"Hows senior year?!?!"

What do you say when someone asks you how your senior year of college is going when it's been the hardest two weeks of your life? This happened to me just the other day. I didn't know what to say. Do I lie and say that it's going great in order to avoid being a huge debbie downer? Or do I tell the truth and talk about how even though my classes are wonderful, I'm going through something that nobody should ever have to experience? It's an awkward situation and it feels like it will be something I struggle with for a while.

Dealing with the loss of a friend my own age was not something I expected to happen only a few months after my 21st birthday. If life were perfect, I wouldn't have had to deal with a death of a friend until I was well into my 70s or 80s. These past two weeks have been like a roller coaster ride. My friends and I have had to re-learn how to laugh and joke around. Laughter has proven to be the best medicine, along with the support of an extremely loving community, kindness, and unity.

I feel like I'm living in a play I read, or a movie I watched, or a suicide prevention film that my high school health teacher showed our class. It doesn't feel like real life. I don't know if it will ever feel like real life. We all thought that the funeral and burial would be a necessary reality check for all of us. But it still felt just as surreal as it did that first night when we lit candles on the oval, sang "Seasons Of Love" and shared funny Justin stories.

Tonight I wrote to Justin in the leather notebook my friends and I have been passing around. I had avoided writing in the notebook for about a week because the thought of 'my last words to Justin' was daunting and disturbing. But then I realized I can always talk to him. For the rest of my life I can talk to him. Ever since my Grandpa died when I was fourteen I've been skeptical about the existence of God and heaven because at the time it was much easier for me to believe that the doctors could make a mistake while doing heart surgery on my Grandfather if there were no God. How could God, if he does exist, let something like that happen? And so I turned my back on God, on religion, and on the idea of heaven. But now, 7 years later, I feel a little differently. Maybe it's because I'm older. Maybe it's because Justin decided to end his life at the young age of 22. Maybe it's because I'm more mature. But whatever the reason is I know this: it gives me comfort to think of Justin strutting into heaven, teaching all the angels how to twerk to Beyonce, and living his afterlife just as fully as he lived his life on earth. And so I know that I can always talk to Justin whenever I want to because even though his body is no longer with us, his spirit and his energy are. And so what I wrote in that notebook is only the beginning of a lifelong conversation I will be having with my dear friend.

So what do I do for now? Sometimes I feel like I'm walking around campus like a zombie. Sometimes I feel extremely emotional. And sometimes I actually feel happy. The only thing we can do is hang in there and support one another, which is what we've been doing.