Ciao Bella

Its easy to sit here and decide to start your blog over. Its easy to sit there and type in a name and come up with a good heading. It all seems so easy. Yet when it comes to making a post. Thats when it gets hard. There are so many things running through my head but the one that stands out I shall tell you about.

It was a cold night back in 2000 when i decided to check out a connections website. Not the connections type you might be thinking of, no, a student connection website. I browsed around for a while and looked at people who I thought might have the same interests as me and felt like a chat on msn. No-one seemed to spark any interest whatsoever in me.
I logged out of that website thinking that I would never have any connection with it again.

I think it could have been 3, possibly 4 hours later (timings a little hazy). I got an alert on msn that someone had added me. I looked at the name and it didnt ring any bells whatsoever. I remember recalling I had never heard of anyone called Summer that I knew.. let alone someone I didnt know.. But thought what the heck and added the name anyway.
It turned out that Summer had found my name on that very same website and had been looking through. Unlike myself, she had found someone that sparked an interest in her. Someone that shared the same thoughts and ideas and she, and that person was me.
We started chatting and by the end of the week it was if we had known each other a lifetime.. secrets flying across the screen, to each other that no one else knew. It even got to the stage we would look for each other online just to chat to each other, and we blocked everyone else so that we wouldnt be disturbed.
I remember back in those days before the open diary went private. That I had a free open diary there and used to write in it alot. I used to have fun playing with html and learning the basics and putting them up there.. I remember going through many phases, from a very pink and girly flashing lights kinda phase.. to a more dark and somber, ozzy inspired layout. Those were some fun times... but I digress..........................

Casually in conversation i remember we were talking about online diaries... Summer made me laugh the way she hated them. She hated them with a passion. She said they were just a waste of space on the internet filled with children WhO wRotE lIkE dIs or that were so angsty it wasnt funny... so i didnt dare tell her about mine.
However she eventually coaxed it out of me and didnt once laugh when I told her I had one.. apparently I was different. She got hooked to reading my diary and I used to fill it with strange and quirky things just to make her laugh.

A few weeks later out of the blue she announced to me that she had opened her own and hadnt told me for fear I would laugh right back in her face, but she had been so inspired by mine, and that I actually wrote things of meaning in them, that she had to start her own. I still remember to this day that her first post shocked me with the title 'my favourite whipping boy'.. and the subject had nothing to do with boys.. or whipping for that matter

Now remember how I said Summer was very talkative? Well there were a few subjects we could talk for hours upon. One would be her hometown, the hills of the san fernando vally. The deserts with which she would drive up in her four wheel drive and lay and stare at the stars... I used to sit there for hours listening to the tales, she told them so well I almost felt like I was lying there with her.
Her other topic of conversation, that once I got her started, she couldnt stop, was politics. She had such strong views for someone so young. She could have easily been a politician and made some radical changes.

With real life getting so hectic, and with me becoming pregnant and starting a family. We lost contact. We didnt speak for over two years. At the time, it was always.. oh Im sure next time I log onto the internet she will be there and we will pick up like there had never been a gap.
I sent her a few emails and never got anything in reply. I wondered what had happened as yes.. I missed her and wanted to hear from her again.

I hate myself for forgetting the link to her journal. I hate myself for forgetting to copy it to my favourites.. in hind sight I should have done that.. but I always thought I would remember it. No search engine ever cam eup with it either and that depressed me.

Two weeks ago I remembered that the place she had a diary was called the free open diary so i googled their page and went there.. to find that there was no longer a free open diary, and that it was all a paid for service now.. I wondered wether summer had gone on to the open diary as in her short time as a blogger she got very very many fans.. something in the line of 300 readers + a day.. just to read her thoughts on life and politics.. she was never one to not express her feelings.
I searched the open diary and came across her blog.
What I found there still aches me today.
Summer had passed away. She had died from Cancer a few months ago and I never got to say goodbye. She had written in her diary the entire length of her cancer telling of treatments, and of how she was doing, right up until the very end.

I know one thing for sure. I know I didnt get to say goodbye in person. But I get to say goodbye in the only way that I know how.
Goodbye my darling sweet Summer Rayne. Forever in my heart. A special friend to me, and may your spirit still live on in the desert and may every star that shines down on this earth, be a reflection of your smile.
I will never forget you and you live on in my heart.

In the words of Summer,

Ciao Bella,

Nicola xx