Not your average American girl
A short story about my adventures with Serena Mulligan.
Serena was like nobody I had ever met before and she is one of the people who has influenced me the most. She had just turned 21 when we first crossed paths and my 20th birthday was coming up. We were both studying abroad for a semester from our separate universities. Serena studied at Wisconsin University in America and I studied at Leeds, England.
Obviously we could both gather where we were from due to our definitive accents. We chose to study abroad at the same university and live in the same student accommodation grounds. The accommodation was a gated area called The Village and it held over 150 semidetached 5 bedroom houses, it was huge. There was many people that I could have been put with but me and Serena were placed into the same house. I was also put with Nic who was very Australian, Andy who was also American and some other guy who I cant remember the name of, but I do remember he didn’t do his dishes. So there it was, the people I would be spending 5 months of my life with in a country half way around the world to where I am from.
Serena, Nic and myself clicked straight away. Nic was unintentionally offensive with no filter and Serena was more conservative. Within the first few days we had house drinks together. Found out Serena wasn’t much of a drinker but when she did have a drink it was whiskey straight, seemed kinda hard core for someone who didn’t really drink but I thought it was cool. By the end of the night and after a few games of ‘odds on’ me and Nic had swapped Pajamas, Serena was tipsy and we all knew each other much better.
Once uni started at Macquarie University and I landed a job at a cocktail bar I was pretty busy and I made many other unforgettable friends along the way. After a couple of months living in Sydney, I went on my first little trip away for a few days to Melbourne with Serena, Tom and James. Tom and James also lived in The Village. When we were booking it I had nothing to do with choosing the Air B&B that we stayed it, i’m pretty easy going and didn’t really mind where we were staying. Little did I know that they had literally booked a small caravan in somebody’s front garden. I was not immediately impressed and to be honest those thoughts didn’t change at all about it. Tom and James slept on the double bed together and me and Serena slept on the pull out bed. It was not comfy and it was freezing but I was looking forward to the next day of adventure. The next day consisted of me driving for 11 hours and it was amazing, driving down the Great Ocean Road. The next day Serena decided she wanted to drive so we rented another car for the day again. She had never driven on the right side of the road and within the first few seconds of her driving she hit another cars wing mirror. The car was fine so we drove off, however I was not because I knew I had to be constantly on the ball with her driving since Tom and James couldn’t drive. It was more effort me watching her drive than driving myself. The only reason she was driving was because it was cheaper for her to rent the car since she was older than me. We could have swapped seats, which I suggested a few times so I would be the driver. Serena wasn’t one for breaking the rules and didn’t want me driving as my name wasn’t on the insurance.
After an amazing and adventurous few days in Melbourne, driving the Great Ocean Road and through the Grampians, we had to return to Sydney and back to uni. I slept the whole day we got back since we had stayed up all night in the airport for our 6 am flight. Typical students trying to save money and not waste dollar on accommodation.
It wasn’t long after this trip that me and Serena were talking about another few days away. In the meantime we had discovered our favorite place to go for brunch and pancakes and I had dragged Serena on a night out, we even went shopping to get her some heals before the night.
I wasn’t the healthiest person back then, my diet was crappy foods and fizzy drinks. Serena would watch me put a pizza in the oven and say: “You’re having another pizza?”. Her diet baffled me, she would have a chopped pepper and cucumber for her dinner and snack on dates and olives. It doesn’t seem so strange to me anymore but my idea of snacks were very different back then. We would have house dinner nights where we all cook together, these were my favorite and we tried to do it once a week.
As the stress of uni was coming to an end Serena, Kat (who lived next door) and myself went for a trip to Cairns for almost a week. We climbed Fitzroy island in the burning sun, went snorkeling and had ice cream every day from the same place. I had the most chilled yet exciting few days, I even got my first tattoo there. It was a wave, pretty cliche but I love it and the memories. I dragged Serena along to about 10 tattoo parlors before I decided which one I wanted to go to.
As we approached the last few days of our semester abroad it would be an understatement to say it was emotional. Me and Serena had gone from strangers to sisters in those 5 months. We were total opposites and I never expected to have such an amazing friendship. I met many amazing people there that I will never forget.
When I returned to England, Me, Serena and Nic would arrange group face-times. This was an extremely difficult task given we each lived in very different parts of the world, but we put in the effort and it was worth it when we managed.
In March 2018 Serena was working in Spain, which is pretty close to England so we just had to meet up. I checked where the cheapest flights from Leeds where to and it happened to be Ibiza. Serena was on board so we booked the flights for a weekend catch up in Ibiza for 2 weeks later.
We stayed in a cheep hostel which I was pleasantly surprised by how nice it was. I noticed how cheap it was to rent a motorbike for the day and thought it was a great idea. I had never ridden one before but for 25 euro for the day I was sold. Serena also thought it was a good idea, which made me feel more comfortable with it. She had to get on the back of one I rented because she left her drivers licence in Madrid. We were riding the bike for approximately 10 seconds before I came to a corner and fell off and the bike went skidding across the road. I was pretty badly injured but didn’t notice until later on in the day. A ‘great’ idea ended up being one of the most expensive 10 seconds of my life since I lost the 200 euro deposit for breaking the bike. Once we embarrassingly left the shop we didn’t even get down the road before we were laughing about it, it could have definitely been a lot worse, but it wasn’t so we had to laugh about it.
We explored round the full island for the weekend and managed to catch a beautiful sunset at Es Vedra. We laughed, reminisced about the previous year and had a big ass catch up.
We kept in touch after Ibiza and the group chat with Nic would get very active. There became longer gaps in us chatting but it just meant we had to have a longer catch up when we did.
Serena messaged me in May 2019 for a catch up, I was completing some of my last assignments for my masters and didn’t have much else to tell besides that. I was literally writing up an essay for my feature writing module as we were chatting, going back to my work as a waited for her to reply. I asked how she was doing, expecting her to say something similar to me. But she didn’t. She told me how she had been recently diagnosed with brain cancer and was given months left to live. I stopped breathing as I read and reread what it said. Then I placed my laptop next to me on the sofa in the living room and ran to my room. I was confused and didn’t know what the right thing to say was, I was very upset trying to text her back through my blurred vision. I was positive for her as she proceeded to tell me about a trail drug she was on, she seemed calm through her texts and had come to terms with it. It massively put things into perspective for me and the uni work I was stressing over minutes before was now unimportant.
I thought about booking a flight to Connecticut to go and see her, but I was pushed for cash and she said she couldn’t travel anywhere as she was loosing her eyesight. I regret not going.
We contacted each other more for a few months. One of our friends from Sydney had a baby which was lovely and another was planning a wedding. I had plans to return to Australia at the end of 2019. I had wanted to return since I left. One day at the end of September I went to message Serena and I couldn’t. All of her social media was gone. I wasn’t sure if she had done it herself, all I could do was hope the worst hadn’t happened.
Late on Christmas eve night I received a message from Nic asking about Serena and if I had heard anything. I hadn’t and we both expressed our concerns and I got very upset that we were unable to wish her a happy Christmas.
I finally went back to Australia in January 2020. I would think about Serena and how she was doing and check to see if her social media was active. In my first few days I met two girls and I was chatting to them about the last time I was in Australia and about Serena. They suggested I google her name as I might find information.
A few days later I was sat on my own in McDonald’s with an iced coffee and a hash brown. I was sat thinking for a while and people watching. Then I decided to google. It wasn’t very hard to find information. I found Serena Mulligans eulogy. I broke down as I read the description of the person I knew so well. I read about her sense of adventure and how she had friends all over the world. I read about her kind heart and how she is an inspiration. I thought about our relationship and our memories, I was and will forever be angry that she was cut short. I’ve never known anyone to have as much appreciation for life like she did. She has influenced my health, my outlook on life, morals, togetherness, appreciation and travel. Life isn’t fair, Serena was 23 when she passed away.
Back in 2017 when we were in Australia together, Serena went to Byron Bay on her own for 5 days and loved it. She said she could live there she loved it that much. She told me about the nice people she met and how chilled out everyone was and that she went to the beach everyday and to the light house for sunset. I decided I needed to go there since I had heard such good things. It was amazing and as I sat on the beach reading my book I was thinking to myself, I know Serena would have been doing exactly the same thing on this beach just a few years ago.
I am not a person who believes people should meet and things are just meant to happen and its written in the stars or whatever. But I am grateful to have known such a wonderful soul and shared so many memories. I’m thankful to whatever computer system stuck us in the same house in Sydney because what came after that I will never forget.
R.I.P Serena Mulligan x
