You are my sunshine, my only sunshine...
She was a ray of sunshine. Loved. To her friends, she was adorable and caring. Like the little sister you want to protect with all your heart and the girl you would trust with all of your secrets. To her parents, she was honest and trustworthy. She was a picture perfect daughter. She had good grades, decent friends, went to church, and never caused problems. To the boys at school, she was an easy target. She had never been in love, but just like every other silly girl her age, she longed for that someone who she could call her own. She opened up her heart too easily, and always saw the best in people. To me, she was life. With out her, it had no meaning. I had no meaning. She was the reason I would wake when the sun rose, I couldn't imagine days where I wouldn't see her because they did not exist. I longed to see the smiles that would light up her eyes and make crinkles form around the end of her mouth. Thoughts of her would drift into dreams of her as heavy sleep would over take me. There wasn't a single moment when that she wasn't on my mind. But to her, I was just her best friend. Blighted by the cursed title, I watched as my sunshine slowly slipped away.
–
The change at first was subtle. She started hanging around that Josh guy. None of us liked him. He was walking trouble. He was considered to have a reputation for getting involved in things he shouldn't. He was pulling Her down. In the beginning, she stopped texting us. Then she stopped spending time with us. It got to the point where she wouldn't even look us in the eye when we saw her in the hallways. She was slowly disappearing from our lives. And it was killing me.
She started wearing baggy clothes. It seemed to just hang off of her tiny frame. She was always covered up from head to toe. Hiding God Only Knows what underneath. She wore long-sleeved shirts on even the hottest summer days. I tried to intervene. We all did. We tried talking to her, but it was as if she were in a distant land. Far away from home.
Summer soon turned to fall, and the bags under her eyes were dark and gloomy, just like the weather. She was failing her classes even now with a new school year starting. How could she pass when she never showed up?Yes, she would be seen around the school parking lot, absently minding Josh and his friends, a wandering look in her eyes, but other than that, she was nowhere to be seen. She didn't smile anymore. And that was like stomping on my already shattered heart. I didn't see Cammie. Sure, physically, she was there (most of the time), but spiritually, she was withering away.
The snow had just barely covered the ground when she killed herself. Her parents found her body on the bathroom floor. She overdosed on Oxycontin. The autopsy report said that she had been malnourished, most likely anorexia. It also said that she had bruises. Bruises scattered across my best friends body. On the day of her funeral, we all cried. There was nothing else to do. Cammie was gone. In a cruel ironic sense, the universe had damned me to live the rest of my life in pain and suffering.
...So please don't take my sunshine away.