This Star Won't Go Out

Sometimes, though, I forget an equally important part of Esther. It’s incomplete to characterize Esther as having been completely open and vulnerable. I forget, even though I constantly remind myself, the Esther who was a young, scared, sick, lonely, flawed girl. I forget, because it took me several months to find out that she had cancer. I forget, because there were far fewer conversations when she told me how sad and depressed she was when her friend passed away, or how futile waking up seemed when she would only go back to sleep, or how isolated she felt even though with the rapt attention of her loving friends and family. I forget, because even though she was a few years younger than me, sometimes it seemed as if she had the maturity and wisdom of an old sage. I forget, because I don’t have to think about death every day except in philosophy classes. I forget, because it’s hard to realize that the same person who gives you so much love, and to whom you give so much in return, can go through the kinds of pain and suffering that nothing you do can alleviate.

Maybe this is why it’s painful to remember Esther. It could have been easy to just recall her laugh, her idiosyncratic typing, her sense of bouncy fun, even her unbounded love, but it’s more true to her own way of loving to remember all the little cracks in her image through which she occasionally permitted us access to her deepest concerns and fears. She would want us to remember her authentic self, including all the imperfect parts. What’s the point of opening yourself up to your friends if they don’t notice you in your vulnerable state? The point of it all is to love friends completely and utterly, at their best and worst, and to love more than just the good things. It’s about showing that you’re willing to accept them for whatever they are, that they should not feel insecure or self-conscious in your presence, which can be a hard task to achieve. Esther really knew how to make you feel constantly that she cared deeply about you, to show that she loved you with or without saying so.

—ARKA PAIN



Make-A-Wish!

Esther, Teryn Gray, Lindsay Ballantyne, Katie

Twyman, Madeline Riley, Abby Drumm,

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, 2010


Catitude is a really difficult thing to try to describe—even I have trouble trying to articulate the weird and amazing relationship between all of us. I have other friends who have said they are envious of the total openness and uninhibited love that exists between all of us, Catitude, as friends. I guess that’s a pretty great thing to be a part of. There has never been a time where I have felt like I could not share anything and everything with someone in the chat. I’m not sure if that unique aspect comes from forging our friendships online, but I am sure that it has a lot to do with how we came together through Esther.

“Esther shared herself through this chat and through us and so, in turn, we shared right back. It became an open platform for discussion on all of life’s problems and curveballs, but also a place where we could race to see who was the fastest at answering Harry Potter trivia (something Esther and I constantly battled for the winning title). We trust and accept each other in a way that we can’t always trust and accept ourselves—through the loving of each other’s faults, we grow to become okay with our own.”

—TERYN GRAY


The Will Grayson, Will Grayson event was my first IRL (in real life) meet up. It was Esther’s too.

On my end, I was terrified. I had to drive a few hours to go to it. Everything was planned. That day kind of solidified everything. Friends that had been friends before an actual meet up all seeing each other for the first time. Too nervous to laugh too loud, talk too much, hug too much, say the wrong thing. All I wanted to do was stare at them to make sure they were real and they wouldn’t run away from me. That was one of the scariest/most rewarding days of my life.

—SIERRA SLAUGHTER



Will Grayson, Will Grayson release,

CONNECTICUT, 2009



“Manly” Esther with friend, 2009


The following excerpts are taken from one of Catitude’s earliest abandoned projects. In the course of sending each other snail mail, someone came up with the idea of a shared journal. Esther was the second and last to receive this notebook that we had planned to send through the group multiple times. This is the epitome of us as a group, diving in with gusto and following through on maybe half of what we set out to accomplish. It’s a snapshot of Catitude as we were in 2009, including a lot of our running jokes. Esther refers to Valerie as a dog, calls herself “unmanly” when she’s tired, and casually slips in quotes from A Very Potter Musical.

—LINDSAY BALLANTYNE





CATITUDE STALKER NOTEBOOK



September 17, 2009


HI EVERYONE, THIS IS ESTHER, AND I LOVE THIS NOTEBOOK. I’m on an actual IRL phone call with Lindsay Ballantyne, the awesome person. She just set her phone down to put her hair up and I could hear her make noises like “nghngg” eheheh.


I’m trying to do our adorable apostrophe character apostrophe on paper and Lindsay wants me to try to draw a D with eyes but somehow make it look like a pipe. Oh Lindsay here I go . . . ‘D’ wtf ‘D’ wtf ‘D’ Lindsay what the hell am I supposed to draw I do not get you :/(<3) And now she’s telling me about rooming with Geri and her other roommates. They would send videos through Facebook. My pen ink color changed! :O!