maryanne

something happened tonight that will change me forever.

tonight my neighbour committed suicide.
I've been sitting here for too long re-reading that sentence over and over again and it never fails to make me feel sick with sadness. what comes next? what to say, to feel, to do. is there such a thing as a writer's block towards real life decisions? what about that space between the chapter just written and the one that is about to begin? this is where I find myself now; straddling the all of a sudden not-so-certain verbs and nouns of chapters written and those to come. this is the time where everything is put into perspective. you start to analyze every page, every line, every word, every little bit of punctuation you've used along the way. a favourite english teacher of mine did tell me once that
"you can't dwell on the past. it'll drive you crazy."
I didn't know at the time, but now I realize that it's a problem I deal with a lot more than I would have ever thought. in life, there are no such things as revised final drafts. we are all living rough copies.

she has two kids. a boy and a girl. I was standing outside my house in the snow. I couldn't see myself but i'm sure if i could i can imagine what my expression would have shown -- nothing. it's that moment you see in the movies when one character stands completely still as the world continues to spin out of control. and then I saw her daughter step out of the house and I looked at her. i don't think I will ever be able to explain what I felt at that moment. all of a sudden I was right beside her and then the next thing I knew, I couldn't let her go. at first, it felt like one of those hugs where only one person was making the effort but I didn't care at all. this little girl did not need to make any sort of effort right now; she just needed to be. I held on and, totally unexpectedly, felt her tiny arms give me one squeeze.

just when I think i can't possibly have a thought left in my head, it completely fills up again. it feels never-ending. I don't know whether it's pointless to try to understand these kinds of things, but I can't not try. i have too many questions and not even close to enough answers. after deciding to go out to keep my mind off things, I came home with my mission not even close to being accomplished. I needed to talk. i woke up my dad. we started talking about it and i was just trying to understand how people think, when he said, "it's all dark. they don't see any light." i understood what he was trying to say in that moment. it made me mad and sad and helpless and a million and one other emotions. I want to be a light, a match, a lamp, a flashlight. I would set someone's world on fire if i had to, to get them to open their eyes and see something.

I will never understand this crazy place we live in.