I wasn't going to write about it given my penchant for being flippant, but then I got to thinking that maybe I needed to just for my own cathartic reasons. Writing is my therapy after all. But I promise I'll at least try to not wax too much philosophic.
Monday the 15th my husband and I were eating lunch at a Chinese restaurant celebrating my doctor telling me I don't need to be on crutches anymore when the TV stopped showing soap operas and started to show the bombings at the Boston Marathon...which New Kid Joey McIntyre had just finished running and where I knew there were people I know cheering him and others on. For one horrifying moment I had no idea who was alive or dead (fortunately they are all fine and uninjured and back online where they belong.) Who really gives a shit about crutches?
Wednesday, after some dumbass sends poison to the POTUS, a Texas fertilizer plant blows up in an explosion that for both my husband and I immediately conjured up images of nuclear bombs. It also reminded me of when the PEPCON plant blew up in Henderson when I was a kid...only there weren't residential areas backed up right next to it because it was a rocket fuel plant for God's sake. One of my coworkers has friends in the fire department in West, Texas, and the last time I talked to her there'd been no word on them. I kind of have to walk with a cane. Big whoop.
Late Friday night another of my coworkers got word her brother had been killed by a drunk driver at about 5:30 pm. I feel really guilty complaining about anything right now.
And yet I still do, because we as humans are inherently selfish and as long as it didn't happen to us there's a little part of us, maybe the five year old us that never goes away, that thinks, "What's the big deal? It didn't really affect me, so business as usual, right?"
But that's NOT right, because even though I didn't know anyone who got hurt in Boston it is still my favorite city the way Paris is some people's favorite city. And though the people I know in Texas all seem to be okay, there's a whole town that's half gone because the "it won't happen to me" mentality of people stacked a lot of flammable crap in a place with other flammable crap. And even though it wasn't my brother who was killed senselessly by a twenty seven year old woman who was drunk at 5:30 in the afternoon and walked away from the accident without a scratch, I am still almost paralyzed with fear when my husband leaves for work in the morning because I've been reminded that life is not guaranteed, and that it can be taken away from you in less than a second, and there is not really a damn thing you can do to control this.
This week has reminded me all too well of not just my mortality, but the mortality of everyone I love. Like Mr. Bennet says in Pride and Prejudice (I'm paraphrasing here) I'm sure that this feeling will pass sooner than it should and I'll be back to my whiney self in no time. But for now I am going to try to not be that negative whiney girl I usually am, and hopefully I can stick with it for at least as long as I've been off of caffeine (which has been since February if you care to know.) If nothing else, I'll try to follow this advice...
