If you take anything out of this, it should be to never lose contact. Never lose contact with the ones who loved you most, with the ones who cared about you most, and most importantly never lose contact with what is happening now because in the future when you think nothing's going right you can always look back on something that went great.

This is what my mom told me before she got sick. My mom and I were all each other had. Her parents died when she was sixteen and she had me when she was eighteen. She grew up with nothing and now I am about to do the same. My mom died a month ago and I am graduating from boarding school next semester. I’ve started to drift away from my friends but I have to keep reminding myself that I can’t lose contact..

“Don’t push them away. Don’t push them away” runs through my head all day long. But that and my two meetings a day with the school guidance counselor isn’t changing the way I feel. My mom was my rock, she got me through all the hard times because she had been through them herself. But this is a hard time she never warned me about or prepared me for. She turned to boys when her parents died, that’s how she had me. I have a boyfriend but he doesn’t seem to know what to say to me anymore. He doesn’t want to make me cry and I’m sick of crying in his arms. I haven’t seem him in about a week because I told him I needed space. But if I’m being honest I need him and my roommate the most. They have gotten me through everything but now they seem to be hanging out with each other more than with me.

High school was perfect. I had the best grades, popular friends, played three varsity sports. I was on top of everything and everyone. Until my mom died. That’s when everything changed. Kids stopped saying hi to me in the hallways, teachers and coaches stopped trying to push me. I just wanted everything to go back to normal but it’s not. I’m losing contact with everyone and especially myself but I don’t know how to stop that. I guess I should just be happy and make the best of everything, I mean it is senior year but my mind won’t let me. I go through little waves of happiness about five or six times a day, but every time that happiness stops happening my day is awful. I spend it crying and shaking because I’m scared of change. I’m scared of starting a new life without my mom, of doing things that would make her proud of me without her there to see it. I’m scared that if I change I’ll lose contact.

But I can’t lose contact, I can’t .