One misstep and the world has changed.

My friend died in an unexpected accident this year. It wasn't really her fault.

I hadn't spent as much time with her as I'd wanted to in the last six months of her life. I'd knowingly let the friendship die a bit.

She made decisions that I didn't approve of. Like running an ultra marathon on an injured ankle the weekend before a huge test. But only part of me didn't approve. Part of me felt guilty for deciding to take care of myself, let my injuries heal, and focus on school. As if I was giving up on a dream that was within my reach if I was only willing to work harder.

She said things that bothered me. One time she said "if I wasn't married by this point in my life(23 years old) I'd feel like something was wrong with me. I'm 27. Instead of feeling compassion for a beautiful, smart, adventurous, loving woman who felt like she needed a man to love her to feel complete, I was annoyed. A man didn't love me. She knew that. And none of this would have been a big deal if part of me wasn't worried that I was never going to have a happy marriage.

But despite these things she did, she was a beautiful person. And that is all anyone talks about after someone dies. Her spirit. How much she loved me.  How much she loved the beautiful outdoors and mathematics. Instead of studying I look at her photos on facebook and notice how much she loved her husband, her friends, her sister. I feel this great guilt for not embracing the time and energy this wonderful person was willing to give me.

I know I must resolve this guilt. I can't live with it-making decisions because I'm worried someone might die instead of taking care of myself. But this requires unpacking the mystery. Who am I and why did I fail to put energy into the friendship. She was the only one who invited me places. I didn't invite her back. I often said no. I sometimes resented hanging out with her and hearing her worry about getting a B or gaining weight(she was so much skinnier than me-and I didn't have the self-confidence to not take this as an insult to me).

She made me feel unbalanced. I'd been trying to start being less perfect, more balanced, more focused on health and happiness and less on winning. And then I was confronted with another version of myself. Another woman trying to do it all who felt inadequate when she fell short. And around her I felt the pull to work out endlessly, to take too many classes, to fall madly, passionately, irresponsibly in love.

She was an inspiration to many. And there were many wonderful qualities we shared apart from our potentially self-destructive habits. But to me, sometimes, she was too much. And so I avoided it. I thought I was avoiding it because my boyfriend didn't like her. But that wasn't it. My boyfriend didn't like the self-destructive bits of me that she also shared. I wanted to be the balanced, happy person he was. I don't know why I didn't spend time with her. I'm still trying to figure that out.

I went through the anger stage of grief(at least for the first time). I screamed at her for not being more careful. I screamed at her for leaving me to try to get her husband to fall asleep at 1 am and convince him to stay in this world. But then I had an epiphany:

I'm angry at my father. I've never really felt like this before even though it would have made sense to given what he did to me and my mom. I'm so angry that the other day I had to pull the my car over into a parking lot and started screaming at him so loudly that someone came out to see what was the matter. They found a woman sitting alone in her car, tears streaming down her face.