She was just twenty-one and I was twenty-eight the first time we met. I was visiting a friend in Victoria for the day in a local trendy coffee-shop. She was a friend of his who joined us. I was immediately impacted by her energy: as though a clear, pure and uncompromising light was shooting out from her. I was fascinated and the friendship was immediate.
About one month later we met in Vancouver on Commercial Drive in a store where we exchanged contact information. She was briefly sharing an apartment with a friend, a young gay artist with whom she was in love. They moved out of the apartment and she ended up in a shared house off Commercial. We saw each other frequently, often visiting each other for coffee or tea. One day I took down a poster for a theatre event that I saw stapled to a fence. There was featured on it a beautiful Renaissance drawing of a tree of life that I knew that she must have. It lifted her dark mood when I gave it to her.
I didn't know for sure, but suspected that she had a mental health condition. She tended to be easily annoyed and offended by others, perhaps very irritable. She also spoke with highest praise of a gay couple she lived with in Victoria, especially as they would astutely remind her that she was not the centre of the universe. She lived on a jagged edge, without support or stability. She inhabited and lived in a kind of fine, pure air and her sense of immediate impact and impactfulness made her one of the most inspiring people I ever knew. She was like a German Expressionist painting come to life. She had the innocent spontaneity, joy and appreciation of the immediate present of a little child. Living surrounded by darkness she both craved and emitted the purest light I have ever known coming from another person. It would also be impossible for her or anyone to live for very long on such a pure high frequency.
She spent time in a homeless shelter to which I was then professionally connected. She dressed in white and danced around proclaiming that she is an angel. We eventually lost contact and I saw nor heard nothing of her for many years to come.
I didn't see Awesome Girl again until 2007. She was a client of the mental health team where I worked. We worked together one to one for a few weeks. She had gained a lot of weight and her medications had slowed her considerably, but there was still that beautiful light trapped behind the medicated mask that her face had become. Our visits were enjoyable, if professional. Soon she asked to end our arrangements. She never explained why.
I will always remember Awesome Girl as a young woman and as a middle aged matron. Same person, same mind, same light. No longer wild though the light whirls about still inside her head like a wild solar flare. I only hope that she doesn't burn herself on her flame.
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