My Heavenly Friend, Tess
I wish this were her writing you were reading right now.
By Victoria @sillycreativexx
written April 2025
I’m trying to sit down, write a bit, and edit, and things aren't quite coming together. It's making me think about my friend, Tess. I can see it like a video in my mind: me sitting at my wooden desk in my freshman year dorm, eyes stinging, staring at my Google Docs page with the cursor flashing at me. Lucky for me, I had Tess Hurley on the phone, who was a TA for an English class at the time and also one of the wisest people I knew, beyond just knowing her shit with writing. Very lucky for me because I did not know what the fuck a rhetorical analysis was and I needed help desperately. It was my first college essay assignment, and I was already worried about being able to get through the semester. Tess and I met at our therapeutic high school for “emotionally fragile girls”, as the website said at the time, and in those years, I only did a handful of multi-page assignments. We didn't have homework, which was awesome because, of course, who wants to deal with that, but many of us were just trying our best to stay out of the hospital with varying degrees of success in doing so. Almost half of the girls attending were living in the residential program connected with the school, with no internet access, and that's where I got close to Tess. God bless her, I think she lived there all through high school. I just did a year. I don't know how she dealt with it.
Back to that first paper. Writing is something I still struggle with. It's something that held me back from going back to school after dropping out years ago. Very much like right now, I was staring at the screen not knowing what the fuck to do. But Tess did. Never was I so ecstatic to see a document littered with highlights and comments going all the way down the side of the page. Chatting on the phone, she talked me through it, multiple times, validated my confusion, and helped me realize that I didn't have to run away just because I needed to write an essay. I remember thanking her repeatedly, telling her I had no idea how I was going to get that done without her, basically that she saved my life via English 101 essay. I’m crying a bit while writing this now because I dream of what Tess’s life could have been without illness and family/housing issues taking it away from her. Issues that were way beyond what I could influence, but play through my mind every day because I wonder why one of the wisest people I ever met had to go that way. Circumstances that were so complicated and broader than suicide prevention can touch in the restrictions of our systems today that I don't even see it as self-inflicted in a way. But I try to see beyond her end, and that's part of why I’m writing this because I wish she could just live. I don't know how to celebrate her life, so I’m just trying my best. She didn't have the support that I am so lucky to have. I wish this were her writing you were reading. I wish I could reference her as my English professor friend. Imagine how lovely the full circle moment would have been, taking another shot at getting my degree, and her thriving in the career that she was so meant to do. Instead, I’m going back to school now, over four years after first trying during a grief-induced hypomanic episode after she died. When I think about her, the gratitude for being supported in my education and having a safe place to live with an emotionally safe family is overwhelming, and I try to bring her with me through her memory in my mind. That's all I know to do right now: for her and myself.