dear maira

i never even got to meet you, and now you're gone.

dear maira,

i still don't believe you're gone. i don't think i ever will.

i've been trying to write this for hours, but every sentence feels wrong because every sentence requires me to accept something i still can't understand. i know what happened. i know you died from cardiac arrest. i know you were only nineteen years old. i know you turned nineteen in march and then just died in june. facts themselves are simple enough, but grief is not. my mind understands what happened, yet every time i think about you, some part of me still expects to see your name pop up somewhere. maybe that's what denial really is, not refusing to believe the truth, but being unable to fit that truth into the world you thought you lived in.

the strange thing is that we weren't even that close. atleast not in the way people usually measure friendship. we weren't constantly talking, we didn't know everything about each other's lives and yet your absence feels impossibly large. i think losing you has made me realize how ridiculous it is to measure love by proximity. people always talk about online friendships as if they're somehow less real than friendships formed in classrooms or neighbourhoods. they talk about internet friends like they're temporary, replaceable, destined to fade away. but if that's true, why does this hurt so much? why does the world feel different now? why do i keep catching myself thinking about things i want to tell you before remembering that i can't?

one thing i've been thinking about a lot lately is how often you were in hospitals. all of us knew that much. it wasn't a secret. you were always going for appointments, always visiting hospitals, always dealing with something that none of us completely understood. looking back, i think we all knew you were struggling. we just didn't know how much. we didn't know what exactly you were carrying, only that you were carrying something. every time you mentioned another hospital visit, we'd do what people always do when they care about someone and feel powerless to help. we hoped. we hoped things would get better. we hoped whatever was wrong would eventually go away. we hoped you'd be okay. we really did, maira.

i keep coming back to that word - hope. maybe because hope always assumes there will be more time, more conversations, more opportunities to check in, more chances to ask questions we never got around to asking. i think that's why grief feels so cruel. it reveals all the assumptions we didn't realize we were making. i assumed there would be more time. i assumed i'd eventually meet you. our cities weren't even that far apart. meeting wasn't some impossible fantasy that existed only in messages. it was something we had talked about. something that felt inevitable rather than uncertain. even my mom knew who you were. we promised each other we would meet in 2027.

i also keep thinking about your future because it's easier than thinking about your death. you wanted to become a model, and i think you would've done it. whenever you talked about it, it didn't sound unrealistic. it sounded like a future version of yourself that was already waiting for you. you were beautiful, but more than that, you believed in the possibility of becoming something more and that's what makes this feel so unfair. nineteen is too young to become a memory. nineteen is an age for beginnings, not endings. every time i think about you now, i don't just think about who you were. i think about who you were supposed to become.

i think about rohan, your boyfriend, too. he's the one who told us what happened and i still can't imagine what he's going through because even he got to know about this through your brother, four days after it happened. i really wanted to see you both get married someday. i wanted to see pictures. i wanted to see the future both of you were building together. i know that sounds strange coming from someone who only knew you online, but grief doesn't care about what sounds reasonable. it only cares about what feels lost. and so much was lost when you died not just your life, but every future attached to it. i feel so bad for rohan ‘cause you guys were supposed to finally meet this year, and look what happened now.

what makes this even harder is that you're connected to so many ordinary parts of my life. i found substack because of you. every time i open this app now, i'll think about you. i've always did. every article i write here will carry a reminder of you. you loved blackpink, you loved jennie and now even something as simple as seeing a post from jennie feels different. how will i like jennie's posts without ever thinking of you again? how will i listen to her songs without ever thinking of you again? this damn grief. it settles into songs, apps, jokes, habits and memories until suddenly a person exists everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

maybe that's why i still can't believe you're gone. somewhere in my mind, you're still here. you're still talking about becoming a model. you're still listening to jennie. you're still telling us about another hospital visit and we ask you how it went and you reassure all of your friends that you'll be okay. suddenly it's 2027 and you send me your location on whatsapp and my dad drops me at your home and we watch movies together and go out and click pictures together and we have so much fun. my brain knows the truth, but my heart keeps waiting for another message that will never come.

all i know is that you existed and that mattered. you were loved more than you probably realized. you left an impact bigger than you probably knew. and despite everything people say about online friendships, your absence has proven to me that love does not become less real because it travels through a screen.

i never even got to meet you, and now you're gone.

rest easy, angel.