A Surly Girl's Guide to Life

Once upon a time the Internet was a friendlier place. A place where people had conversations – not just monologues of self-righteous indignation or idiocy – and this speakeasy of the past is where I met a truly and divinely weird woman named Jodi. She was smart as fuck, but cut from a wholly different cloth. She was a witty and clever writer. A savvy (and savage) food critic. A woman of faith. A bell ringer. A goth. And a quilter.

We met on a now defunct blogging site called Open Salon. By the time I started writing there, Jodi was already a legend. Her posts were thoughtful, reasoned, well-researched, and frequently snarky at a level it usually takes decades of experience to achieve. I immediately wanted her to like me. To like my writing. I wanted her to be as impressed with me as I was with her.

Over the course of a few years through our writing we became friends. Eventually, we formed a social group with a few other women. We talked. We wrote. We supported each other. We collectively called ourselves “The Bitches”. For a while, we had a Twitter account called Bitchileaks whose tweets were comprised of snippets of our daily conversations. Jodi was one of the pillars of this group and it was when her real life started to pull her away from the online world that our group started to fall apart. She was our glue. She was the best of us, and the youngest. We’d keep up with each other here and there via social media, but gone were our days of chatting for hours about everything and nothing.

I met Jodi in person only once in the 14 years we’ve been friends. 5/6s of the Bitches gathered together in Canada for a weekend, because these kinds of meetings need to take place in a neutral country. Jodi and her husband, Phoenix, arrived with their 4 children, and I pretty much screeched “The Munsters have arrived!” as they pulled in the driveway. These two goth parents and their offspring were a sight to behold. Her children were a complete reflection of their mother. They were all smart, funny, creative, and weird in all the best ways. Watching them over the years from the window of Facebook they’ve only grown to be more like their mother. She raised them to be inquisitive, tolerant, smart, and above all to be themselves, fully and unabashedly.

This weekend for no good goddamn reason at all Jodi left this world. I’d like someone to blame. It would be convenient. But clearly, the powers that be needed her elsewhere. And we will get just what we deserve in her absence.

I hate it when death claims anyone, but this time I think Death got more than he can chew. He took the brightest and darkest light from the night, and frankly, I hope he chokes.