I don’t often talk about the period of time I worked at Red Robin because it wasn’t one of the best times in my life. I worked fifty-hour weeks sometimes, coming home smelling like a grease trap. Early on, it wasn’t bad, and the pay was decent, but as my personal life fell apart between 2005 and 2006, it made me bitter, angry, and depressed. I came home to an apartment originally intended to be for myself and my ex, but not even a week after moving in, we broke up. I slept on an air mattress in the living room. I played video games or watched cartoons with headphones on to drown out the sound coming from the bedroom. Any sane and logical person would have left, but my name was on the lease, and I was too much of a goddamn pussy to leave.

So much to no one’s surprise, I wasn’t a well-liked person. I broke down into uncontrollable fits of rage at the slightly rise in pressure. I had anxiety attacks. I even stormed off into the mall parking lot once. It was never my intention to be that sort of person, but rather than realize my own instability and quit, I wound up being pushed out the door, partly on my own faults, and partly on several others throwing me under the bus. Only a small number of people I worked with there saw enough in me to look past that. One of them I got the opportunity to marry, and several more remain social networking friends, for the lack of a better term. One of those people, whom I haven’t really talked to in a long time, passed away recently.

I don’t like to dwell on emotional sadness with people who pass away. It’s not a component of not being able to feel, or show compassion, but more that when tragic events like this occur, and the worst becomes reality, we naturally turn to the happy memories we have of them. Death is a celebration of life, the culmination of all one’s experiences, their interactions, and their impact on others. I’ve watched the Facebook feeds of four or five people this past week light up with pictures, stories, and tales of the things this person did with them that highlighted the mark she had on everyone around her. From goofy photos, to “before they were called” selfies, the smiles and laughs. These are what we choose to remember someone by.

When I was in that hole of my life back then, I was invited by her and some other friends of hers to come out to a local bar for karaoke night. I’m not an extrovert, or any sort of social creature. I don’t drink, and I certainly don’t sing outside of my car or shower. But by that point, I felt like I had nothing to lose. I went, and I had fun. It was a surreal experience, which was promptly wrecked by my ex after she discovered me having too much fun with other women even though we weren’t together. It was a brief foray into a world I couldn’t have imagined going into before. She showed me something I’d never thought possible in myself. I like to think that was the stepping stone that helped me embrace the world I then stepped into with the woman I began to date shortly after, and would eventually marry. I’m far from not being broken, but I’m much better off today than I was then.

To say that she affected other people’s lives the same way is nothing short of an understatement. Here I am, a second or third-degree-of-separation friend, and she still had more impact on me than three dozen other people I know. That’s the sort of personality she had. It was cheerful, bubbly even. I couldn’t be that. I short-circuit myself after thirty-minutes of high-degree social interaction. I can only imagine that the time leading up to now could only be properly illustrated in the most bright and colorful woven tapestry one has ever seen. One tragically cut short before it could be finished.

But the amazing part is that where hers ends, others have only begun to continue adding to it, with every image, story, or memory they have ever experienced with her. That is the real secret of life, that even after it ends, there are people out there continuing your story, weaving your tapestry along, showing the world that you meant something to them, and they meant something to you. That’s what experiences mean. I may not have been the best of friends with her, but her impact on my life at a time when I could have easily skipped that and went to hard liquor, contributed to helping me realize, if only by a little, how narrow I felt of the world. It would be a real tragedy not to include that experience in the tapestry that is her life.

You will be missed. By more than you may know.

Wed Dec 06 22:32:43 2006
[22:39] kittykatgirl19: i am stuck in zelda. very angry at the wii at the moment…grrrr…
[22:40] deltax20a: aww
[22:40] kittykatgirl19: i will live. i am just impaitent. i want to see the boss!!
[22:41] deltax20a: wonder if someone’s written an faq on teh intraweb for it
[22:41] kittykatgirl19: i refuse to use cheats!! i am painfully stubborn, i WILL get it…lol
[22:41] deltax20a: i don’t really call it cheating per se
[22:41] kittykatgirl19: just helping?
[22:42] deltax20a: i call it “after 293829478 times of doing it wrong, i’m impatient”
[22:42] kittykatgirl19: well yeah