My friend, Cleo

Trigger Warning: this story contains sensitive content, including the loss of a friend, grieving, and issues of mental health.

She often thought about her tomorrow. She daydreamed about the climbs she would conquer and the happiness she would earn. Her spirit and mind were much younger than her actual years. I guess you could understand why many were envious of her without wanting to accept it. Everyone desires to be younger once we realize the time we have wasted. Funnily enough, when we are little, we just want time to pass through faster to leave behind our infantile perils.

She did not have many perils as a child. But as years went by, bills and student loans became a thing. Life away from home was a war in which she thrived to be victorious, and a dream of a successful career in Hollywood became her guiding torch. She did not waste any time wondering why people didn't like her. She was focused on the next step of the ladder. 

That was my friend, Cleo. When we became friends, it was like a Glinda-Elphaba friendship. We might have clashed at the beginning, but we learned to see the good in the other. We wanted to be like each other. Sometimes, we had no one else to talk to or confide in than each other. 

My friend Cleo was the one who told me I could do anything and that my art was not only worth reading but worth sharing with the world. What kind of friend fortifies you like a mother to her little girl, if not your older sister? What kind of friend believes in you blindly, if not your soul mate? 

I did not have time to find out the secret to our bond. Cleo had to go away. Our goodbye was enough for the real world but not for my heart. Ever since, I have written to Cleo constantly in an attempt to reach her and ask her if she could help me recover my dreams and my art, dust them off, and set back out to realize them. For a while, I had an idea of where Cleo was, but I wasn't sure if she knew where I was and that I was looking for her.

I would pray for her and pray to her every night. I would text her about my day and the boy I now had a crush on. This helped. Somehow, I felt she was receiving my messages. Maybe she would respond in my dreams. Maybe she would respond for real. I knew it was impossible; I just wanted to avoid believing it, much like when you go see a play and suspend your disbelief. 

Maybe I wanted to rub off the guilt I felt sometimes. Many times, I wondered if I had been a better friend, maybe Cleo would still be here. To this day, I don't know what I could have done. Non-surprisingly, I neither know why Cleo had to go. I only know one other person who lost a friend like Cleo, and they never talk about how they managed to get by. Having lived through it, I can't blame them anymore. So I went on with my life, texting Cleo from time to time but hiding any sign that might give me away as a wimpy, depressed, guilty, lost chic.

Until one day, she came by. 

I asked permission to spend a few hours in the studio we used to rehearse in every night for so many nights as students. I turned on some music, lit a candle and everything like a crazy person, but I knew Cleo would understand. I began with a body and voice warm-up. I played around with some lines, but of course, I did not achieve anything performatively. Except I did remember for a second what a joy it was to be an Acting student. The feeling of freedom from the cruel world that did not understand us, that did not understand Theatre. What a lie we had lived in, a blissful, youthful, and consoling lie, and how necessary for today's world: to learn how to be free and happy by play-pretending, not hurting anyone. 

Suddenly, there she was, listening to me. 

Cleo was dressed in an ethereal pastel pink dress... like Glinda. Her velvety, brilliant black hair was down in a harmonious cascade... like Elphaba's. Her dark eyes saw through mine with solemnity and tenderness, like she was sorry things had turned out the way they were but trying to assure me that things would all be alright. Her face, cream-white as she was, was finally at peace: free of chemo, free of the angst of the ache in her body, and free from the immutable frustration of the life of a hungry artist. She was at last complete and eternal, my friend Cleo.

She sat there, my only audience member, the only one I needed. And she saw me cry. I cried so loudly that I scared myself. I cried because it had taken me so long to find Cleo! And she was finally back here with me. My best friend was with me here, where we had been happy and where we had created together something worth sharing. Because art was worth making when Cleo was alive.

While my tears trembled onto the dirty studio floor, I read Cleo a note I had written her the night before after thinking about her for a long time. She just sat there and listened, not making any motions. And then, she smiled? 

The same way she appeared, she dissolved into the thin air of the studio. The quiet, which I just then noticed, engulfed all around me again. The music had stopped. Rehearsal is over, I thought. I grabbed all my props, phone, and papers with my lines. I blew out the candle and wiped off my tears. I switched off the lights in the studio before giving it a long glance. Then I stepped into the hall of that mystical basement of the Arts School and fastpaced out into the real world under the grilling sun of Texas. As I drove back to my mediocre apartment, it dawned on me that my last memory of Cleo in that ethereal pink dress was forever engraved on my mind. And I smiled.

Cleo often thought about her tomorrow. To this day, she is the only person I have ever known with such faith in her future. Since she left, all my new friends I have made are experts on seeing today and now. Nothing is wrong with this, except that I have forgotten to have faith in my tomorrow as if Cleo had taken such wisdom and light with her. 

However, maybe she just hid them for some time because she wanted me to go search for them. Perhaps she knew I would be paralyzed when she left, and she wanted to protect me from losing myself. Now that I have grown and made peace with her departure and peace with not knowing why she left, I may be ready to set sail and follow her voice onto my tomorrow. I don't know how long it will take me to thank Cleo for such love and for all her faith in me. Moving onward might be a good place to start. After all, the song does say: "Because I knew you, I have been changed for good."

Cleo, this is for you, girl.