Preface: I was going to write about this yesterday, but that was interrupted by the addition of another subtraction from my life.

Fifteen years.

And it was sugar gliders and M&M minis and laughter and hypothetical beanies and lasagna and yearbooks and first bank accounts and my brother’s death and Cabaret and feet on the dashboard and unreliability and a prom worse than I thought possible and Mexican food apologies and Black & Milds and getting kicked out of gated communities and pretending to like Middle Eastern food and running away and Bacardi 151 and sprained ankles and, “It’s not you. Don’t ever think it’s you. It would hurt me if you thought it was you,” and white gold powder and laughter and Mao’s Kitchen and a NYE kiss in the backyard of a house party and USC and green hats and karaoke and tortilla soup with chiles rellenos and birthday parties and iPhone envy and daily texts messages and more laughter and months of being ignored and months of pretending to be okay with being ignored and tears driving home and safaris of self and, “I had a fear that if I told people how I actually felt when they upset me that they would leave–and you did,” and reconciliation and farmers’ markets and “random goodness” and mommy issues and local band shows and Shakey’s with its C- vegetables and the coffee shop and gin and Uno and twitter and emails about roses and nunchucks and chips and salsa-induced hospital visits and cinematic adventures and Uncut and Unedited and ganache and too many screen names to count and name changes and Thanksgiving dinner snubs and Halloween invitations and late night moonlight pinky finger promises that turned out to be pie crust: easily made and easily broken  and pride and shame and humiliation and family closer than blood and secrets and all or nothing and, “If you had a penis, you would be me. We are the same person,” and silence, followed by more silence and quoting Grey’s Anatomy and iTunes playlists and awkward run-ins and temporary unspoken truces via feigned internet friendship that even lead to well wishes and cicatrices and, ultimately, a city divided, mutual friends to find seemingly insignificant reasons to no longer see, streets to no longer drive down, names to go unspoken, walls to be built.

Now all that’s left is the vacuum of sound that laughter leaves when it ends.

I don’t know that person anymore.