With My Head Under Water

I blame my recent hiccup in post frequency on my being home too much lately, which is my fault, so ultimately that's not an excuse. Whatever. The point is, I have spent the last two weekends back here instead of at college. The reason for this is a combination of bad timing and bad planning (respectively), and so far I lack any good stories regarding being back. Hence the lack of posts. Mostly my time has been taken up with dealing with specters from the past and this new spin on the concept of "moving on". Wouldn't we all love to believe that the moment we left something, a place, a person, anything that was an important part of our lives, that it would all fall apart in our absence. Not out of malice, but we want to feel as if we were vital, and that people would really miss us. Evidently, this is not the case. Life marches on with a disturbing lack of grief and it takes old teachers a minute to realize you even left. Old friends make new friends who seem to replace you, maybe only because you're all too scared to admit you miss each other. Nostalgia becomes a sign of weakness because no one wants to be the one who hasn't moved on.

About a month ago, a friend of a couple of my classmates killed himself. I never met him, never even herd of him before, but I've thought about him a lot lately. It was totally unexpected; he was well liked by everyone, perfectly happy. Then he went off to a very respectable college, fell into deep depression, and was found dead in his family's vacation home. Now, if you look through the facebook profiles of his friends, he's in virtually every one. The whole town has a backdrop of sadness. It's a familiar feeling; it comes up every time local high schoolers die, but never like this.

No one knows why he did it. No one was there. I can't imagine any of the friends he made in his brief time in college knew him well enough to see what was wrong, and of course everyone from back home had been scattered across the country. Now they're all left to wonder and try to find some solace in their shared, if distantly, grief.

Life marches on. That must be what they hope for each of their old friends now. 'Who cares if they forgot me, as long as they're doing alright'. Maybe dying is the best way to get remembered; it's hard for their lives to march on when you just took your own?

Suicide is a waste of opportunities to live. Wasting opportunities is like suicide. Carpe diem.