle before. We had a cursory knowledge of each other but only because we had mutual friends and shared the same Talented and Gifted class. I followed closely behind, watching as she jumped through day old puddles in her sneakers and when it came time for Toni and Danielle to return to Toni's house for dinner, we stood on my front porch and I wondered if she would hug me, as I had seen her hug others, and she did. The following month, in June of 1996, we were all making our Confirmation at St. Bernadette's and getting ready to graduate from eighth grade. Toni's parents threw her a Confirmation party at the Club Bene, the dinner-theater they owned. 
Toni, Danielle, Julia
Toni, Danielle, Tracy, JessLater that day Toni, Adrienne, Julia, Janine, Danielle and I were sitting around on the hardwood dance floor after all the other party guests had gone, talking and gossiping while the DJ packed up his things, when Danielle came close to me and rested her head in my lap. She told me I was probably a good kisser, she could tell, because of the way I put my hand on the side of Joey's face or his shoulder when it was our turn to peck on the lips during Spin the Bottle. I didn't tell her I had never kissed anyone. After a while we relocated into the secluded women's lounge just off to the side of the banquet room, the one with all the couches and armchairs. Again her head was in my lap and I curled her hair around my fingers as I would for the dozens of months that were to come. This act became a comfort for both of us, a soothing gesture capable of calming us both. Twelve years later, almost to the day, she would lay in the bottom of a casket and I would touch her again and be reminded of Rapunzel in reverse, her hair turned to straw, and I would wonder where we went wrong. But for now we were fourteen, and Danielle was my new best friend.
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Me running towards her in the night |
We began spending every day together, and most of the nights. She was an honors student with a wild streak and I was happy to go along. She would slip cigarettes away from her grandmother when she was visiting, or her father on the rare occasions when he had Marlboros, and when she spent the night at my house we would sneak out my ground floor bedroom window and let the summertime darkness carry us where it wished. I lived in a small neighborhood just off the highway; four lower-middle class blocks with an old brick road (where supposedly a spy had been hung during the Revolutionary War) that led down to the marina, the train tracks and the bay. At the end of my street there was a dead end where new construction was going up, a massive house in the trees with a wrap-around porch. My neighborhood was safe. I knew every family in every single house so it was nothing to travel around that four block radius at night. We'd boost each other up onto the makeshift porch and sit with our legs dangling over the edge, smoking the cigarettes she'd swiped. The doors were often open, the house was just wood at that point, it was not yet a home so sometimes we'd look in the windows and imagine, and once we went inside. Other times, pulled in the opposite direction, we'd head for the highway, empty at this late hour and dance on the concrete median until a car rushed by and spooked us, and then we'd quickly return home. At fourteen, it was the most freedom either one of us had ever had. And the best. |
Kuber, me, Danielle, Toni, Phil |
A couple weeks later we graduated from eighth grade with our friends. It was bittersweet, I remember everybody being really emotional for no reason. Most of us were leaving the middle school and would be attending the public high school just down the hill, but others, a number of whom we weren't even close with, were going to Catholic high school. I remember the big rumor at that time was that Sayreville public schools weren't "safe", but no one really knew why. So after 8th grade graduation everyone was emotional and nostalgic. I was completely focused on the friends with whom I was having my picture taken, and to this day my mother scolds me because apparently I was so preoccupied that I didn't give my father a hug after the ceremony. |
At T.G.I.Friday's after 8th grade graduation
From left to right: Me, Adrienne, Danielle, Kuber, Tracy, Toni, Phil
This picture didn't scan too well, so I look demonic, but you get the ideaWhen we slept at Danielle's house, which was more often than not, we weren't allowed to climb out her second story bedroom window at night and sit on the garage roof but we did it anyway, talking in the dark, sunbathing in the light. We could laugh so hard, for so long, that it began to drive other people crazy. At night we would try to muffle it as best we could but no matter how quiet we thought we were, Danielle's little sister, Lynda, would still scream through the wall from the bedroom next door, "SHUT UP!!!" which would just make us laugh harder. Sometimes we would be laughing and Lynda's door would open and we'd hear her thudding across the hall to her parent's room, and then a minute later Cheryl would be standing sleepy-eyed in front of us, begging us to please keep it down, even though no one could hear us except Lynda, and then in the morning Lynda would come down to the kitchen grumpy and complain that we were giving her insomnia. She was eleven.  |
We did other things in those early days, explored Wicca, lit paper on fire in her trashcan, then freaked out when the flames burst up and almost caught the bedspread. We both had parents that were beyond compare, and they took us to New Hope where we bought Kurt Cobain paraphernalia and patches for our backpacks, the Route 18 and Englishtown Flea Markets where we found chairs to paint in her basement (on Tuesday I saw that Danielle still had one of them in her bedroom--the only reminder), Dorney Park and Wildwater Kingdom where we rode the rides together and got sunburned. At the Rt. 18 market we both shoplifted a postcard each.
And yet there was a childlike innocence about her that I don't remember anyone else having at that age. She continued to splash through puddles and run outside with me during the sunshowers that passed through (I have dozens of pictures of rainbows we saw together), and she liked to catch lightning bugs while we waited for my mother to pick us up from the mall. One time we were in the front yard at her house when we saw a stray kitten wandering around. We wanted it to come to us, we wanted to get closer, but we didn't know how. |
"Let's call it's name," Danielle suggested. "Do you know it's name?" "No, but we can just say 'Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhnnniiiiieeeee' ." "...What?" "Yeah, you know, like how every cute little animal has a name that ends in 'y' or 'ie'. 'Kitty', 'Teeny', 'Sweetie'. So if we just make a general noise that sounds like one of those, he won't know the difference." And then she crossed the yard making that horrible screeching sound, and I laughed for nine hundred days. 
Danielle and I on the couch in Jess's basement (Tracy in background)But summer was ending and ninth grade was approaching. I would be going to Sayreville War Memorial High School, but Danielle had decided before we became friends to attend the Catholic private school, St. John's. She had been excited about it at the time, but now it became a death sentence. We were convinced that we were never going to see each other, that we had just become friends and now we were going to lose everything. She wasn't moving and neither was I, we would live just as close to each other as we always had, but at fourteen, having a best friend completely out of reach in another school for thirty hours a week was unbearable. 
Danielle on Brent's skateboard, Gateway Shopping Centre |
We launched Operation SWMHS.
"Mom," Danielle said as we stood hesitantly in the kitchen doorway one August afternoon. "Can I go to Sayreville high school this year instead?"
"No."
We went upstairs and burst into tears. We found out later that her parents had, obviously, already paid tuition for the first year of St. John's and there was no way they were going to budge on this way. Cheryl said she didn't understand why the change of heart, that Danielle had been excited to enroll at St. John's, she had said she wanted to get away from the people in Sayreville.
"But that was before I met you!" Danielle wailed.
"Waaaaahhhhhh!" I cried.
"I'll do everything I can! I'll fight them tooth and nail! I'll be miserable every day until they agree to let me transfer!"
It was all very tragic. But when September rolled around I was in Sayreville and she was at St. John's. Contrary to our belief, separate school districts did not separate us as friends, we still hung out often. But we didn't give up. One night we sat in her bedroom and I helped her compose a letter to her parents that listed the reasons why she should be allowed to transfer, and at the end we included a quote by Metallica that said something like, "Dear Mother, Dear Father, you've clipped my wings before I learned to fly..." I look back now and laugh, but at the time we were totally serious.
I don't know what it was, or what conclusion Cheryl and Ken eventually came to, but one day Cheryl went to Danielle and said, "You can start at Sayreville after this first marking period is over." And true to her word, Danielle showed up in the halls of SWMHS, at my freshman locker, one morning that November. It was the greatest gift. |
Danielle and Brent |
I've failed to mention that Danielle had a boyfriend this whole time, Brent. They got together shortly after Danielle and I became friends. He was around, but not often. We got along at first, but I didn't have boyfriends then so it was usually just the three of us. Over time, something changed and we both became jealous of one another. He thought I was the third wheel. I thought he was. When Danielle came back to SWMHS we started sharing a locker because we didn't have any classes together, and we would meet there after classes when we could and accompany each other to next period. Brent would show up at the same time, and Danielle always told me she felt conflicted when we were both there, divided between paying attention to me and paying attention to him. This was all during the days when call waiting was just gaining popularity so not many people had it and the busy signal was a way of life. When Danielle and I weren't together, we were on the phone. Years later my dad would say, "I never understood how you and Danielle could spend all day together, then come home and talk on the phone all night. Didn't you get sick of each other?" But the truth was that we didn't, not ever. |
Sometimes I would call her, or she would call me, and the line would be busy. It was then that we discovered a neat little trick called "emergency break through". Basically, you could dial the operator and say that you needed to make an emergency break through to a particular phone number, she would put you on hold and interrupt the other line (BEEP BEEP, I have an emergency break through from Jaclyn, will you accept?) She would say yes, the operator would come back to me and say, "She's getting off the line," then we'd hang up and within moments Danielle would be calling. We later found out that it cost $3.95 each time one of us did this and were forbidden from doing so unless we planned on paying for it. But it was a useful tactic in times of necessary contact, and it was an unspoken agreement that no one ever said no, she would not accept, when the emergency break through request came buzzing in.
The emergency break would have been handiest in December of 1996. My Aunt Patti was over for dinner and I was sitting there eating when my parents casually mentioned to her that they were going to be going back to look at a piece of property in south Jersey that they had visited once before. They were thinking of buying it. This wasn't news to me altogether; my parents had been talking about moving for years, especially after my dad remodeled our home and put on a three-room addition in the back, and I had known they were looking at property. |
Me and Danielle - June 1997 |
June 1997 |
But up until now they had hated everything they've seen. This was the first inkling I had that things were getting serious. I freaked out silently, excused myself from the dinner table and tried frantically to call Danielle -- busy. Since we had already been banned from the glory of emergency break through at that point, I signed onto AOL and there she was: DDB123181. I sent her an IM and briefly relayed what I had heard about the new property.
Once again, it was instant fourteen-year old tragedy. Oh my God, no, you can't move! You're my best friend, I don't want to lose you. Why is this happeninggggg??? We signed offline so she could call and spent the next three hours crying on the phone and piping "Because You Loved Me" by Celine Dion and "Count on Me" from the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack on repeat through the telephone lines to express how we felt. I forget what happened, but days later the threat of me moving had dissipated. Either my parents hadn't made an offer on the property, or they weren't sure they could afford it, or they wanted to keep looking, but something eased our fears and life continued as usual. |
| For my fifteenth birthday in April of 1997, Danielle's family took us to see "Phantom of the Opera", my first broadway show. Danielle's father was a stagehand at The Met, and he could get tickets to any seats for any show on any day, a privilege we enjoyed more than a few times. We both got new outfits for the occasion, and that night her parents and Lynda drove us into the city. We had third row seats, and the show was amazing. I've never forgotten it, because it sparked a love for Broadway within me that remains to this day. It became a tradition; every year for my birthday we would see a different show. "Phantom of the Opera" was the first, and the best, but later we would see "Les Miserables" and "42nd Street". Back at her house that night we were giddy from our evening out and couldn't sleep. We had forgotten to take pictures of us all dressed up before leaving for the city, so we took pictures of each other in her room afterwards instead. |
Me after 'Phantom of the Opera' |
At her house - April 1997 |
On the day of her funeral I was looking through the album that contains the photos from that night and in the back of the book I found a couple of shots that had been shoved there. The images had been double exposed, and thus were not worthy of being displayed, but I had kept them anyway. There's one of me and Lynda in the car on the way to New York, but the rest are of Danielle and I, our two faces swirled into one frame, both of us. One overlapping the other. I carried one particular photo in my journal the whole day, and have continued to carry it ever since. On the back of the photo eleven years ago I had written Dan and Jac, when 2 become 1
There are more things about Danielle, the little things you can never completely capture. She had a giant red dog named Sunny, who was old as hell but still capable of knocking me to the ground and humping me if I got too close to him when he was in heat; she drove like a maniac and was constantly flipping the rearview mirror back and forth to deflect the headlights behind her; she loved butterflies, the color purple; she wanted "Wonderful Tonight" by Eric Clapton to be her wedding song; she had a passion for Saturday Night Live and campy horror flicks from the 1970s, and she may have been sick her whole life, but she was never sickly. |
I've been writing this entry for weeks, and I don't care that it's massive, that it takes up two city blocks. But I have just now realized that if I keep trying to tell the story of our friendship in such minute detail then the real story will never actually be told. So from here on out I'm going to remember the past in pictures, and the words will have to come later to catch up.
( here she is... )
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Ever since Danielle passed away I have been looking for my high school photo album and have been unable to find it. I found plenty of notebooks, journals and pictures from 8th grade, but nothing documenting any time later than that. I've been wanting to do a massive picture post, but there was no way that I could until I found that album. And I couldn't find it anywhere. I scoured the billions of boxes of belongings in my parent's basement, under my bed, in my scrapbook room. When that didn't yield any results, I desperately began looking in my sibling's closets, in kitchen cabinets. I was looking in places I knew it couldn't be, because I had exhausted the places where it could. It was driving me banana sandwich. Frustrated a few nights ago, I employed my mother to help me search her room, her hope chest, her walk-in closet. Nothing. Finally, late last night, my Danielle offered to help me search the boxes in the basement that contain our stuff from when we had our apartment in Staten Island. Neither of us thought it would be in there, but I assured Danielle I had checked everywhere else. We must have ripped open and resealed a dozen boxes, and we were down to the last two containers.
And then we found it.
The relief that washed over me was more like a tidal wave. "OH MY GOD I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU!" I cried, kissing both Danielle and the album.
"You don't understand," I said to her. "It's been driving me crazy. The only pictures I could find of Dan and I were from eighth grade, but we were best friends for years after that and there was no proof. I've been feeling like I can't fully begin to heal until I can fully reminisce." Then I started rambling. "You know, just because we hadn't spoken in the last three years doesn't change the fact that she was my best friend in a time when that was all that mattered--"
"You don't have to explain it to me," Danielle insisted. "Of course she was important to you. What's more important than a best friend when you're sixteen?"
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