BEFORE:
I think every high school student goes through at least one traumatic experience throughout their high school career. For most, this experience will be a mistake, a late night that began with a few innocent shots of vodka and ended with a stranger waking up beside them in their bed. And for others, their traumatic experience will involve not studying for the SATs and as a result, getting declined from their dream school.. 
My traumatic experience cut much deeper than any drunken mistake or ruined dream. My traumatic experience came in the form of a 5’11, tan skinned, dark brown haired football player named Brian Wilson. 
I led an uneventful, boring life before I met Brian my freshman year of high school. I’d wake up for school each morning, apply just enough makeup to cover the acne on my face, but not enough to make me stand out, sit through seven class periods a day, come home, study, sleep and repeat.
I didn’t have a grand, spectacular social life -- or any social life at all. The possibility of me finding a boyfriend seemed as likely as my horse magically transforming into a unicorn overnight: virtually impossible.
Brian Wilson waltzed into my life on a Wednesday morning in gym class – literally waltzed into my life. Our PE coach, Mr. Donovan had recently become transfixed with Dancing With the Stars and thought it’d be a fabulous idea to incorporate ballroom dancing into his curriculum.
I had always admired Brian from a distance. He was a tall, attractive football player who had a great sense of humor and seemed nice enough, but was too shy to so much as look at him. But on that Wednesday in gym class, the stars aligned and Coach Donovan assigned Brian to be my ballroom dance partner.
Our connection was almost immediate. We were both horrible dances and spent the entirety of gym class tripping over each other’s feet and poking fun at how stiff of dancers we were.
“I’ve seen baby giraffes dance better than you,” Brian laughed after I stepped on his foot while he was trying to twirl me. 
Approximately 10 seconds after that sentence left his mouth, he tripped over his own foot and fell to the ground, bringing me down with him.
“Well at least I don’t dance like a drunken penguin,” I giggled.
“Karma’s a b****, isn’t it?” I laughed.
“No, you know what’s a b****,” He said, standing back on his feet and offering his hand to help pull me back on my feet. “Not knowing a girl as charming and beautiful as you. Why don’t I know you?”
I could feel my cheeks turn neon red within a few microseconds. No one, not a single guy, had ever showed interest in me.
“I’m quiet. People tend to overlook me,“ I rubbed my palms together nervously.

“Well, Ms. Elena, I think that is extremely unfortunate. You seem like a lovely girl and anyone who overlooks you is missing out,” He grinned. “I’d like to take you out for frozen yogurt on Friday if you’ll go.”
In that moment, my stomach felt as though a thousand caterpillars had just erupted into energetic, fluttering butterflies inside it and my knees felt as though they had melted into Jello.
Before I could pass out from my nerves or fall over from my weak knees I whispered, “Sure, I’d like that.”
Brian and I dated for three months. Our relationship was and still is the greatest adventure I had ever gone on. Brian’s was fearless, adventurous and quite frankly, a little reckless. Dating him was the greatest risk of my life. I knew falling in love with him would get me into trouble. But it wasn’t until I met Brian that I began to live.
He taught me how to forget the risks and learn how to have fun. One our one-month anniversary, Brian convinced his friend who worked at Magic Kingdom to sneak us into one of the fantasy suites in Cinderella’s Castle. The room was grand. It had clear chandeliers that, when lit, reflected rainbow colors hanging from the ceiling, gold, three bottles of champagne sitting in an ice bucket on a mirrored dresser and a bed that was so fluffy, I was entirely convinced it wasn’t actually a bed, but rather a cloud.
We would have spent the night in the room, but the manager of Cinderella’s Castle walked into the room to show potential guests what it looked like, caught us and immediately began paging security. Brian and I sprinted out of the castle, half laughing, half having a panic attack, before diving into some bushes and hiding from the security team that was chasing us.
“I thought the magic wasn’t supposed to wear off until midnight, Ms. Cinderella. It’s only 3 p.m. and we’ve already been kicked out of our castle,” He joked.
Brian told me he loved me three and a half months after we began dating by writing the words, “I love you” into our school buses’ foggy mirror. I reciprocated the revelation by writing the word “too” under his.
And while we had only been dating for a short period of time, I genuinely did believe I loved him. We had our entire lives planned out: we were going to get married in Cinderella’s castle, win the lottery, buy a castle of our own in Ireland and have three children.
And then, on 4-17 North on a Sunday evening, when the sky was still a cotton candy pink and blue, everything was taken from us. Brian was driving to the Orlando International Airport, on his way to visit relatives in Italy, when a semi truck turned into the drivers side of his car, catapulting Brian’s car into a ditch, making it flip five times.
Brian, who wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, died instantly.
When Brian’s mother Kimberly showed up to my door at 11 p.m. that night, black tears running down her face I didn’t believe her when she told me he was gone. He was a smart kid, a good driver. He never went more than five miles over the speed limit, he stopped at every stop sign, there’s no way God would let him be killed in a car accident.
But days passed and there was no punch line to the joke, no phone call from Brian saying he had pulled a horrible prank on me and he was coming home, no closure at all. He, like all of our hopes and dreams for the future, were gone.

AFTER:
  I kept my eyes closed and pretended to be asleep as my school bus departed from my bus stop and started the 15-minute journey to school. I never used to mind going to school, but ever since I lost Brian six months ago, going to school felt like being locked inside an observatory. 
When my school’s psychiatrist asked me how I was coping with Brian’s death, I thought the best thing to do was tell her exactly what I was going through. I knew what I was experiencing seemed crazy, but I didn’t know whom else to talk about it with.
Everywhere I went, I saw ghosts of Brian around me. Whenever I drive past the Menchies Brian took me to on our first date, a misty vision of him appears placing his hand on my lower back, leaning his head down and placing his lips on mine for the first time appears. Every time I drive past his house, I see an grey outline of his body laying next to mine on his driveway, each of us pointing out constellations in the jet black night sky.
Every time I saw one of the ghosts, a flood of tears rushed to my eyes and every emotion I felt after loosing Brian – despair, sadness, anger, heartbreak – pierces my heart like a freshly sharpened razor blade.
My school’s psychiatrist had deemed me clinically depressed when I told her I kept seeing the ghosts. She told me I was clinically depressed and had my doctor prescribe me anti depression pills. When the ghosts still didn’t cease to show after I started taking not just one, but three antidepressants a day, I stopped telling people I was still seeing the ghosts and plastered a false smile on my face each day. 
“Elena, Elena, you’re doing it again,” My friend since middle school, Lauren snapped. “You keep zoning out. I thought you said you were getting better.”
Lauren was just as bad as my parents and my psychiatrist when it came to trying to “fix me” and “rid me of my grief.” Anytime she catches me crying, even if I’m crying over something completely irrelevant to Brian, she informs my mom.
“You need to just get over him, Elena. You dated for what, four months before he passed?” She crossed her arms against her chest and smirked at me with her bright red lipstick. Lauren had always been extremely cold when it came to discussing Brian, even when he was alive. “You probably weren’t even in love.”
I could feel the anger spread through my body like a wildfire. My chest constricted, my fists clenched involuntarily and tears formed in my eyes.
“You know what, screw you Lauren,” I snapped, snatching my textbooks from a top my desk and strutting out of the classroom. I could hear Ms. Elks, my English teacher shouting at me to get back into the classroom from behind me, but I didn’t care, I wanted to me anywhere but in that classroom with Lauren.
I just didn’t understand what her problem was. I know it’s probably been tough on her dealing with a supposedly clinically depressed friend who sees visions of her dead boyfriend and is probably crazy, but I never asked for her help.
As I walked past the front office, towards my blue Volkswagon bug, another ghost of Brian appeared. This time, it was a translucent vision of him giving me two dozen red roses and a huge Valentines day card that sang Taylor Swift’s Love Story to me. He knew he was my first Valentine and wanted to make sure he got me something special.
I shook my head and tried to shake the ghost from my sight. Why me? Why did my boyfriend have to die, why did I have to see ghosts of Brian, why did I have to go through this alone?
When I was 30 feet away from my car, my knees gave out and my body began convulsing with sobs. A million black tears streamed down my face, making my face undoubtedly look as messy and dark as my life had become.
“Elena, oh my gosh, are you okay?” Maxon, Brian’s old friend who had been trying to take me on a date since couple months after Brian passed ran up to me and placed his hand on my shoulder, looking me over for any injuries.
“Not now, Maxon,” I shouted. “I can’t do this now.”
“It’s Brian, isn’t it?” Maxon sighed, rubbing circles into my back to calm me down. “You’re seeing his ghost still.”
“Yeah and so what? Are you going to call me crazy now, too? Well guess what, I already know I am. So you can go tell my parents to up my meds just like…”
“Elena, Elena, stop.” He interrupted me. “I’ve seen them, too.”
I pushed him away from me and crossed my arms around my chest. He’s lying. He’s trying to make me feel crazier than I already do.
“I get it, Elena, I do. You see his figure everywhere, flashbacks of happy moments between you and him before he died. They’re making you feel crazy, people are telling you you’re crazy and you just want it to stop, for the visions to go away,” He explained. “Elena, you have to let go of Brian. You have to stop being hung up on him and start living your life again. I know you’re sad, hell I am, too, but the only way for his ghost to stop crushing you is if you stop letting them. Look back on the memories and view the ghosts as happy times you’re grateful for and try not to cling onto the sad feelings.” 
“I want to, but I don’t know how,” I sobbed. “I loved him, Maxon, I loved him so much and he’s gone. He’s gone and I’ll never get him back.”
Maxon pulled me into him and held me tightly against him.
“Elena, he’s not gone. Part of him will always live within your memories, within your heart.”
I didn’t learn how to let go of Brian and his ghost for a few months after I collapsed in the school’s parking lot, and I didn’t stop seeing his ghost for a few months, either. But eventually, I learned to accept that we can’t control who we loose in this life. There are going to be times when we loose people who made us feel whole inside and brought great light into our lives. But what we can control is how we react to it. We can either narrow in on our sorrow and let the grief from loosing the person crush us or we can let our losses teach us how precious and rare true love is.
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