Ruby
Ruby was three things, from the moment she was born. She was fierce, fearless, and feral.
She was born with fat rolls and dimples. She kept the dimples her entire life. She was the baby of the family. The youngest, and then the only one left at home. She was adored. And she adored her family, but mostly her mama.
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When she was little, she held baby chicks and baby pigs, she ran through fields singing at the top of her lungs in her deep, raspy voice. She danced and wore dresses, her curly hair flying behind her. She was always Ruby-brilliant, blunt, and sarcastic. She sparkled with electricity her entire life, a humming energy that never dimmed.
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She was born with an adult sense of humor. Her second grade teacher once said that Ruby was the only child in the class that understood his humor, and that he would often make jokes, and she would be the only one to get it.
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As she grew, she excelled academically. But she struggled socially from the time she was very small. Friendships were impossible for Ruby. She was louder, she was more abrasive, and she was smarter than most kids her age. She internalized this from a very young age, knowing that she was different and not knowing why.
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She struggled with insomnia and started showing signs of anxiety, and so she started therapy when she was nine. She also started getting in trouble at school, because she would get done with her work and be expected to sit quietly. Ruby was not quiet a day in her life.
Ruby spent the bulk of her life feeling very alone and very different.
From the time she was little, she struggled with sensory issues. Structure and routine were incredibly important to Ruby. This led to a general lack of enjoyment in most things that people take for granted. The world was so loud and bright and sharp. Ruby was not a fragile flower, but she was sensitive. She saw the world differently than most people. And she expected kindness from a world that would not give it to her.
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She fell in love with art, she drew portraits and cartoons, drug addicts, and house fires, and so many cats. She inserted her amazing sense of humor into so much of her art. In middle school, Rubys mental health declined rapidly. She could not enjoy most things. She still loved art, anything inappropriately funny, and her family. But she was exhausted most of the time.
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She was given a host of mental health diagnoses and meds. She willingly went to therapy and dutifully took her meds, because she wanted to feel better. These things helped and didn’t help and she struggled every day, which led to an impulsive suicide attempt and a hospitalization.
Ruby had started silently self-harming, in an attempt to release some of her overwhelming feelings. Her second day at the hospital, she was given a preliminary diagnosis of autism, and when she came home, she had an evaluation. Her formal autism diagnosis was a relief to her.
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She embraced autism at first, because it explained the bulk of her life to her, it gave Every day her an answer as to why she couldn’t enjoy most food, why she struggled with social interactions, why she wore earplugs. It also explained her hyper fixations, because Ruby loved to learn about random things that interested her. She loved cats her entire life, and most often, if you saw her at home, she would be cuddling a cat. She could sit and talk your ear off about cat facts and cat breeds. She had loved Lalaloopsy dolls since she was tiny and could tell you every single one by name, while proudly showing you her large collection of boxed and unboxed dolls.
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After her hospitalization, Ruby stopped attending public school and instead enrolled in virtual school. She went to work with her mom every day. She got a job, and she genuinely enjoyed it. She was brilliant at masking, and it made her a wonderful employee. She was incredibly proud of herself, and began saving money. She made plans for her future, the first of which was to graduate high school a year early.
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But then, in early 2024, Ruby’s mental health took a nose dive. By that point, she had been doing so well for so long that it took a bit to figure out what was going on. She struggled with suicidal ideation and intrusive thoughts. They scared her and she was very open about it. And then they were gone and she would feel better. And then they were back.
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She attended therapy, her meds changed, and she went to the hospital. She wanted to feel better, and yet she was so tired. She struggled on a daily basis, every day of her life. And yet she maintained her brilliant sense of humor, she maintained her grades, she continued to do art and snuggle cats and her mama.
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She was still Ruby, she was authentic and hilarious, while she struggled with overwhelming feelings, but she became very self-aware of the impact of her feelings on other people. It impacted every relationship that she had.
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She was brilliant and beautiful, snarky, and wild, every day of her life.
Ruby brought electricity and magic to every interaction that she had. Ruby was a glitter-bomb, she left sparkles wherever she went. She was authentic, even on the hardest days.
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And then, in the blink of an eye, in one impulsive moment of overwhelming feelings,
she was gone.