Melancholy
I'm not sure how committed to writing about the following in a public forum I'll stay, but I figure I'll keep going until I don't feel like it anymore. Yesterday I found out law school peep and semi-frequent commenter on this lj mathwhiz78 was found dead at his house in Minneapolis. It has not been made known to me what the cause of death was, however in the end it doesn't matter terribly. I've spoken about Mike to many of you at one time or another, and some of you already know then that at best I found our friendship complicated. Nine times out of ten I believe he had the best of intentions, but he often had trouble with social cues and boundaries that rubbed people the wrong way. Often I found this very difficult to deal with, though I respected that he owned the problem and was making genuine attempts to improve. And I am ashamed that I was sometimes unable to be as open-hearted to him as he nearly always was to me. My only defense is that I met Mike during a very stressful set of years in my own life and I didn't always have the emotional capacity to give more. That said, that does not excuse me much. I can only continually work towards becoming a kinder, more patient person and hopefully the rest will come.
Death within my larger circle of friends, family, and acquaintances invariably leads me to spend more time than normal dwelling in the land of Alex. Not that that is always bad, but when my mood is down it's less likely to be the happier stuff. It's sadly my reality that all my losses After Alex are refracted through the prism of his death - not particularly sadder for me, but I feel badly that so far each additional loss is either serving as some kind of direct conduit to him or is by comparison less devastating because it is (thankfully) unlikely to be as seismic to my life as losing him was.
Death within my larger circle of friends, family, and acquaintances invariably leads me to spend more time than normal dwelling in the land of Alex. Not that that is always bad, but when my mood is down it's less likely to be the happier stuff. It's sadly my reality that all my losses After Alex are refracted through the prism of his death - not particularly sadder for me, but I feel badly that so far each additional loss is either serving as some kind of direct conduit to him or is by comparison less devastating because it is (thankfully) unlikely to be as seismic to my life as losing him was.