ilovelife94

A friend of mine was shot in the head.
He isn't actually a friend, but I had come to think of him as the paradigm of love via clicking on an absurd amount of pictures of him and his girlfriend, who I once knew, and thinking about how beautiful they looked together. In picture after picture they smiled and held hands and were by far one of the most beautiful couples I have ever seen. A paradigm of love. In my own way, I loved him. So by calling him a friend out loud, I connect myself to what happened and garner, feed off the sympathy of people who don't have the tenuous connection to the tragedy that I do.
I do this because he got shot in the head, and I am the one who needs saving. I know their grief isn't rightfully mine, but I wallow in it selfishly. I have not, like many others, voyeuristically posted condoling things on Facebook, my (and their) primary connection to the incident. I haven't sent her loud, public sympathies so my name, too, will appear on her wall of support. I have not tweeted about it. I have talked about it and thought about it and read about it feverishly. But I know the grief doesn't belong to me, so I have tried to bathe in it as quietly and privately as possible. I don't know him. I have never MET him. His shooting was but a single isolated incident not mine, but it stands for a bigger whole I am facing.
He got shot, and I need saving from a reality that is becoming clearer and more threatening every day.

So I loaded up my bed with books. I don't know what else to do. I feel, for the first time in my life, really and truly alone.
The only thing that comes close to this was when my high school sweetheart and I had broken up at the beginning of my college career, as a freshman, but at that time there were already new romances on the horizon, new people to talk to, new places to see. I was a freshman in college, for fuck's sake. I was alone with 24,000 potential new friends.
But now I am truly alone. The ultimate promise of social networks -- never being alone -- has failed me. I don't know who to talk to, but more than that, I don't know what to say.
"So this guy I've never met got shot in the head, and I'm not OK."

What it means
It means pain is real. That at some point in my life, I am going to feel real pain, real grief, real tragedy. It means my parents and my sisters and Creighton and everyone I love is going to die. It means life is random and quite possibly meaningless. It means, perhaps most terrifying for me, that I am not in control.
I woke up a few weeks ago from a sound within my apartment that meant I was not alone. This is a particularly problematic sound to someone living alone -- a crash in the other room, a squeak in the hallway. In my sleepy, half-blind haze, I saw someone creeping down the hall. I thought to myself, "Holy shit, I'm going to die." I called out in my fiercest whisper, "Get out. I have a gun." I did not have a gun, but I hoped the threat would convince the person peering into my bedroom to reconsider. I grabbed a pocketknife I keep by my bed and flipped it open, hoping the minuscule "click" it made was close enough to the sound a gun chambering to be convincing. The person did not move. A few painful, heart-racing, eternal moments later, and I tried again. "Hello?" Nothing. I couldn't decide at that point if a face was peering into my bedroom or a shadow.
It was a shadow.
I have not been the same since.

I can't stop replaying what may have happened in Earl's house when he got shot in the head. After reading newspaper articles online, I have a pretty good sketch in my head. I have considered where the bullet entered his head. I have thought about the screams of the other people in the house as the gun went off. I have thought about the expression on the face of the would-be robber, the entire face widening for just a fraction of a second in realization he just shot someone -- another human being whom he might have known -- in the head, before sprinting out the door. I have thought about Annalee receiving multiple phone calls and her hurried panic to get to the hospital. I have tried to put myself there.

I turned to Didion. I did this because I read on TheMillions.com she wrote "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" because she was disillusioned with a place to the point of pain, perhaps depression. I was disillusioned with a place, an industry, a life.
My library didn't have "Slouching Toward Bethlehem." I picked up "The Year of Magical Thinking." I knew she had lost a husband and daughter in rapid succession. I read the inside jacket and discovered her dealing with that grief was the topic. Because I had put myself in a position to adopt a grief not my own, I took it home. Someone I knew was possibly losing a loved one. One day, I would lose a loved one. I needed this book.

Years ago, I sort of knew a man who was involved in an awful motorcycle wreck. The details, by the time I heard them, had been exaggerated, but involved something about how his knees got caught underneath a truck bed while he was still on the motorcycle. Driving. You knew it was bad because DiscoveryHealth worked him into one of those "I shouldn't be alive" episodes with two other people. One of them was a black girl who got stabbed. I remember watching it with the motorcycle-wreck survivor in the room. I remember the doctor on screen talking about brain surgery.
After the wreck, Josh was in and out of the hospital for a few years because every time he got better, he would stand on his knees wrong and need another surgery. I remember the only time I visited him -- with my sister, during Christmas break when I was possibly a freshman in college. I remember thinking I didn't know if he would walk again, if he would get out of the hospital for good and make a recovery at all. I remember thinking it was sad he was spending Christmas in the hospital, that he might always spend Christmas in the hospital.
He is now married with a child. He appears to walk fine. I would bet he lifts his child over his head effortlessly, that he plays football with the child and doesn't even think about his knees. I wonder if he ever dreams about the wreck.

I have thought a lot about aging, about how our cells break down with years. About how we are so limited. About how one day I'll be fatter and saggier. It's already beginning.

Time heals. Time breaks us down.

Earl is in critical condition in a hospital. He is alert and apparently responsive and still alive. He is breathing on his own. I hope beyond doubt and science and reason and probability that he lives. At least for now.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

The first day alone is always the worst.

I stare at my empty apartment, and I feel empty. The bed. The kitchen. The couch. His lack of clutter. His not being here.

I used to believe relationships were this big crazy things you couldn't control. It was in the language, even. "What if I fall out of love?" "What if I just wake up one day, and we don't click anymore?"
Recently I've been thinking that's bullshit. There are always going to be other people for me to fall in love with. There are always going to be arguments. 
You look at those couples who just obviously "don't work." They're so different. They don't communicate well. They don't click. But they're still together. Sometimes, they're still happy. Relationships aren't these mystical beings like dragons that you have to tame. They can be as wild or as sedate as you want. You can stay together, or you can break up. Only thing you can't control is the other person. 
It's like a railroad. If you are on parallel tracks going the same directions, you can sync up. You have to talk about it. "Hey, how are you feeling about this today?" "Hey, I'm not crazy about you today." But just because there are off days, just because there are days when you feel like, "Jesus, I've been in THIS relationship before," or "He didn't thank me enough" doesn't mean you're doomed. Relationships aren't doomed. They aren't fated to be one thing or another. You and one other person have complete control of the trajectory of the relationship.
I'm not saying I'll never experience another breakup. I'm not saying I've figured it out. But I'm OK with this.

Not "this." Not this empty apartment. Certainly not this cold bed. But with watching Troy at 3 a.m. Getting old and more than likely fat. 

I am at that age where I'm not old, but I can feel it coming. I'm out of college. But I'm still young and crazy and invincible. It's still me against the world. But I look at old people differently. I see them and think, "Holy shit, that's going to be me." I can feel the changes just around the corner. I can feel myself thinking the young whippersnappers are so crazy. We can be as young as we want. I hope I'm young when I'm 70. But I'll probably take the changes as they come. I just don't want them yet.

I probably have another 10 years of youngishness. People aren't old until they're 30, right? 32? I don't even want to get married until I'm 27, have kids (MAYBE) at 35. People live longer now. I can do what I want. But I've started thinking differently. I suddenly want to wear a helmet when I bike. I want to eat right and exercise. I am thinking about what I'll be like when I'm 60. I know I have to pay for things, and I need new clothes. I think it's called "maturity." I think it's called "being an adult." But being an adult does not mean "being old." Yet.

It's both sad and normal. Passage of time. A Visit from the Goon Squad, yar. Life feels totally out of control and totally malleable. It's terrifying. It's exciting. It's boring as fuck, depending on if it's my off day and if I'm by myself staring at a wall.

But I'm not really worried about "us." I live 300 miles away, and it's the least worried about "us" I've ever been. It sucks that my weekends are Tuesday-Wednesday (for now). It sucks that I have to come home to an empty apartment and then I cry for a few seconds before telling myself to suck it the fuck up and stop being a child, crying like someone took your damn pacifier. Put on your big girl pants and go hang out with Brian/other friends. You'll live. It sucks to love another human being for everything they are (and are not). It especially sucks when they drive you absolutely nuts and then they're gone and you wish they were here to drive you nuts some more. 

Maybe we'll move away together, and it won't work out. We'll move into a smallish apartment we share and drive each other crazy. I'll want him to do the dishes. He'll want me to vacuum. We'll argue about money. I'll listen to "Big Girls Don't Cry" as I pack my stuff, sobbing, moving out, moving on. I'll cry for months after the breakup, randomly, when it hits me, so tempted to just text him, both of us being too stubborn.

But maybe not. "In five years time, we might not get along. In five years time, you might just prove me wrong." My mom would say, "If it's meant to be, it'll work out." I say, "If we make it work, it'll work." I feel like I've said that before. I don't know.

But I wouldn't change it for anything.