Letters to Anabella

Or why I'll never delete my Facebook account

“The Schoolroom” by Vanessa Bell (1938)

In my final year of school, I had to transfer. For an assortment of reasons, I’d had to change schools quite a few times in the past; from just moving cities to my dad deciding to go cheaper after the divorce, I did not necessarily look at being the perennial new girl as a problem. I have, and – if I am to be honest – still have, a tendency to get fed up with people and drop them. This is not a cute personality trait to have, but now I guess I am old enough to look at it for what it is. I am a person who longs to move on. So yeah, while it is quite awkward to get into a new environment for what will only amount to a few months, that also gave me a sense of freedom: if I hate everyone and everyone hates me back, it won’t matter because by November we will never have to see each other again.

A week before term started, though, I found out a former crush (a.k.a. the first boy I ever loved, whom I would one day go on to write a novel about), someone who had attended the same school his entire life, was not only also changing schools but transferring to the same place as I was. We ended up in the same class. I had the benefit of foresight, however, so though at the time I told myself I was completely over him and the whole story and didn’t even have time for schoolboys anymore, I made sure to prepare to see him there and for him to see me (looking quite hot in the first day, of course). And though it takes ages for me to trust people enough to open up, I forced myself to be outgoing enough to make friends from day one. See, I didn’t want any actual friends. I was already planning my life post-secondary school. I just wanted a group of mates so that that persistent reminder of the recent past wouldn’t have too much of a chance of getting too close. But then, of course, I ended up with what was probably the best friend group I had ever had in any school. It wasn’t really about him anymore.

While I thought that changing schools in my final year would mean provisionally joining some pre-existing clique, our group was mainly made up of people who ended up in that school under similar circumstances. There was Claricia, who loved Kristen Stewart and whom Lady Gaga herself gave a follow on Twitter. She was the first friend I made there. There was Natália, who was bright and funny. She loved RBD, was great in Spanish, and wanted to be a psychologist. Her mom bought her fancy chocolate that was shaped like seashells. Barbara was gorgeous, like drop-dead, could-be-a-model gorgeous – she actually was a professional model for a while. She was quieter, but somehow also the one in our group who mingled the best with the rest. One of her eyes was blue, the other one was brown. Felipe was very tall, extremely beautiful, and also in love with Gaga. He never took shit from anyone, not even from a homophobic sociology teacher (!!!!!!!) who was the bane of our existence. He majored in fashion, then became a pâtissier in Paris. We met once again in London in 2017.

And then, there was Anabella, and to be honest, I always kind of liked her best.

Anabella was beautiful, but more than that, she had taste, a sense of style. She was an artist, and whenever I think about her, two things come to mind. I see her, pen in hand, sketching mid-class; I hear her delicious, infectious laugh. She was cool and had famous YouTuber friends at a time when that actually meant something, but she also had a melancholy about her that was somehow built into her artistic sensibility, I think. It gave it a backbone. When she told me she needed to create things, it never seemed like an affectation. It wasn’t. She had an understanding of pain. It had to do with personal, family stuff, but it also had to do with the beautiful, gorgeous person that she was and her unique view of the world. She took care of her younger siblings and was constantly talking about them. Later, I learned that her sister became an artist, too.

I hated her boyfriend. He was older and, even then, I felt that he was somehow taking advantage of her. The whole being mature for your age thing was very true in her case because of the things she had gone through, but it still felt very wrong for her to date a man who was bald. We had horrible arguments about it because I just wouldn’t leave it alone. I know better now than to give unsolicited advice, but back then it seemed like a must because everybody else seemed to think he was so normal.

I loved her very much. I loved the things she said, the way she said them; I loved her face – high cheekbones, dark hair, a very straight nose and doll-like lips – and her laugh. I loved her sense of humour, and the way she also told me that I made horrible romantic decisions at the time (which I did).

I cared for our group. They cared for me. We had fun together. We talked shit about that weird school, with its psychotic teachers and weirdo students. But I was terrified of becoming attached to them, which, of course, I already was. I felt that for them to keep liking me, I had to keep on being interesting, which translated in my brain into emotional unavailability but also actual unavailability. When they set up dinners for Felipe to cook for us, I always, always told them I was busy, even if I wasn’t. I had a date, I had a concert, I had a trip booked, sorry, no-can-do. And then that became our in-joke thing – oh, of course Marcela can’t make it – so I obviously felt that I couldn’t go back on it. I told myself there was no point in getting too attached – remember, you are parting ways by the end of the year anyway.

I was so afraid of allowing them the opportunity to dump me. I told them that at one point. They kept making plans: we’ll go to the same uni, we’ll stay in touch through Facebook and do our dinners and stuff. I told them they were deluding themselves and that after school was out, we would probably lose touch in two months. Felipe and Anabella did actually end up attending not only the same university, but studying fashion together – Barbara even modelled for them at one point. But I was also mostly correct. Claricia cut us out and disappeared from social media. Natália went to Mexico for a while and did become a psychologist. We exchanged messages on Facebook for a while, but that was all. Felipe and Anabella had a falling out in college and later made up, I think, but she stayed close with Barbara. I stayed close to nobody: I had no idea what I wanted to pursue, I was in love with a horrible and much older person who sucked all the life out of me (hypocrite, much?) and had a raging eating disorder that was extremely high maintenance.

But Anabella never let go of me. She would write me messages on my Facebook wall. Sometimes she would try to set a meeting up though we were both horribly busy. Sometimes she’d just remember me and write or call. To this day, I often go on Facebook – a platform I abandoned, alongside most millennials, somewhere around 2017 – hoping that it will remind me that on this day in 2012 she wrote me something. Sometimes it does.

She was such a great friend. We would talk on the phone for ages. This one time we met up at Cinelândia to buy tickets for a Zeca Baleiro concert at a small theatre. We got excellent seats. I think the buying of the ticket and the show itself were the only times I actually met her outside of school. I was very much into photography at the time so I took my camera with me. I would also record videos of songs on my Cybershot and post them to YouTube. I lost everything from that night. I posted it on some channel I had at the time, but it’s gone. I think I recorded it on a DVD-R and misplaced it somewhere. So, because I was an idiot, I lost the only photo of us we ever took. I hate myself every time I think about it. Yet, for some reason, the artist’s official channel reposted one of the videos; because she was sitting right by me, you can hear her laugh at one point.

Around the time we met, I got into wearing heavy make-up because I wanted to look older. It was probably a bit too Pretty Reckless–oriented for 8am, but she would tell me I should always, always wear red lipstick – that my lips had been made for it. About a week or two ago, another friend told me the same, and it got me thinking of Anabella, of how much I missed out on because I was terrified of getting too involved with people who cared about me, in case I started needing them in any way. I can never get that little parcel of life back: it’s gone forever. I won’t have a chance to reconnect.

Anabella died of COVID in April 2021 at 29. Though we were not at all close anymore, she sent me a follow request on Instagram in 2017; I followed her back, we liked each other’s posts occasionally. She seemed to be in such a great place. I kind of hate myself a little every time I think about her and miss her. I know I was often not a good enough friend, and that I missed out. I am terribly afraid of forgetting her voice, her little expressions, her laugh. In our messages to each other on Facebook, we mention talking on the phone a lot, even after school wrapped. I can’t remember that properly. In one of the messages, I tell her how I called her and her sister picked up, but I thought it was her because they now sounded so alike. I am so afraid of forgetting, but I already am. So I write letters to her, even if only mental ones. I tell her about crushes and heartbreak, I wonder what she would make of things. The thing with grief is that it accumulates; the people you lose, they stay with you, but their absence also does. It takes up so much room, but I allow it to. I will never delete my Facebook account.