I always thought that Sarah was beautiful and full of life. She was on the short side but she was full of life. We’d been friends since high school and everyone knew it because we were so much alike. Everyone would say we were “connected at the hips”, and we didn’t mind it. We spent all of our time together, and people usually assumed we were sisters.

Once college came around things changed. I majored in photography and she majored in law. We still hung out often but her personality changed. Her roommate was the beauty pageant type and Sarah and I used to make fun of those types of people, so naturally I was alarmed when she started dressing and acting like those girls. It started simple but rapidly progressed and before I knew it she was nothing like the girl I met in high school she was like the girls I hated in high school.

After a few months of this behavior I decided that we were better off acquaintances than best friends. Life moved on. I fell in love, got engaged, and worked part time to pay for college and so on. I’d wonder what she was up to when I’d do what Sarah and I used to do, but with my fiancé.

One day she called me out of the blue asking if I wanted to go out to lunch. I accepted, missing my best friend. Of course I soon figured out that she had every other girl’s dream job; she was a model. While I was off falling in love, she was discovered by this modeling company and became their spokes girl. She acted like she was happy and wanted nothing more in life but I knew she was unhappy, and I felt bad for her, so I decided to give her another chance.

As the months past Sarah and I became as close as we were in high school, except she was still a model and I was still in college to be a photographer. When I got married she was my maid of honor and she let me practice my photography on her when she wasn’t working. She was still an excellent model and she was becoming more and more famous. Instead of being on a little advertisement she was on the cover of magazines. Although she loved the money, the longer she was a model, the more depressed she became. She’d love to quit but she had convinced herself that she had no other talents and that no one else would want her as an employee. I, as well as others, often told her that she could do anything and be great at it, and many jobs would love to have her, but she didn’t believe us. I don’t know maybe she didn’t want to.

I knew she needed help, but I didn’t know how to help her. She had become so miserable in her “glamorous” life that she was like a zombie. She was quiet and never wanted to go out and have fun with me and other friends. I could go for days and not hear from her and every time I would become more worried that I’d never hear from her again. I’d call all the time, she’d just never answer. It had been two weeks and no one had heard from her or even seen her at all. At that point I knew the truth; I just prayed I was wrong. I drove to her house not shocked to see her car was there but her house was dark. Normally people just think “oh she’s sleeping”. It was noon. I knocked on the door as hard as I could. There was no answer. At that point I knew there was no way I was wrong, so I ran around back and go inside through her back door. I searched that house so rapidly that I didn’t notice that it looked like no one was living there. It was so clean and unlived in. I had gone through almost every room. The only room that was left was the bathroom and I knew what to find so before I even opened the door I took a breath and prepared myself.

Seeing her unconscious, skinny body there on the floor will never leave my head. Pills were everywhere. After I called the police, I went downstairs and realized the shape of the house. At that point, there was no doubt in my mind that she did this on purpose. As I waited I sobbed for the best friend I’d lost. All because I wasn’t around to remind her of why we made fun of the type of girl she had become. She was like my sister and I loved her like she was. I knew she was always prettier than any girl out there and she was too pretty and amazing to be a model, but I guess she didn’t think so.

At her funeral a few weeks later her family asked if I could speak about her, and all she had meant to me. I did, but I left out the day I found her. I decided to not even tell my husband that it was on purpose, that it was an accident and I even told her family that I’d prefer people not know that about my best friend. So to everyone else Sarah was a beautiful model who accidentally took to many pills and died, but to me she was and still is my best friend, who I met in high school, went to college with, watched as she became a successful model, and a beautiful and full of life person.