This reminds me of my ex-husband saying to me after he dropped a friend suddenly, "I only have so much time. I need to be friends with people who are also good for my work or my career and I can't waste time on people who aren't." Now, he did not harass women, but he used other artists to help his own work all the time and he saw what he did as practical, rather than horrifying. I AM SO GLAD we got divorced.

Here's the rest, msbelle.

Every time she notices you you feel validated. You feel like you belong, like you're not some interloper who wandered in to crash the party.

You never tell her how awesome you think she is. You don't have that kind of relationship. She probably doesn't even think of you.

This goes on for eleven years.

Eleven years, you're at this party with her.

Eleven years, she is there, and you are there.

And then one day you go to the party and they tell you she's dead.

She's just...dead.

She is no longer alive.

Just like that.

At this point you don't know your grandfather will die in a few months.

At this point you don't know someone else at the party will die to bookend the year with a pair of deaths.

You never even met her.

(The party is an online community the metaphor is breaking down now sorry.)

You don't know how to feel because you don't think she would consider you a friend so how much can you possibly feel for her.

You just know that she was always there, she was an amazing person who you wish you'd known better, God you wish you'd known her better.

You channel your conflicted grief into a piece of flash fiction, but even that cannot begin to tell the real story.

You don't really know what do, you just can't believe she's gone, this is not supposed to happen.

Happy birthday, ita.

I miss you.

followed by a million hairpats in comments.

Gross.

Compare and contrast with how much anyone else tweeted about it.

I just remembered that I tweeted to Colin that night, because I forgot to put his number in my phone.

I'm sorry.

It's also shitty writing. Why is it written in second person? Gross.

I guess you all have more finely tuned bullshit detectors than I do, because that doesn't set off mine.

Use of the 2nd person, he's depersonalized it. This is what other people may be feeling, he guesses.

I think for me it is the set up.

hey everyone are you paying attn - I'm going to write something now.

then the thing itself - It both states I I I, while seemingly minimizing him, but it is only seemingly - it is still all self.

then that it was on twitter which I guess is his main social media outlet, but seems an odd choice given that I think the fewest of those of us who knew her are there. it reads as not really about her, but about the piece, to get a reaction for an audience.

and this was written this year on her birthday, so a year later.

I agree, it feels like a performance

It is terrible that really I just want to be done thinking about him? For now anyway