Today I write with a heavy heart.

Two days ago, a friend of mine passed away in a freak accident that nobody could’ve seen coming. One moment she was alive and well and enjoying the beginning of her summer, the next she was in unbearable pain and just barely grasping onto the finals cusps of life. In the moments that followed that, what little life that was remaining seeped out until, with one final breath, she was gone. Here one moment, gone the next. Boom. Poof. Gone.

She was nineteen years old.

I can’t claim that this girl was a particularly close friend of mine, but she was a friend nonetheless. We’d shared conversations and we'd shared laughs; we'd even had a few classes together back in high school and I just recently learned that apparently she had gone to Texas A&M too (I had just never seen her there). She was a funny and kind and caring girl who was amazing at pretty much anything she set her mind to (sports, academics, you name it), and I can just imagine in my head all the dreams and aspirations and plans she had to have had for her life. Scenarios that would’ve played out in her mind. Places she wanted to go. Goals she wanted to accomplish. Things she wanted to experience.

But now she’s gone.