musical ramblings... and sad stuff.
So I'm totally a creeper over at fandom secrets. It's kind of hilarious, the kind of stuff that shows up there. Not to mention some of the stuff makes me feel a lot better about some of my guilty pleasures and that sort of thing. It's kind of ridiculous. But anyway, there was a Tanz der Vampire secret on there... with a beautiful Herbert. Like, total girl Herbert. So I creeped on the comments, and got links to that particular Herbert's performance. And I remembered why I love German musicals.
They're so ridiculously long-winded and elaborate and silly and just all around WONDERFUL. Not to mention there's a lot of... ahem... pretty vampires that aren't from Twilight... so yeah. That and the TdV reference on Glee a few weeks ago = me listening to all my German music/not-crappy Dance of the Vampires demos. It's fun, finding old music and listening to it again. It makes me wish I knew German, though...
This also led me to go fanfic-hunting. Because that's what happens when a musical has a open ending and your favorite character gets ditched by his true love and stalked by a pretty-boy vampire. And let me say right away, Alfred/Herbert fic makes me giggle. Like, I can't even read it without laughing. And the vast majority of anything with Alfred in it also has Herbert, which means I read it. And I'm not usually one to read fanfics for musicals I like. ((is totally a hypocrite, since she wrote *all* the Heights fics over on fanfiction.net))
Yeah, musical ramblings is pretty accurate. But seriously, people that do not exist, you should totally look up Tanz der Vampire. The entire thing is up on youtube (with subtitles!) so it's super easy to understand and follow and all that fun stuff. Not to mention there's pretty costumes, pretty vampires... and pretty humans... and crizazy dance sequences. Seriously, if I was a dancer, I wouldn't want to end up in Cats or WSS or any reality TV show, I'd want to be in Tanz der Vampire.
Anyway, ramblings over. Now onto the sad stuff. ((lj cut wasn't working, so this is a novel))
My cousin, who was over in Iraq two-ish years ago, hanged himself a few days ago. Nobody saw it coming at all. I've barely spoken to him at all these past three years and he lived on the other side of the country, so I'm having a really hard time dealing with all this. I know I'm supposed to feel sad, but it's hard to feel sad about someone you haven't seen for three years. We were never close by any stretch of the imagination, to be honest. When we were little he was my favorite cousin, though, because he'd actually talk to me and let me watch him play on the computer. I remember at his younger sister's graduation party, he kept drinking all this beer and I got really worried that he'd start puking, so I followed him around and put pool water in his glass when he wasn't looking. I was probably really annoying, but he was always really nice about it.
He went over to Iraq on my 18th birthday. Like, legitly, he left on a plane on my birthday. I saw him right before he left and we all took pictures with him and gave him hugs and I cried the entire way home because I was scared that something terrible would happen to him. I was scared that he'd get shot or he'd get separated from his group and get lost or that he'd step on a land mine or get a grenade thrown at him or something. I raised money at school to send supplies over for him and the others in his group. We sent so much over and he said it really helped and I really felt like I was making a difference. For the first time, I actually cared about an issue and I spoke up when people asked me what I thought, because it wasn't fair that my cousin was risking his life. I told everyone who would listen that no, you don't understand what you're talking about because you don't have someone you love over there and you will never be able to tell me that war is a good thing and that it's the right thing.
I was relieved when he came home and wasn't injured. Actually, I was just relieved to have him home. We all went to a baseball game together, and I barely spoke two words to him. But that's just because I'm horrible at making conversation with people and I had no idea what I was supposed to say to him. I didn't want to ask him what Iraq was like and I didn't want to turn into a broken record telling him how happy I was that he was back home. He knew all that already. So I just smiled at him and hugged him and didn't try to put anything in his beer.
He went back to Washington not long after. We didn't know what was going to happen to him, so we were back to being worried all over again. But he got into trouble for something or other, and there were issues with him staying in the army or something, and even though he basically lost his job, I was happy because that meant he could come home and be with his family and never have to fight for anything ever again. He stayed in Washington, though, and I didn't hear anything from him after that. And then mom wakes me up earlier this week to tell me that he committed suicide.
Something's not adding up. Nobody saw it coming. How does a person hide that much hurt and pain inside of them, hide it so well that nobody notices? Fast forward to now, when I'm typing this and I still haven't cried and I'm tired of feeling guilty and I just want to sob my brains out and blow my nose until I lose feeling in my face, but I can't. It's like I don't actually believe that it happened, and my brain can't wrap itself around the fact that I'm supposed to start missing him. He's been gone for a year already, my brain's telling me, so what's the difference? There was a very small chance you'd have ever seen him again anyway, so all this did was make sure that you'd never see him again. It's not like I saw him every day or called him up every week or wrote him letters or anything. I just forgot about him, and now he's gone.
And now I feel guilty about so many things. I should have raised more money, I should have tried harder to send more things over, I should have written real letters to him, I should have actually made the effort to give him a call, I should have learned how to talk to people properly so I could remember one real conversation with him. I should have been there for him. I shouldn't have forgotten him and made him feel like he had nobody in the world to talk to. There are so many things I should have done, but I didn't do any of them. And now he's gone and I'll never be able to do any of them and for whatever reason, I can't fucking cry about it.
I need to cry over this soon and prove to myself that I still have a heart.
They're so ridiculously long-winded and elaborate and silly and just all around WONDERFUL. Not to mention there's a lot of... ahem... pretty vampires that aren't from Twilight... so yeah. That and the TdV reference on Glee a few weeks ago = me listening to all my German music/not-crappy Dance of the Vampires demos. It's fun, finding old music and listening to it again. It makes me wish I knew German, though...
This also led me to go fanfic-hunting. Because that's what happens when a musical has a open ending and your favorite character gets ditched by his true love and stalked by a pretty-boy vampire. And let me say right away, Alfred/Herbert fic makes me giggle. Like, I can't even read it without laughing. And the vast majority of anything with Alfred in it also has Herbert, which means I read it. And I'm not usually one to read fanfics for musicals I like. ((is totally a hypocrite, since she wrote *all* the Heights fics over on fanfiction.net))
Yeah, musical ramblings is pretty accurate. But seriously, people that do not exist, you should totally look up Tanz der Vampire. The entire thing is up on youtube (with subtitles!) so it's super easy to understand and follow and all that fun stuff. Not to mention there's pretty costumes, pretty vampires... and pretty humans... and crizazy dance sequences. Seriously, if I was a dancer, I wouldn't want to end up in Cats or WSS or any reality TV show, I'd want to be in Tanz der Vampire.
Anyway, ramblings over. Now onto the sad stuff. ((lj cut wasn't working, so this is a novel))
My cousin, who was over in Iraq two-ish years ago, hanged himself a few days ago. Nobody saw it coming at all. I've barely spoken to him at all these past three years and he lived on the other side of the country, so I'm having a really hard time dealing with all this. I know I'm supposed to feel sad, but it's hard to feel sad about someone you haven't seen for three years. We were never close by any stretch of the imagination, to be honest. When we were little he was my favorite cousin, though, because he'd actually talk to me and let me watch him play on the computer. I remember at his younger sister's graduation party, he kept drinking all this beer and I got really worried that he'd start puking, so I followed him around and put pool water in his glass when he wasn't looking. I was probably really annoying, but he was always really nice about it.
He went over to Iraq on my 18th birthday. Like, legitly, he left on a plane on my birthday. I saw him right before he left and we all took pictures with him and gave him hugs and I cried the entire way home because I was scared that something terrible would happen to him. I was scared that he'd get shot or he'd get separated from his group and get lost or that he'd step on a land mine or get a grenade thrown at him or something. I raised money at school to send supplies over for him and the others in his group. We sent so much over and he said it really helped and I really felt like I was making a difference. For the first time, I actually cared about an issue and I spoke up when people asked me what I thought, because it wasn't fair that my cousin was risking his life. I told everyone who would listen that no, you don't understand what you're talking about because you don't have someone you love over there and you will never be able to tell me that war is a good thing and that it's the right thing.
I was relieved when he came home and wasn't injured. Actually, I was just relieved to have him home. We all went to a baseball game together, and I barely spoke two words to him. But that's just because I'm horrible at making conversation with people and I had no idea what I was supposed to say to him. I didn't want to ask him what Iraq was like and I didn't want to turn into a broken record telling him how happy I was that he was back home. He knew all that already. So I just smiled at him and hugged him and didn't try to put anything in his beer.
He went back to Washington not long after. We didn't know what was going to happen to him, so we were back to being worried all over again. But he got into trouble for something or other, and there were issues with him staying in the army or something, and even though he basically lost his job, I was happy because that meant he could come home and be with his family and never have to fight for anything ever again. He stayed in Washington, though, and I didn't hear anything from him after that. And then mom wakes me up earlier this week to tell me that he committed suicide.
Something's not adding up. Nobody saw it coming. How does a person hide that much hurt and pain inside of them, hide it so well that nobody notices? Fast forward to now, when I'm typing this and I still haven't cried and I'm tired of feeling guilty and I just want to sob my brains out and blow my nose until I lose feeling in my face, but I can't. It's like I don't actually believe that it happened, and my brain can't wrap itself around the fact that I'm supposed to start missing him. He's been gone for a year already, my brain's telling me, so what's the difference? There was a very small chance you'd have ever seen him again anyway, so all this did was make sure that you'd never see him again. It's not like I saw him every day or called him up every week or wrote him letters or anything. I just forgot about him, and now he's gone.
And now I feel guilty about so many things. I should have raised more money, I should have tried harder to send more things over, I should have written real letters to him, I should have actually made the effort to give him a call, I should have learned how to talk to people properly so I could remember one real conversation with him. I should have been there for him. I shouldn't have forgotten him and made him feel like he had nobody in the world to talk to. There are so many things I should have done, but I didn't do any of them. And now he's gone and I'll never be able to do any of them and for whatever reason, I can't fucking cry about it.
I need to cry over this soon and prove to myself that I still have a heart.