through the unimaginable torture of losing a child in a grotesque, brutal
way that no one would ever want to have experienced for themselves, let
alone have it senselessly inflicted on their daughter. They have to sit on
the sidelines and watch as their daughter becomes nationalized. She will
grow into an image, an example for college girls, and serve as a reality
check to remind everyone that evil does not select a rare few but anyone.
She became “Drunk Girl,” a tale that parents could tell their kids while
delivering a certain fear factor without the cost of personal grieving.
Those poor parents probably try to hold onto their personal image of
Hannah despite all the press spreading photos that previously were only
seen by visitors and friends passing through their living room. Perhaps
she loved riding her bike or talking loudly on the phone or doing her
homework alongside her dad as he did his own work. But now she is
“that girl” and they are “those poor parents.”
I tried to nap after talking to Nora, but laid restlessly still in my
bed. Please just let me sleep, I tried to tell my whirring train of thoughts.
Maybe it was the exhaustion that comes with being a college student
driving me to this whirlwind of sensitivity I had never experienced before.
But honestly, people don’t warn you about how much you will miss high
school and being surrounded by the people who know you once you step
onto your college campus. Everyone simply says, “College – the best four
years of your life, you will have so much fun.” But no one says, “Hey, it’s
going to seem like everyone else is having more fun or like you’ll never
make friends but you will.” Why does no one say that?
I was exhausted thinking about the four-year process it took
for me to feel like I had found extensions of myself in my high-school
friends, the people who deal with my quirky, weird mannerisms and my
obnoxiously loud laugh. The thought of going through it all again made
me feel hopeless, like looking at that point in the future through tunnel
vision. It would happen eventually; it always does. I wasn’t at a point of
despair. I just felt like I had lost my patience with walking in a sea of
strangers at this huge university full of tens of thousands of kids. People
you would meet here wouldn’t wave to you if met them the day before.
They would actually go out of their way to avoid eye contact as their sign
of recognition, which was the opposite of what my small high school did.
My hand could be constantly waving the entire five minutes it took to
move across campus to my next class.
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