The Summer Reunion (unedited version)

55| Moving On

She seemed to be lost in thought and didn't hear me until I sat down next to her. I waited for her to speak first.

Strands of her dark hair brushed across her face in the breeze. "Isn't it crazy to think something so beautiful can be so dangerous?" she played with a pebble, tossing it from one hand to the other. It fell into the water and descended deeper and deeper, until it was no longer visible. 

"Yeah," I agreed. "It freaks me out."

She stared off at the vast view, an odd look etched onto her face. "I... it doesn't look like a long way down. You wouldn't think it is." She waited a brief moment, thinking about what to say next. "But it can be fall that lasts forever." Her next words took a moment to come out. She hesitated. "Do you ever get scared of the choices you make?" 

I didn't even have to think about my answer. "Sometimes I get scared of the choices I'm not making." 

The two of us could not be more polar opposites. Same with our decisions. She was always making ones she regretted, and I always regretting the ones I never made.

"Like right now for instance." She gazed down. "I could make one decision and it could be my last. I almost did."

"Do you want it to be your last?" 

"I didn't think so...No. Not now. I just think it's interesting. That we're in charge of making rational decisions when the entire world is filled with irrational people." She tilted her head up to the sky. "I could have drowned. I could make another mistake and drown again. For real this time." She stated not in any tone that insinuated either option was good or bad, it was just a fact. "I wouldn't," she assured me. "I don't think I would. But I could."

I wasn't exactly sure how to handle this. Or what to say. I wasn't even really sure what she was trying to say. Or trying not to say.

"Do you ever wish you could be someone else? Just erase all your problems?" I asked. 

"No." she replied much faster than I thought she would have, given the circumstances.

"Why not?"

"Because everyone has problems. Being someone else wouldn't erase all of them. You'd just be switching them out for new ones. And trust me, they'll hunt you down eventually. The complications of life won't go away just because you want them to or because you ask nicely.  You'd still have flaws. You'd still have faults. Those are also something you can't escape. Ever." 

Tosh has always been so unapologetically and authentically herself. It never occurred to her she should be anybody else. I've always admired that about her. I always wished I could change things about myself. Find some way to be prettier or smarter or any other quality that would make people like me more, make people notice me. I spent so much time hiding the bad parts of myself from other people, I never learned to appreciate all the good things. 

Tosh was different. The shininess of her personality, her outgoingness, her grit, her lust for life, they were every bit as real as not so shiny parts. The qualities that had rusted over time, the ones she had buried like hidden treasure, waiting for someone who cared enough to come along and dig it up, they were every bit as real. She embraced them just the same. Few are lucky enough to see through her antics designed to drive people away. But if you looked close, you could see the vulnerable side of her peeking out. 

And that's the Tosh I stick around for. The one who needs extra kindness and care. No matter what she does, I know that part of her is begging to be noticed. 

It occurred to me now how different she was from the rest of us. Growing up I always pictured Gray and I in this little bubble, separate from the others. Tosh didn't fit in the bubble, but she never faced the world head on the same way Drew and Izzie did. When she acted like them it wasn't because she was excitedly and carelessly running towards whatever life threw at her. It was because she was running away from it. Her actions weren't for the search of pleasure, but the aftermath of pain. She wasn't in the bubble or braving new adventures. She was living by her own set of rules. I used to envy her for that. The way she was so effortlessly free.