(no subject)
Every once in a while I think of life as a timeline. I can see events at each little juncture of life, like filing papers in some metallic drawer. I also seem to focus on death a lot; the end of the timeline? I'm not sure and will never be sure until it happens to me. However, I've been weighing the density of these events as it gets closer to the end of the timeline for at least this part of life, and it feels like the pace is picking up. It's awakening my inner carpe diem.
When Cason and Casey died last year, of course I was distraught, but it seemed so isolated. Firstly, I didn't know Casey, nor of her metasticizing disease, very well anyway. And Cason I hadn't talked to in a year before his truck's brakes stopped working and he was slammed into a tree. I went to Cason's service in the school auditorium. We each took a penny with "Cheers Cason" written on them. We walked past collages and photo albums of his time. Oddly enough, I met a friend of his tonight for the first time, a girl who had spoken at the service, which is coincidental timing that I'm thinking of all this now. Despite all this, my idea was that it was horrible, yes, but it's so rare, and now that we have that tragic event out of the way, it heavily decreases the chance of it happening again.
My thinking at this moment is totally different, though. A few days ago, the sister of a few friends of mine, the Parsons, drowned in a lake in Utah. She literally fell off a raft in a lake and didn't resurface. That's it. She was almost 15 years old, and it doesn't seem like it's enough to drown someone, like you'd be able to swim back. I don't know the real specifics of it...I suppose only a few people do. But the image that I keep getting isn't even of her face or anything. It's of her brothers, the grief they are feeling. They're both highly involved in theater, and I once saw Chris in the lead role of a one-act play my friend wrote and directed and such. There's a moment of that play where Chris did such a fantastic job that he was able to make his character silently cry. That image, of the tears on Chris' face, is what gets me. Because that was acting. This will be real. He'll be experiencing real pain. This is why, even though I didn't even really know Mallory, much less than I knew Cason, this seemed much more real to me. It also added to my perception that maybe tragedy isn't an isolated event...as time goes by.
And just two days after I heard about the Parsons, today, I took in another tremor; I was told that a friend of mine, who will remain nameless, was checked into a hospital a week ago for having a psychotic breakdown, and still isn't lucid. Still isn't lucid! He doesn't have a CLUE what's going on. And this is someone who would be the absolute last person in my mind for this to happen to. Dead last. It makes no sense to me. A psychotic breakdown? Someone who I've talked to so many times, have laughed with (and at; he is so incredibly funny), have lived around...is now somewhat insane. Literally insane. It's enough to make me never want to use 'insane' to describe anything wild or cool like I would normally.
The frequency...it's sort of making my mind feel like the timeline is going through a funnel. From age 0-16, I didn't know tragedy. Whatever tragedy I might have claimed to know was trite. Now it feels like the real deal is coming through, and with more and more frequency. I feel like something is going to need to be balanced out, like a novel; there are deaths, there are debilitating injuries and illnesses, varying degrees of tragedy that will happen as the timeline gets pushed into the funnel, condensing everything. There are also varying degrees of how much these tragedies affect me, and it almost makes me feel like the tragedies that will crush me most are yet to come...and at random intervals and times. Not only is there balance in novels, but it feels like it works towards events inevitably. We move down the timeline, and everyone's gets closer to their tragic event as it goes along; it should be obvious that these tragedies feel more condensed the more I live. Glass half full, or half empty? Are you living more, or are you dying more, as you move along the timeline?
I don't want to put out the wrong idea. I'm not depressed, I'm not gaining some sort of hopeless, pessimistic world view. I'm more becoming aware of every event, whether it be tragic, wonderful, etc. Maybe it's just my increased ability to notice that gives these events their meanings. This is just the viewing lens that I possess right now.
My life is actually pretty excellent right now.
When Cason and Casey died last year, of course I was distraught, but it seemed so isolated. Firstly, I didn't know Casey, nor of her metasticizing disease, very well anyway. And Cason I hadn't talked to in a year before his truck's brakes stopped working and he was slammed into a tree. I went to Cason's service in the school auditorium. We each took a penny with "Cheers Cason" written on them. We walked past collages and photo albums of his time. Oddly enough, I met a friend of his tonight for the first time, a girl who had spoken at the service, which is coincidental timing that I'm thinking of all this now. Despite all this, my idea was that it was horrible, yes, but it's so rare, and now that we have that tragic event out of the way, it heavily decreases the chance of it happening again.
My thinking at this moment is totally different, though. A few days ago, the sister of a few friends of mine, the Parsons, drowned in a lake in Utah. She literally fell off a raft in a lake and didn't resurface. That's it. She was almost 15 years old, and it doesn't seem like it's enough to drown someone, like you'd be able to swim back. I don't know the real specifics of it...I suppose only a few people do. But the image that I keep getting isn't even of her face or anything. It's of her brothers, the grief they are feeling. They're both highly involved in theater, and I once saw Chris in the lead role of a one-act play my friend wrote and directed and such. There's a moment of that play where Chris did such a fantastic job that he was able to make his character silently cry. That image, of the tears on Chris' face, is what gets me. Because that was acting. This will be real. He'll be experiencing real pain. This is why, even though I didn't even really know Mallory, much less than I knew Cason, this seemed much more real to me. It also added to my perception that maybe tragedy isn't an isolated event...as time goes by.
And just two days after I heard about the Parsons, today, I took in another tremor; I was told that a friend of mine, who will remain nameless, was checked into a hospital a week ago for having a psychotic breakdown, and still isn't lucid. Still isn't lucid! He doesn't have a CLUE what's going on. And this is someone who would be the absolute last person in my mind for this to happen to. Dead last. It makes no sense to me. A psychotic breakdown? Someone who I've talked to so many times, have laughed with (and at; he is so incredibly funny), have lived around...is now somewhat insane. Literally insane. It's enough to make me never want to use 'insane' to describe anything wild or cool like I would normally.
The frequency...it's sort of making my mind feel like the timeline is going through a funnel. From age 0-16, I didn't know tragedy. Whatever tragedy I might have claimed to know was trite. Now it feels like the real deal is coming through, and with more and more frequency. I feel like something is going to need to be balanced out, like a novel; there are deaths, there are debilitating injuries and illnesses, varying degrees of tragedy that will happen as the timeline gets pushed into the funnel, condensing everything. There are also varying degrees of how much these tragedies affect me, and it almost makes me feel like the tragedies that will crush me most are yet to come...and at random intervals and times. Not only is there balance in novels, but it feels like it works towards events inevitably. We move down the timeline, and everyone's gets closer to their tragic event as it goes along; it should be obvious that these tragedies feel more condensed the more I live. Glass half full, or half empty? Are you living more, or are you dying more, as you move along the timeline?
I don't want to put out the wrong idea. I'm not depressed, I'm not gaining some sort of hopeless, pessimistic world view. I'm more becoming aware of every event, whether it be tragic, wonderful, etc. Maybe it's just my increased ability to notice that gives these events their meanings. This is just the viewing lens that I possess right now.
My life is actually pretty excellent right now.