I've been doing a bit of thinking about Hos. It started from when Brent drove me home today. He took a small detour so we could drive past my old house. I love that house, I love the memories it holds and I love what it represents to me. It was a time when, for the most part, my life was remarkably uncomplicated. At least compared to now and a couple years previous.

Hos lived about two minutes from my house and always had, as long as I can remember. We sought each other out often growing up and soon became friends. We had a lot in common and plenty not in commmon with each other. It was a good mix for a friendship. We talked about anything and everything, we argued the same way. Our arguments never lasted more than an hour and then we'd continue our conversation as though nothing had happened.

We introduced each other to our favorite books and them read them together. She'd borrow my Archie comic books and we'd both feel it was time well spent to just be in each other's company. We'd go for walks to butternut Creek before the construction had happened and we would ride our bike up and down Gore Rd. We'd go to PVR and spend what little money we had on candy, comic books and Slushies.

When we hit puberty, or rather when I did, our talks became more intimate. We'd discuss things that we knew we had never even said out loud before to another soul. We talked about our crushes and our relationship with our parents. For me it was getting harder, the hormones had set in and had already begun to make me irritable. Hos on the other hand was still on the other side of the fence and had not yet rebelled.

We went to high school together. We had always taken the same bus but it would be the first time we would go to the same school. For a couple more years we were inseperable. We saw each other at school but we spent our time together outside of school, as we always had. Hos slowly began to change.

She had hit puberty and in a year she would no longer be the same person, not by a long shot.

It was her looks that changed first. She finally outgrew me and she lost her glasses a year or two before. She got rid of her braces and she cut her hair off and plucked her eyebrows (after I had begged her for years to do.) She became a very pretty girl, elfish prettiness that I had never really noticed before.

Then she started looking for an identity. She needed attention, lots of it. She had always been like that but she had always sought it out in plesant ways. Now she resorted to telling everyone stories of parties she had gone to, many of which never really occured. 1 party could be 10 in Hos language. She had developed a bit of a figure and wanted to be noticed for that, first and formost. She wanted acceptance and approval for her sex appeal.

Now I think her boyfriend, Dave was a problem for her and I think it warped her a bit. I've always thought that. He was into drugs and he smoked and was a couple years older than she was but was in a grade lower because he had dropped out a few years ago. He was a master of feeding her lines which he had no doubt practised on other saps before her to get them into bed. That was his intention for Hos as well. She was still in her right mind at this time, grade 11.

He was her sexual awakening really. Those hands of his could do plenty, he knew exactly what to do with a woman's body. A young girl associates sex and love and to have this guy who pushed her buttons but didn't care about her... well I think it was the beginning of the end. He dumped her after a month and started seeing another girl almost immediately afterwards. He had been seeing this girl at the same time all along.

She later began implying she was easy and sexually charged. She started to fool around with various guys she didn't know, some she did and so forth. It was as though she didn't want to be dumped again, not for the reason of withholding sex. She wanted guys to believe they could have it. I still think that sometimes she regretted Dave during high school. Not because of her choice to be with him but her choice not to. She never had sex though. For all purposes, she was a sealed envelope.

Then the drinking. She never really had a drinking problem, in my eyes. I think that she was just feeling really badly about herself and feeling negative towards life in general and turned, not to alcohal but to alcohalism to solve her problem. Maybe if she had a labelled problem, someone would listen to her and help her through he issues. Then came the cutting. I claim responsibility for that one. I was talking to her about it. I knew someone who did and I did but I spoke to her of it only hypothetically. Then one day I came out with it. All the while she had being doing it to herself as well. She was getting better at making the blood come. I think she didn't want to come out with it until she was ready to show us something serious. In the end it was never serious, she went for quantity over quality so to speak. Never more than a cat scratch worth.

Then the day came when she took one too many shots of Vodka at the Crosman's house and made a suicide attempt. Well, that's what the official version is, I don't know what sort of suicidal person tries to dive for knives to slit their wrists with 5 people watching and waiting to stop them. Do I think she had a breakdown? Yeah, I believe that much.

Her next stop was the psych ward at the local hospital. She stayed there for part of the school year and returned a few times after that. This was around the time my mother died. I am sorry to say that I have never really forgiven her for the lack of compassion. She bawled her eyes out inconsolably and unabashedly during the funeral, causing people to focus on her rather than the mass. During the wake she talked about her own problems with the psych ward and she did the same at the funeral reception.

She was good at dismissing my feelings back then. My mother's death was nothing compared to her woes. I don't deny her own issues but I don't think it was too much to ask that she put it aside for me for just a little while. A mother's death is nothing easy to deal with. I can't imagine anything harder in my life than that.

Hos became selfish and self absorbed. She had no problem talking about cutting herself during lunchtime conversation. She only had to take English and art for the whole semester while she 'recovered.' She told people that they made her want to kill herself or harm herself or that they were making her depressed. She listened to angry, screaming music and bought herself several presents right before my birthday and didn't bother with me at all when it came. She fooled around with Rock Star's boyfriend and claimed he raped her. She said it happened plenty of times. He would ask her to come and drink with him and they would get frisky. I couldn't believe her audacity. She knew what he wanted when he offered the drinks, went anyway, fooled around with her friend's boyfriend while they were drunk and tried to hold him accountable for rape. Somehow she was not responsible for her actions but he was respnsible for both of them.

By the end of Grade 12 she had been dumped two more times. One was by the aforesaid Rock Star's boyfriend (before he had started seeing Rock Star.) They had gone out, Lenny and her for a couple weeks. He didn't care either way and she didn't care that he didn't care. He tried to get her to break up with him. He was an utter jerk to her so that she would dump him and feel good to be rid of such an ass. No go. She had to cheat on him for him to have a good excuse to dump her instead. I don't know what kind of regard you have to have for yoruself when you allow yourself to be put down so much. In public no less....

The second guy was a nice fella named Kevin. He though Hos was cute and they dated for away. Then she unloaded everything I have already mentioned onto him in one sitting. He dumped her shortly after. Hard lesson: your significant other is not your thearapist.

The one thing that was easy for her was school. She was allowed to leave class whenever, say whatever and attend 'group' where she could command the attention of social workers and the like. She relished it, this attention, despite its negative side effects. It was all easier than focusing on her real problems (her self esteem) and dealing with life head on. She lived in a way that catered to her. It always bothered me. I still cared about her and I knew that it wasn't healthy to get used to people walking on eggshells and bending over backwards for you. She insisted though and continued to be as negative as she could, with the occasional 'relapse' to keep everything the way she wanted it.

Her parents took on the blame for her condition, her mother especially. Her mother had a temper when it came to Hos, she wasn't always nurturing and I think Hos had always taken it hard (the other issue she needs to deal with) but other than that she loved her daughter. Hos had no problems blaming her parents for her messy feelings and told us all she lived in a hell hole. I practically lived over there as a kid and I saw the love between her family members. I couldn't believe hos would drag her own family into the mud like that.

It was around then that I started to distance myself. A true friend would give back some attention that I gave her, especially when I needed it so badly. I was hurting and it didn't phaze her. Her negativity was bad for me and so little by little I stopped returning her calls, stopped asking her how she was doing, stopped calling her to do things.

And now I'm going into my second year of college (she scorned college, she felt university was a higher calling for better people) and she has apparently failed her first year and cannot go back until '03.

I wonder about the paths she chose. She chose a lot of easy ways out. She never prepared herself for life after the easy street that was her high school career.

I think the one path that could have saved her was the avoidance of Dave. I wonder who she might have become otherwise. I wonder if we would still be friends. I miss her; the old her. The Hos I used to ride bikes with, read comics with and grew up with. I want to go to the old park with her and sit in our designated swings (we always chose the same ones) and have a talk like we used to. I want to see if we can't recapture our old friendship and maybe if I can, the old Hos. But her old swing was torn down and replaced with a babysized swing. We can never swing there together again. It's just as well though. We're two different people and no matter where we are or where we go, nothing is going to change that.

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