everyone's life was better with her in it.

a year ago today (if you're going by actual calendar date, it'll be tomorrow 3/25), the world lost Stephanie Gotz.

i say the world and not me, not her family, or her friends.. because i have never really seen anyone so universally loved. everyone who knew Steph could claim her as their own and they'd be right. she'd stay on the phone for hours for anyone, listening to them cry or tell stupid stories or make her sing them songs. she'd go see anyone. she made everyone feel like they were a priority in her life- which they were. she knew exactly how it felt to lose someone and she didn't want the remaining people in her life to feel that way.

i first met stephanie when i was 15 years old. i'm going to be 23 soon. she knew me through braces and bad hair. she knew me before I took my SATs and had a cell phone. she knew me when my family still had 5 members and she knew me when i lived in my childhood home.

i knew her through all of that too. i knew how nervous she was for prom. i would be on the phone with her til 3am on schoolnights and she would let it slip that she should really get started on a spanish project... that was due first period. i would tell her that she should get off the phone and go do it....

.. but what if she took that time to do something fun instead? what if she took that time to go take a walk outside in the sun or to listen to just one more song or to dance one more time? what if i talked to her for 10 more minutes? i'd have 10 more minutes with her that I can't have now. if she did all of those things, would her life have been that much more fulfilled? would it have made her that much happier in the end?

hindsight is 20/20 and looking back, i wish i could tell her how much longer she was going to have. how i should've taken the bus to go see her that many more times. how i should've hugged her a million more times. i miss going to her house, i miss walking through her door. i miss throwing ice cubes on the floor for brandi and playing with her pink guitar. i miss listening to bad music in her car and going to Wawa. most of all, i miss her telling me that its ok to cry, that it will get better. she was helping me through my dad's death and told me this: "you have your good days and your bad days. it won't hurt any less but you'll learn to live with it." it makes me so utterly emotional that i now have to apply that to stephanie.

everyone's life was better with her in it. i can honestly say that i dont know a single person who was negatively impacted by her. its so rare in this world to find someone who was so full of light, who made you feel better simply being around her. everyone is in your life for a reason and once that reason is fulfilled, i feel that they move on, one way or another.

steph was in all of our lives for a reason- we each have our own. if the general reason was to make sure that we don't take a single thing, day or person for granted, then so be it. a year ago, the day it happened, people started calling everyone they knew. they ended conversations with 'i love you' and promised to go visit their friends. has everyone upheld those promises? no. people still don't see their friends as often as they should, people still take it for granted that everyone will be there. it takes 2 seconds to send a text. take the time.

there's a line from a song that describes stephanie best:

"that girl had so much love, she'd wanna kiss you all the time."

steph was one of those people who would just come up to you and hug you. she loved everyone so much that she just wanted to be around them.. it was literally overflowing from her and she'd have to hug or kiss you. we ended most every one of our conversations with 'love you!' just because she was that the type of friend that you would do that with. you never ever questioned her love for you because she let you know it all the time.

i used to get mad that people who knew stephanie barely at all or in passing would be so upset, as if it made the people who DID know her seem less geniune in their grief. they couldn't be feeling the same amount of pain, the same amount of heartache when they go to call her and they realize that they can't. when they drive by her exit and have no real reason to get off. but i've come to terms with it and realize that they're likely more upset over the simple loss of someone great. that the potential of having that person prominently be in their lives is gone. how the entire world doesn't ache every day for steph's loss, i do not know. i just know that her friends and family see it and we feel it every single day of their lives. there's peace in knowing that she's with her mom now, someone she missed every single day for the last 5 years of her life. she's happy now.. i feel it.

we miss you fefe.