True Friendship

Prologue: The calm after the storm

I had no idea how many problems a person can have with getting over past experiences. It’s been four years now and I’m still trying to deal with it. I thought I should be alright by now; it’s been so long, and the storm has passed a very long time ago.

The calm after the storm... That’s what I’m living in right now, except that it is not really calm.

Well, life is calm I suppose, but I am not. After all this time, the past is catching up with me, and I’m getting afraid that I can never be calm again.

Everyone knows what the calm *before* the storm is: it’s that moment when the normally tumultuous river of life quiets down and it gets really still… when it is still enough to pay attention at gnawing feelings of premonition and doom that one would usually ignore or overlook completely. It's when you are getting more sure every waking moment that the shit is going to hit the fan and that it is going to hit *hard*. I’ve had those feelings. I suppose it’s easy to say that I had premonitions when I look back. Yet it is true. I was the one that protested the hardest, I was the one with second thoughts.

Lyce claimed that it was because I have always been sickeningly careful, that I had always been a bit of a wimp concerning new chances and challenges... but that's typical for Lyce - recklessness in person, that girl. I think that it’s because at some level I knew something bad would happen. I had no idea *how* bad, of course, otherwise I would never have consented with the whole deal at all, but I knew *something*.
Sometimes I think Willen did too, but he never said anything about it. It’s just a gut feeling that I have, something I thought I could see flickering in his eyes once in a while. Not that it really mattered. By the time the storm hit, we were refusing to accept what was happening while the evidence was clearly there. We were in far too deep to back out anyhow. Maybe that is what is bothering me the most these days.

Writing this is some sort of last ditch effort; a way to prevent me from losing my mind. I don’t want to lose my mind, but I’m getting awfully close and everything else has failed already... I'm not much of a writer. Although I like to rant, I've never entrusted my thoughts to paper. It's going to be fucking hard for me. Somehow, writing makes it real. These words are true and this really happened. Today I am finally going to sit down and tell this story and I will admit what idiots we have been. I will explain to you how hard storms can hit you, even if you’re unconsciously bracing yourself for it, even when you’re expecting a hit. I will tell you about love and sacrifice and friendship.

Yes, let’s keep it at that.

I will tell you about true friendship.

As true as it gets.