For Bailey

With this school year coming to an end, there is one thing I never wrote about that I feel deserves to be talked about and remembered.

January 4, 2021 is a day that I will never forget. This is the day that the world took my best friend away. Not just from me, but from so many other people. Bailey Dwyer was a light in any room that she stepped into. 

I want to tell her story from a friend’s perspective, from little stories and memories that people would not know about. 

The way that I met her was a story that I never fail to smile at when telling. We were at orientation walking towards Taylor Hall when the instance happened. She was with her mother and I was alone so I was afraid to talk to anyone. Everywhere on campus, there are small poles that look like chess pieces. Bailey almost walked into one of those and that is how our friendship happened. I asked if she was okay and the rest is history. Her clumsiness always made life a little more interesting. 

We then sat with each other at the event we were going to. She was so bubbly and energetic that it rubbed off on me. Then she noticed there was a boy behind us alone too, CeeJay, and she started a conversation with him. We then eventually became a trio because she was so adamant about her adding us on Snapchat. June 5, 2019, really is a day I will never forget either. God or whoever is up there put her in my life for a reason. 

There are so many memories with her but one I will never forget is when we explored downtown Kent on move-in day. I wanted Insomnia Cookies so I dragged her and CeeJay to go with me. We went to Insomnia then realized we wanted icees. We then took the longest way possible to Sheetz because none of us knew the city and we kept getting lost. We eventually got the icees and on our way back got stuck in a thunderstorm. We ran into the nearest KSU building that we saw. We may have been trespassing because it was so late, but hey, the door was open so we took it as a sign that it was okay. I truly think back to that night and how surreal it was. It was all of our first days of freedom and we ran with it. Nothing held us back, not even a thunderstorm.

Bailey was truly a free spirit and did not let anyone stop her. She could make friends with anyone that she spoke to, even if it was just once. She just had that lasting effect on anyone. I have never and will never meet anyone that has the same energy as her. Whenever people hung out with Bailey, you did not have to fill in the quiet space. It was never awkward. That is just kinda how it was around her.

Did she have her bad days? Yes, everyone does. But, did she make everyone feel better even if it meant pushing herself aside? Yes. She put everyone else before her. That is the one thing I always told her not to do, but she was too stubborn and caring to listen. 

She really knew how to make me feel more confident in myself. If I did a new eyeshadow look I was unsure of, she was the first to hype me up and make me feel confident. If I did not feel pretty, she knew what to say to make me feel better. She truly flirted with me better than anyone else could have. She just always knew what to say. 

Bailey was a journalism major, one of the best journalists I have met. She wanted to start her career in music journalism, “Rolling Stones is end game,” she said to me. Then when she was “too old” for music, which in her words was being in her 30s, she would eventually do criminology and autopsy reports. 

She had her life planned out, even if there were road bumps in the way. The one thing about Bailey that I admired was she always went with her gut. If she wanted to do it, she did it. Nothing or no one could stop her. 

Although she worked at Dunkin, Starbucks was always her thing. When we were on campus, you could find us at the nearest Starbucks. Our last time hanging out, we went to Starbucks to try the new drinks that just came out in March 2020. Mine was god awful but she loved hers, so it was worth it. 

Starbucks became a routine and our thing. If she did not want to go to class, I would suggest Starbucks, and then she would be right there. She loved matcha, which I do not understand, but she was never afraid to try something new. 

For this part of telling her story, I asked some of her closest friends from Kent to talk about her or their favorite memory of her. 

“She’s the definition of being beautiful on the inside and outside. I’ve never met anyone at Kent who didn’t want to be her friend,” Sophia Shea said. “Just super cool to talk to and have fun with, even though she had a tough exterior, she was a softie on the inside I think.” 

Shea said one of her favorite things about Bailey was how she felt about herself when she was with her, “She pretty much forced me to wear her Docs to Euro because I said they made me feel confident.” 

Another memory she had was when they wanted to talk to each other in the winter, they would throw snowballs at each other’s windows. 

“Bailey was my first friend in college. She was the first person to actually become my friend that wasn’t forced, it just happened naturally,” Benji Galela said. “We were in the same class together, and we complimented each other’s outfits and that’s how it happened.” 

That friendship grew as time progressed, “It slowly became this thing where I would go over to her dorm and would study,” Galela said, “We could just sit in the same room and enjoy each other’s presence.” 

“Bailey wasn’t a perfect person, she had her flaws. As bubbly as she could be, she was a very anxious person,” Galela states. “ She never really showed her sensitive side because she wasn’t like that. When I saw her sensitive side, it made me realize she wasn’t perfect. But that’s why I stuck around because she wasn’t perfect. I didn’t want a perfect person.”

Bailey helped Galela get out of his shell, “She would always slide up on my snap story and boost my confidence when I needed it.”

Allison Robinson shares a memory that will stick with them forever, literally, “Alfred and Bruce. We got matching tattoos on the seventh day that I knew her,” Robinson said, “They are just dinosaurs, there was no thought behind it. It started as a joke, but then we walked to downtown Kent and got them.”

Bailey just had that impact on everyone, “She had something in common with everybody,” Robinson said. “She was just so easy to bond with.”

 “I don’t have words to describe who she was. But she was one of the best people I’ve met in my life,” Robinson reflects on.

Everyone has their own memories, versions and stories of Bailey. She truly meant a lot to so many people, even if she did not see it herself.

I miss your TikTok spams. I miss your random Snapchats at 3 a.m. I miss your hugs. I miss everything about you. I still wear our matching chokers and the bracelet you gave me. I miss my person.

It has been hard to talk about you in the past tense, but your story deserves to be told. Everyone deserves to know you. I will be the Mas to your Billy, your LOH and the Best to your Buds forever. Long live you, BQD.

• Alexandra Golden
• hcksu
• hercampus kent state
• Kent State University
• ksu