I Will Never Forget My Friend Amelia

Every Sunday morning when I walk into the church, I dip my fingers in the holy water, make the sign of the cross, bow, and walk over to the other side of the building to light a candle. As I light it, I pray, using whatever words I have in the moment.

I have a clinical diagnosis of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and I light the same candle every Sunday. There are a few people that know this, and I am grateful that they ensure that there is always a new candle in that spot. I can light a different candle if I need to, but that one is Amelia’s candle.

They do not know it is Amelia’s candle, or why I light it, but they know that I do and are gracious enough to make sure that it’s there and ready. It’s a small thing that makes a huge difference to me and I appreciate it.

Amelia died nineteen years ago, some time in early August. I cannot remember the date, because dates weren’t relevant at the time. The beginning of August is still a tough time of the year for me, because I can never forget.

She wasn’t someone who was my best friend, but she was one of the very few friends I had at the time, and we worked together as exotic dancers, which was a fancy word for stripper. One night in early August, we finished up and left work.

We had both had too much to drink, and our employer kept us slightly drugged so that we would be more experimental and “fun.” Amelia was not of age yet, still a month or two before her eighteenth birthday, but I was already 19.

This was the only “employment” option available to Amelia and I at the time. We were homeless and the only way we could stay at the place we were at was to engage in sex work. If we didn’t do that, we didn’t get to stay. Although Amelia was underage, there were loopholes that were exploited so that they could exploit Amelia.

We walked out the back door, and started off down the street, still in stilettos, and scantily clad in clothes that left very little to the imagination. The same route every night: down to the end of the street, into an alleyway, behind some buildings, and back out onto another street.

Amelia never made it back to the house that night. She only got as far as the dumpster behind the buildings. Seeing as we were wasted, our inhibitions were low. We’d just exited the alley, which was dark, and found ourselves suddenly with light in our faces from the street lights.

Instead of continuing to walk, we decided to climb the dumpster. It seemed like a really good idea at the time. It so turns out that playing in and on dumpsters didn’t work well if one was wearing stilettos, fishnet tights, and in Amelia’s case, a wig. We laughed and played like we were little girls again.

What most people don’t realize unless they have caused one, is that accidental death is fairly common. In the United States of America, someone is killed accidentally every three minutes. It’s not well-known because people who have caused these things often never talk about them.

All said and done, Amelia’s death was ruled accidental. Like most accidents it was probably preventable, but there was no malice and no intent to harm her.

The Police did their investigation, and ended up with the official sounding version of “play stupid games, win stupid prizes,” or, as kids these days are saying “fuck around, find out.”

There’s still no sensible reason why she died except, essentially she died of a case of bad luck, because there is no way in hell that fall should have killed her. As I have learned, freak accidents just happen.

I also learned how little value sex workers have in society.

The fun was an illusion of course, and neither of us would ever feel that free again. The alcohol had almost worn off, and the drugs weren’t going to be far behind.

Amelia became a little obnoxious, but nothing serious enough to make me mad. She came a bit too close to me, almost knocking me over, and so I laughed, called her a bitch and half-heartedly and playfully pushed her out of my way.

At first she fell into a wall about a foot from the back of the dumpster, but as she tried to gain some stability her tights got caught, her wig fell off, and she fell onto a broken up, rough slab of concrete jutting up off the gravel below.

Almost everything after this point is still a blur. It became clear to me at some point that she was dead. It felt like I was watching myself as I freaked out and wondered what to do.

I talked to the authorities as soon as the sun came up, which was early, and apparently Amelia had also been doing other drugs that contributed to her not being able to stop her fall. I had been unaware of anything else she had taken, but of course the authorities have testing for just this kind of thing.

I was grieving, but I could not show any signs of being in distress. That would get me into trouble because I was supposed to be going to work. I got dressed again that very evening, but I couldn’t walk the same route that I had always walked with her.

There were other, more direct routes to get back and forth from the house, but Amelia and I had chosen to walk the way that gave us the most privacy getting to and from. It seemed more appropriate to walk in the dark because I was in a dark place emotionally, and now I felt exposed by the street lights.

Every August, the panic attacks come. There’s a particular kind of grief that comes from bearing such a burden, and the pain of that is incredible, even all these years later.

Flashbacks are worse during this time, and I become angry and sad that I cannot remember certain details or the sequence of some things due to the fact that I dissociated.

In this time of grief and horror, I feel the need for people to notice that I’m hurting and reach out to me. That isn’t something that is really possible, because they don’t know what I need, but I need them to figure it out because I’m so overwhelmed.

I’ve often felt that this isn’t about me, and I’ve felt like I have no right to my grief. The idea that this situation isn’t about me is quite frankly bullshit. The problem is that it is about me. Amelia died that night behind a dumpster in a semi-industrial area because we stopped to play around instead of going straight back.

This has everything to do with me, because I’m alive and she is not, and I have to live with myself, like I have for nineteen years now.