You know what really bugs me?
People who act all devastatingly sad when someone they barely know dies. It must be the guilt of not knowing them, or the romanticizing of death itself.
If you didn't know somebody, knowing they're dead must make you feel terrible for not taking the time to get to know them. Especially if you were acquaintances. They were a nice person. You feel bad. But you also can't be close friends with everyone in the entire world. The romanticizing thing makes sense. Maybe you've never experienced the death of someone close. You act like you think people should act, and you stir up all of this attention. It's not attention given to the DEAD person. Just attention for you, so people know you're really trying to "experience" death.
I witnessed this at the funeral of one of my high school friends. They invited the entire school as part of an "honor shield" and we lined the aisles to the church. It was a very nice touch, and very sad to see her family so upset.. but she deserved it. She had a terrible life, and to see her family, who hurt her more than they helped her, so moved... it was like a +1 for us. They finally understood what it was that had happened, and their contribution. Most of all, they probably remembered the good times, and how much they loved her. I hope that family is somewhere safe. I never met her mother and her father but what I remember being said about them was not great. I did meet her little brother once, and he was also a victim in the situation. Anyway, getting back on topic..
People who have actually had someone very close to them die will know that there is no romance. There is no vie en rose where everyone acts in an orchestrated way. They dress in black and weep and cry. Sure. There is a lot more than that that goes on, though. There is actual pain. Real pain. Hard times. I guess I can understand someone wanting to experience life and everything it offers - love, pain, life, death - but do it in a real way. Pick something that actually affects you. Don't cry for yourself. Don't insult this person's real family and friends who probably have it way rougher. You barely knew the person.
I can't put my finger on why this bothers me so much. I haven't experienced many types of death, but I have experienced pain. And I have experienced the death of a friend. I know it's not the same as the death of someone I'm intimately close with. This I know. I would never show up at an acquaintance's funeral and put on a show. Because that person has actual people who actually are really hurting.. and somehow it seems rude to me. I'm sure if that person were sitting alone at home, they would not be cranking out those tears. Funerals are weird and I've been known to cry at them.. but it's different because you're crying because you feel sad for the people involved. Not because you've lost something.
So the whole reason I'm writing about this is because there's this girl who is acting all emo and shit on twitter and her public journal. She rode the bus to classes every day with a female classmate for a few years. She has never once mentioned an ongoing relationship with this friend, and I've never heard her even mention her in casual conversation. I've never seen or heard her text, email, or have any kind of facebook interaction with this girl. Fast forward a few years, and she finds out through friends that this girl has had some terrible accident and is dead. I'm sorry, but if you never talk to the girl, don't IM her, don't make some attempt at keeping a frienship going, then you have not earned the right to write 7+ blog entries about how much it meant to you when she would ask, "Can I share your seat?" and how she would doodle on her notebooks. She wasn't doodling dreams. She was probably just bored and coloring something. She wasn't being intimately friendly. She just wanted a fracking seat on the bus. I mean, COME ON.
There must be some kind of mental condition where you feel really close to someone, but they don't even consider you a friend. That really disturbing French film... what was it? A la folie... pas du tout. Thank you wikipedia. So, in this film the main character is a woman that is portrayed as being in love with her neighbor, a successful, handsome, single man. It shows her buying him flowers, clips of her out to an event with him in a dress, talking to him, him giving her a set of his keys. Then in the middle of the movie, it's flip flopped to "reality." She is a mentally ill woman who believes she's in a relationship with him. In her own mind. The keys being exchanged were in case he locked himself out, as neighbors often do for each other. The party where they were standing together, it shows him talking to his real love interest and she's just trying to brush shoulders with him. Finally the girl is put in a mental institution where she makes excellent progress. They release her having put her on steady medications, and she leaves. The janitor goes in to clean out her room, and behind a cabinet he finds a rainbow mosaic of the guy's face made out of her pills. Glued to the wall. She never took any of them, and only told the doctors what they wanted to hear.
It strikes me as a bit mental. What this girl is doing. I mean, okay. I understand if it's hard for you to handle knowing somebody who died. Everyone reacts differently, and not everyone has experienced heavy loss. But, come on. COME ON. It makes me so mad. The only time I've ever done something violent was at the funeral of my high school friend. I saw these bitches who never looked twice at this girl, who was obviously in pain and going through something tough. They were bawling and putting on a show at the funeral. I remember. We had locked hands to form our "guard" as she was wheeled to the front of the church. All of her real friends had this look of utter disgust and shock on our faces that these bitches would ruin the funeral for everyone who really cared about her and go howling and fanning themselves like they gave a shit. Please excuse my profanity. You can see I still get fired up about this, even after 10+ years.
Two of these girls were standing outside the church after the ceremony and I somehow bumped into them. I was managing the best I could, being upset myself, but handling myself pretty well, I think. So these two girls were gossiping about our friend's personal life. They were saying stuff like, "I bet she was on drugs" and "I bet she killed herself and made it look like an accident." Wait a minute. Weren't these girls sobbing just 10 minutes earlier? I couldn't keep my mouth shut. I had to stick up for my friend at her funeral. I wasn't going to let her be disrespected again and again. I told them it's not their place to say anything about her. They had never even cared enough to strike up a conversation with her. One of those bitches started yelling at me and accusing me of being a druggie too, and I smacked her right on the steps of the church. It was not one of those fake slaps. My hand left an imprint on her cheek.
That was the only day I ever did anything violent in public. It was not one of my proudest moments.
Sorry for not being my usual beam of sunshine. I promise I'll balance this out with a more positive entry in the future.
If you didn't know somebody, knowing they're dead must make you feel terrible for not taking the time to get to know them. Especially if you were acquaintances. They were a nice person. You feel bad. But you also can't be close friends with everyone in the entire world. The romanticizing thing makes sense. Maybe you've never experienced the death of someone close. You act like you think people should act, and you stir up all of this attention. It's not attention given to the DEAD person. Just attention for you, so people know you're really trying to "experience" death.
I witnessed this at the funeral of one of my high school friends. They invited the entire school as part of an "honor shield" and we lined the aisles to the church. It was a very nice touch, and very sad to see her family so upset.. but she deserved it. She had a terrible life, and to see her family, who hurt her more than they helped her, so moved... it was like a +1 for us. They finally understood what it was that had happened, and their contribution. Most of all, they probably remembered the good times, and how much they loved her. I hope that family is somewhere safe. I never met her mother and her father but what I remember being said about them was not great. I did meet her little brother once, and he was also a victim in the situation. Anyway, getting back on topic..
People who have actually had someone very close to them die will know that there is no romance. There is no vie en rose where everyone acts in an orchestrated way. They dress in black and weep and cry. Sure. There is a lot more than that that goes on, though. There is actual pain. Real pain. Hard times. I guess I can understand someone wanting to experience life and everything it offers - love, pain, life, death - but do it in a real way. Pick something that actually affects you. Don't cry for yourself. Don't insult this person's real family and friends who probably have it way rougher. You barely knew the person.
I can't put my finger on why this bothers me so much. I haven't experienced many types of death, but I have experienced pain. And I have experienced the death of a friend. I know it's not the same as the death of someone I'm intimately close with. This I know. I would never show up at an acquaintance's funeral and put on a show. Because that person has actual people who actually are really hurting.. and somehow it seems rude to me. I'm sure if that person were sitting alone at home, they would not be cranking out those tears. Funerals are weird and I've been known to cry at them.. but it's different because you're crying because you feel sad for the people involved. Not because you've lost something.
So the whole reason I'm writing about this is because there's this girl who is acting all emo and shit on twitter and her public journal. She rode the bus to classes every day with a female classmate for a few years. She has never once mentioned an ongoing relationship with this friend, and I've never heard her even mention her in casual conversation. I've never seen or heard her text, email, or have any kind of facebook interaction with this girl. Fast forward a few years, and she finds out through friends that this girl has had some terrible accident and is dead. I'm sorry, but if you never talk to the girl, don't IM her, don't make some attempt at keeping a frienship going, then you have not earned the right to write 7+ blog entries about how much it meant to you when she would ask, "Can I share your seat?" and how she would doodle on her notebooks. She wasn't doodling dreams. She was probably just bored and coloring something. She wasn't being intimately friendly. She just wanted a fracking seat on the bus. I mean, COME ON.
There must be some kind of mental condition where you feel really close to someone, but they don't even consider you a friend. That really disturbing French film... what was it? A la folie... pas du tout. Thank you wikipedia. So, in this film the main character is a woman that is portrayed as being in love with her neighbor, a successful, handsome, single man. It shows her buying him flowers, clips of her out to an event with him in a dress, talking to him, him giving her a set of his keys. Then in the middle of the movie, it's flip flopped to "reality." She is a mentally ill woman who believes she's in a relationship with him. In her own mind. The keys being exchanged were in case he locked himself out, as neighbors often do for each other. The party where they were standing together, it shows him talking to his real love interest and she's just trying to brush shoulders with him. Finally the girl is put in a mental institution where she makes excellent progress. They release her having put her on steady medications, and she leaves. The janitor goes in to clean out her room, and behind a cabinet he finds a rainbow mosaic of the guy's face made out of her pills. Glued to the wall. She never took any of them, and only told the doctors what they wanted to hear.
It strikes me as a bit mental. What this girl is doing. I mean, okay. I understand if it's hard for you to handle knowing somebody who died. Everyone reacts differently, and not everyone has experienced heavy loss. But, come on. COME ON. It makes me so mad. The only time I've ever done something violent was at the funeral of my high school friend. I saw these bitches who never looked twice at this girl, who was obviously in pain and going through something tough. They were bawling and putting on a show at the funeral. I remember. We had locked hands to form our "guard" as she was wheeled to the front of the church. All of her real friends had this look of utter disgust and shock on our faces that these bitches would ruin the funeral for everyone who really cared about her and go howling and fanning themselves like they gave a shit. Please excuse my profanity. You can see I still get fired up about this, even after 10+ years.
Two of these girls were standing outside the church after the ceremony and I somehow bumped into them. I was managing the best I could, being upset myself, but handling myself pretty well, I think. So these two girls were gossiping about our friend's personal life. They were saying stuff like, "I bet she was on drugs" and "I bet she killed herself and made it look like an accident." Wait a minute. Weren't these girls sobbing just 10 minutes earlier? I couldn't keep my mouth shut. I had to stick up for my friend at her funeral. I wasn't going to let her be disrespected again and again. I told them it's not their place to say anything about her. They had never even cared enough to strike up a conversation with her. One of those bitches started yelling at me and accusing me of being a druggie too, and I smacked her right on the steps of the church. It was not one of those fake slaps. My hand left an imprint on her cheek.
That was the only day I ever did anything violent in public. It was not one of my proudest moments.
Sorry for not being my usual beam of sunshine. I promise I'll balance this out with a more positive entry in the future.