Cori

(I'll warn you, dear reader, this is one of the most personal posts I've ever written. I'm just saying. And it's long. It could be so much longer.)

I knew Cori in college. I knew of her long before I met her. In fact, I saw her when I toured campus the spring before I started. I was a little punk rock girl, standing in the middle of an ag-centric campus in the middle of nowhere Missouri, wondering what the hell I was going to do because this was the only school I had applied to, and oh my god how was I going to live in this podunk town. What the hell was I thinking? What had I done? And then I saw this girl with long blonde hair, wearing a black leather biker's jacket bounding up the steps of the admin building. And I breathed a sigh of relief. I knew people like me were like roaches. If you saw one, you knew there were others.

I didn't meet Cori until the second semester of my freshman year. She had taken a year off and had gone back to Omaha. Despite that, our lives were so tightly interconnected it isn't even funny. So much so it would take far too long to explain how. Just take my word for it. 

Let me just say this: Cori became one of my closest friends. Seriously. She was such a huge part of my life I can barely remember not knowing her. But that isn't to say our friendship wasn't volatile. It was. Very. I don't think anyone could have anything but a volatile relationship with Cori. 

Cori was an artist. And when I say artist, I mean artist. Yes, she was an art major, but everything about her was flamboyant and colorful and dramatic yet amazingly down-to-earth. She felt everything to the core. And she shared everything she had inside her. She loved and lived with a passion and in the moment. She disliked few, but she had been hurt by many. She was generous, loving, frustrating, self-destructive, and amazingly positive yet sad--all at the same time. She was one big bundle of color and contradiction. 

She was one of the most beautiful people I had ever known. I mean drop-dead gorgeous. She could stop conversation when she walked into a room. And believe me, she knew it. And she loved it. Because she lived for the dramatic. 

Sometimes I would get so frustrated with her that I could go months without talking to her, usually because I wanted to shake her for doing something that I knew was going to hurt her. Or me. Or someone else. She was one of the most honest people I knew because she was so genuine, yet at the same time, I don't know how much of what she told me was true. Years after we graduated, some friends and I sat down and pieced together the various stories Cori had told us about her life. Few of them were pleasant and most of them contradicted each other in some way. I'm not sure if we will ever know what or who hurt her in her life, but I think it is safe to say that she had been hurt, and I have a feeling that there was a segment of truth in each story she told. 

Cori died August of 1991. She was 22. She was found naked lying on her kitchen floor. She was found by a friend who hadn't seen her for a few days and grew concerned when she didn't show up for a lunch date. When she saw the mail piled up in Cori's mailbox she knew something was wrong. She broke down the door, and there she was. Given her age and the circumstances, the police thought it was sexual assault, until someone told them she was diabetic. 

Cori had been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 16 (I think). She resented it. A lot. She didn't take care of herself like she should have. I didn't know that at the time because I figured she knew what she was doing. She should't've been living alone. Diabetics weren't supposed to live alone. She knew that. I knew that. I knew that because the year before she moved off campus she asked me to be her roommate, because she didn't want to live alone. I knew I couldn't. I knew it would ruin our friendship. I knew I wouldn't be able to live with the mood swings and the drama. I said no. And believe me, when she was found dead on her kitchen floor, that conversation haunted me for years. 

The day before she was found, I was standing in front of her place. I knew she hadn't been feeling well; someone had told me she had the flu. I thought I should check up on her and since I was leaving a friend's place who lived next door, why not? I didn't. I never even walked up to her door. I was exhausted. The semester had just started. I was hot. I needed to walk home. I had a million reasons. I figured I'd walk home, call her and ask if she needed anything. I never did. I can honestly say that I thank the god I don't believe in that I was not the one that found her. It would have killed me.

I don't know for sure when she died, but she was found on a Wednesday. Someone may have told me the time she died, but I have long forgotten it, because I am positive she died that Monday. Why? Because about 5:30 Monday afternoon, I was lying on my couch when I sat up, looked at my roommate, and said, "Something is wrong." I didn't know what, but all of a sudden, everything changed. It was like the universe had shifted just a teeny bit and everything around me was slightly off kilter. And for the next two days, until I found out Cori had been found dead, my world was in the weirdest funk I'd ever experienced. Ever. 

The week following all of this is a blur. Some of it I remember like it happened thirty minutes ago. Some of it is a jumble, and some of it has come back to me since getting back in touch with so many people from that part of my life. But that week changed my life. It was the first grown up thing I had ever faced. Losing her was like losing a limb. I didn't know how to function afterwards. That semester was a blur. Hell, the last two years of college were a blur. Because of that one event, I wanted to leave that shitty little Missouri town and never go back. I did leave when I graduated, yet I did and still do go back. Because of memories like Cori. 

One of the last things I remember about her was her birthday. Her birthday was July 4 (of course), and that summer she told me growing up she had never had a birthday party, because she was born on the 4th of July. I decided that on July 4, 1991, I was going to throw her a surprise birthday party, 'cause everyone deserved a birthday party. So I talked to friends. It was summer and not many people were around, but a few of us began to plan. In the back of my mind, I wondered if she would be in town, but she was broke... Where was she going to go?

Well, one day while walking home from class, I stopped by her place. None of the classrooms on campus or my apartment had air conditioning. Cori lived half-way between campus and my place, so on hot days, I would stop and cool down in her air-conditioned apartment. She told me she was going to borrow her neighbor's luggage because she was going to Colorado for her birthday. I don't remember with who or why. It was probably with some vagabond family she met while hitchhiking to some music festival. Did I mention that Cori was a half-naked hippie free spirit? She was. 

Anyway, she tells me this, and I say something along the lines of, "Goddammit, Cori! I've been planning a fucking birthday party for you and we were going to surprise you because I wanted you to have at least one surprise birthday party in your life but noooooo you decide you need to leave town to go sit on a mountain somewhere. Ugh! God, you are so frustrating!" By the end of my rant, she was crying and hugging me and telling me how much she loved me.... But she was still going to Colorado. And then she began to tell me she had been thinking about leaving town, about moving on with her life. But she didn't think she would, at least not anytime soon. There were too many people in town she couldn't live without, and one of those people was me. Things were looking up for her, she said. She felt like she had begun to get her diabetes under control. She had begun to paint again. She was feeling good. She had covered up a fairly dark painting she had started with an incredibly colorful and vivid painting of a wooden chair. (That was probably one of the last things she painted. I told Cori's mom that; she said it was in Cori's sister's house.)

Less than two months later she was dead. She had run out of insulin. She thought she had enough to get her through the week since she was supposed to go home that weekend. She went into a diabetic coma and never came back out. Lots of people wondered if she had done it on purpose. It had crossed my mind, but I knew that wasn't what happened. First of all, there would've body paint, glitter, drama, and a feel-sorry-for-me letter. But I also know she would never've left without saying goodbye to me. I believed that then, and I still believe that now. 

Why this post? It's not her birthday. She's been gone for twenty years this year, but the anniversary is in August. Why now? When I woke up this morning I saw an old friend had tagged me in a photo on Facebook. It was an image of a charcoal done by Cori. Seeing it was like a punch in the gut. I have several of her paintings, including a self portrait that her mom sent me after I graduated from college. I used to always have them out, but when I moved into my place three years ago, I never put them up. So I dug them out. And staring at the self portrait, the self portrait I remember her working on when she still lived in the dorms... Well it was like opening up a door that had been shut for twenty years. Thoughts, memories, conversations.... they all came back in one strong whoosh. Staring into those eyes, I couldn't stop thinking about how much I missed her still. 

So, that's it. Rest in Peace, Cori. You were loved then. You are still loved and dearly missed now. 

Cori, self portrait. 1990-91