Do you think you can tell that story?
sure.
this girl (ENFJ) was a year older than i. she sought me out, since we were in a PE class together, and essentially made the whole relationship happen. at that point in my life, i basically had no idea how to be assertive, and she taught me. she was like 5 years more mature than anyone else i'd met at that point in my life. so our relationship was completely life changing for me.
eventually, she went off to Columbia and i was still a senior, but we stayed together (i live in the bay area, california, and she was in new york). she visited me for a weekend and it was our best two days ever. then she went back to school. about a week later, we had a normal convo on the phone, she said she'd call me the next day, we said "i love you", and the next day she never called. she literally flaked ZERO times in our whole year and a half relationship, so i got worried. i was calling her dorm room and cell phone for the whole day, then i went to sleep. i kept calling her the next day, but couldn't get a hold of her. i eventually called her parents, and they had found out she died about an hour prior. what a terrible conversation for them to have to have with me
so basically she had a single room, and had an allergic reaction. her floormates began to worry when she wasn't around for a day (she was like the floor leader), so they asked the R.A. to open the room. she was found dead with an epi-pen (allergy emergency medicine) and benadryl in front of her. autopsy results were inconclusive (no drugs or anything were found).
i stayed home from school for a few days, then went back. everyone knew (small-ish school) but no one had any idea what to say to me, so no one said anything. i didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable, so i just kept quiet about it for the rest of the school year. my friends really had no idea what to do, so they did nothing. only ONE friend understood what i was really going through, and she helped me tons. but basically i became a huge stoner, smoking 3-5 times a day -- it allowed me to hold everything inside (which was obviously bad in the long term).
i went to therapy, blah blah, but i intellectualized everything instead of really facing my emotions and dealing with them (party because i was always stoned). then i went to cal, had a ton of freedom, and ended up blowing off all my classes and smoking all day instead. i had to bring my grades up the next semester, since i put myself on academic probation, but i didn't. so i got kicked out. i guess i was 19 at that point.
but yeah, i spent a year out of cal, got back in, was gonna fail again, had to withdraw, then got sober for 7 months. that sober time was really what's allowed me to enter the next phase of my life. i had a little stoner phase for the last few months, but i'm done with that now.
interestingly enough, i think i changed from enneagram 1w9 to 1w2 somewhere in there. it's because she was always helping/saving people, and once she died, i unconsciously took on that characteristic.
phew. that was long.
. I think as we get older, different things bother us more, and the answer to this is likely to change (even for older-than-average-around-here folks like me).
