Bye Bye Buffy
Sunnydale, the world without shrimp 1998
Dear Diary,
Buffy left town the summer of '98. She was gone for three months. I don't think I'd ever gone that long without seeing her, not even that summer she went away to camp. Mom is in pieces, but she's also mad. I'd never seen her like that before. She was erratic, running around calling everyone she knew for a couple of days. Then a week went by with no news. We knew Buffy had been upset, but mom thought she was depressed, and with the running away. The worst thing was watching mom break down.
I know that the day Buffy left, her and mom had this massive fight. But mom was completely shut down about it. She wouldn't talk about it at all, like she was blocking it from her mind. She cried just like Buffy had the last few months. It went just like Buffy's had too, at first it was like she'd never stop crying. But eventually, as the days passed by, she only cried occasionally. But then I'd find her in the kitchen in the middle of the night with a glass of wine and she wouldn't stop talking about how she'd let Buffy down.
She called once in all that time. I think that whatever sisterly bond we were forming, broke for a while after that summer. Because I had to step up, I had to be the one who was there for mom because she wasn't. And yeah, I was mad about that. Because as soon as she got back I went back to being a child. It was like Buffy stepped back into the limelight and I second best again. I needed babysitting again. I couldn't get my head around it, how mom could rely on my to pick her up and make her happy and then completely forget that the whole had happened. But my anger dissolved over time.
Me and Willow grew a lot closer that summer though. She came over to check on mom too, and I knew she had taken over some of the patrolling duties. She talked to me like a sister should and she let me keep the brownies when we made them together. I liked her and Oz together because she seemed like a happier Willow. She wasn't trailing Xander around too much and instead had her own boyfriend to keep her happy.
Willow told me that Buffy had to kill Angel. And later I found out a lot more about what happened. But at the time it just seemed so big. That Buffy had to do that, and she didn't just come running home. I didn't really understand why she left. If it was me, I would've run right back to mom and just spent every moment with her. But Buffy didn't know then that she was going to die. But now I think about how hard that decision was. That Buffy had to kill Angel, someone she had cried over for months, someone she loved so much. How was that fair?
Dawn Xx