Rabbits, Death, Etc.

I've never really liked dead things. One time, I had a rabbit named Grace because, of course I had a rabbit named Grace. Anyway, she died. I was about eight years old when I found her chillin in her rabbit pin, stiff as a board. We got her from the flea market near our house where most things are half dead to begin with, so it was kind of a miracle that she lived as long as she did. Anyway, when I found Grace, I grabbed her and attempted to shake her into life again, but it was pointless. Grace was dead, and I was breaking down. To be fair, I had a pretty ugly road with death at a young age because my mom's parents were 46 and 60 when she was born, so a huge portion of my family starting dying before I could really understand what that meant. That, and I had watched Titanic pretty recently, and that whole Rose lives to be really old and then dies thing really got to me as well.
Because death happened so often, I didn't really understand why it happened--to me, death was kind of like getting a cold. People got death, and then you just kind of died. The whole thing was really unfortunate, but it happened, and in my mind, it was only a matter of time before I caught it myself. I carried Grace to resting place that my parents dug for her, and I said a prayer over her tiny rabbit body, and then I placed her in the grave. I wiped the tears from my face, and then I realized: I just wiped DEATH all over my face. Great.
As soon as it hit me, I lost it--like full blown 8-year-old panic attack. My mom grabbed me and tried to explain that my rabbit was with mamaw and papaw and all the other half-dead animals they had gotten me at the flea market, included but not limited to: my dog Sable, my dog Roxie, my cat Tiger, both of my turtles Jo Jo and Urkle, my dad's old dog Amos, and a gerbil that I had once named Conway that died because he got a penis infection. I'm not kidding. But I wasn't worried about Grace's eternal soul, because her name was Grace for God's sake. I was worried about my fragile mortal body that had been exposed to death--not just exposed really, but slathered in it. I wiped my face with dead rabbit hands, and clearly, if that wasn't terminal then I don't really know what could be.
My parents spent the next 16 years trying to persuade me that people don't die by being exposed to death, but I'm not entirely sure that they're right. Regardless, I'm still here, fighting the good fight and trying to stay away from death and all his friends. I actually became kind of numb to the whole death situation. It's been years since I had been to a funeral because a whole generation of my family passed away before I was 16 years old. Instead, I just focus on the random diseases that could kill me instead of actually catching death itself. I call my mom weekly or so to check in because I've convinced myself that I have anemia or a tumor on a lymph node. For a while it had gotten out of hand, and then she eventually called me a hypochondriac. Now, I've blocked WebMD on my browser, and my fear of sickness and death has gotten easier.
Funerals, at this point, are just hurdles. Very sad hurdles, but hurdles, and as my generation has grown up, we've all also grown apart. I haven't seen my entire family together in one place in a long time, let alone the super-extended family. We never did a great job of keeping up with one another because people were having babies or going to jail or in my weird case, relocating to a new location entirely. But I was able to make a stop home after work trip out to California, and when I arrived my mom asked me the dreaded question. "My nephew Stanley died. Will you go to the funeral with me?" I mean, of course I would go to the funeral with her, but the first words out of my mouth were, "I had a cousin named Stanley?" That's the tricky part of being separated from some of your cousins by 30-40 years--sometimes you don't know they exist until they've passed away or in the newspaper for doing something really absurd.
As I pulled what I imagine was probably an illegal U-turn in the middle of the funeral home parking lot, my mom said, "Oh look. There's Roger Dale. I wonder how life's treating him now that he's out of prison." I wasn't sure if she was being sincere or just being a smart ass. Either way, I chose not to recognize it as I attempted to pull my dad's giant truck into a parking spot made for a smart car.  That, and for some reason, I kind of wanted to be friends with Roger Dale. He's one of the few people in my family that's around my age--and even though he was supposedly an accessory to an attempted murder, it's nice having friends, ya know? I finally got the truck parked, and my mom looked at me and said, "No more than 20 minutes. I'm serious. 20 minutes--in and out. Let's go. Oh, and your aunt Wanda got you a souvenir from her trip to the Amish country, so don't forget to grab it before we leave."
I wasn't expecting to go to a funeral while I was in town, but then again, I don't think anyone ever expects to go to a funeral. It's not something you etch into your planner months ahead of time. Stanley was 55 when he died, which is really complicated to explain because that makes him older than my mom. But in short, my mom had siblings that were legitimately having children before she was even born, so she was an aunt baby.
As we walked up to the funeral home, a whole bunch of people sat on the porch in white rocking chairs that overlooked the parking lot/duck pond combo below. I didn't recognize anyone on the porch, but I didn't really expect to recognize anyone anyway--kind of like when you go to a party with a friend. So, as we walked up the steps, I nodded to them and said hello, but they just kind of gave me a really annoyed look--kind of like when you go to a party with a friend... and you try too hard. Come to find out, there were two funerals going on, and I was trying to speak to people that actually weren't in my family (which at funerals, is poor form).
But once someone directed me to the sign in the lobby, I had things a little more under control. I walked into a long chapel, and everyone seemed to be gather toward the front. I inspected the front of the room, but I didn't see a casket. Luckily, they had decided to forego that part of the funeral process, and even though I was well aware that you couldn't catch death, the 8-year-old inside of me was a little bit relieved. But in its place was something terrifying in a completely different way--family that I hadn't seen in years. I was out of practice when it came to this kind of thing. I barely know what to tell my friends when they lose a family member, but it's so much harder when it's your own family. I tried to survey the room, but I couldn't place any of the faces with names, so I just kept walking forward until I reached the cork board at the front of the room.
There were pictures of Stanley and his entire family, made up of people that I may or may not have met throughout the years. I followed the pictures from the bottom to the top until something else caught my eye--a giant flatscreen TV posted up on the wall with a single candle burning. The background was totally black, and the only thing on the screen was a white candle with a single flame. I'm sure it's supposed to represent something, but for some reason, all I could think was, "I mean, could we have just not put like... a real candle or something in here? And who captured this looping video of this candle... like, how do you get that job?" I spun around and stepped on a tiny little old lady who said, "Hi there. I'm Herman's sister. You know Herman," I have no idea who Herman is. "You know there's nine of us, right? Six boys and three girls. Can you even imagine?" I still had no idea who Herman was, and for a second, I thought that she might have made the same mistake that I did earlier, except she didn't see the sign in the front directing her to the correct funeral parlor.
I didn't know what to do, so I told her that I would be right back, but when I turned around again, there was Roger Dale. I immediately felt startled, but I was also really excited because in my mind, I kept thinking, This is my chance at a friend! We shook hands, and he had a really strong handshake, and as much as I hated it, all I could think was, "This is the perfect place for him to kill me because they wouldn't even need to call an ambulance. They'd just embalm me and call it a day." I froze, and I didn't know what to say, and before I knew it, I had lost my opportunity. My mom called me over to say hello to my aunt Connie who made a grand entrance from the back of the parlor. I watched her hug my mom and dad and brother with big tears in her eyes, thanking them for coming. Then my mom said, "Connie, here's Justin." She immediately stopped crying and said, "You're grown." She pulled me in really tight, put her face against the side of my head, and then it happened. I'm not sure if it was intentional, but she just blew... blew her nose with all of her might, directly in my ear.
I pulled back with a flattened smile and touched her shoulder and said, "I'm going to head over here for a second." I felt like people were watching me, waiting to see how I would react to this whole situation. I sat down in a pew behind my mom and pulled a kleenex out of the box sitting in the pew. I shoved it in my ear and leaned forward, quietly whispering to my mom, "Aunt Connie may or may not have just blew her nose in my ear. So, that happened."
My mom couldn't stop laughing, so I had to take my family outside where we congregated with my aunt and uncle that I'm closest to. By the time I got outside to join them, my mom had already lit in on the story about Aunt Connie blowing her nose in my ear, and on the other side of the circle Was Roger Dale, whose much closer to Connie than I am. I wanted to dive on my mom and tell her to stop or to cut the story short, but it was too late. I was making no headway with Roger Dale, and if he didn't smell the fear on me earlier in the parlor, then he definitely smelled it on me now. I felt like I needed to chime in, so I said, "You know, I'm wasn't upset at Aunt Connie for blowing her nose in my ear. I was just... surprised, which I feel like is the logical response when someone blows their nose in your ear." Roger Dale stared at me with the blankest expression and said, "Yeah, that doesn't happen," and then walked away. I knew that the funeral wasn't about me, nor was it supposed to be, but I wanted to fight back. I wanted to explain how brave I was for enduring getting a snot rocket lodged in my ear. I wanted to tell everyone how I was a survivor. But my mom interrupted and said, "Can we smoke on this porch, or do we need to go somewhere?"
Standing off the porch waiting on everyone to finish up their cigarettes, I looked back on the porch, still unable to recognize if any of the people hanging outside were actually related to me. It's almost comical because at one point, every death felt like the world was ending--whether it was a person or a rabbit. And then somewhere along the way, I wasn't able to even tell the difference between who was part of my family's and who was part of someone else's.
I still miss Grace. She was a pretty cool rabbit, but in retrospect, sometimes I wonder if I might have accidentally killed her myself. As an 8 year old, I wasn't really great at feeding things, nor taking care of them. In reality, my parents probably should have gotten me a goldfish, or like... one of those crabs you can get from the beach that legitimately never comes out of its shell. But no matter how mortified I was by Grace's death or the lethal rabbit death disease that she carried, it wasn't so much that I actually, you know, tried taking care of her while she was alive. And maybe that's the whole point of why rabbits and dogs and cousins named Stanley die. Maybe it's about reminding you of what's still in front of you--what you could be taking care of. Or maybe it's just a solid reminder of how many germs you carry on your face. We may never know.

Bleeding Out On The Table

I woke up in a pool of my own blood this morning. Okay, maybe not a pool, but at least a dignified puddle or a dampened semi-circle. Regardless, this morning there was blood and me and a bed. My stomach had been hurting the night before, but I wasn't too concerned, so I took a shower and went to bed and woke up to what could have been a crime scene. It was like my own little Halloween week nightmare, and I ran through all the horror movie plots that could have happened to me in the six hours since I had fallen asleep: first and foremost I checked for a horse head. Not The Godfather. Maybe Jason had come or Freddy Krueger. Most scary of all, I thought for a moment that it was the plot of Carrie... the menstruation scene or the post-pig blood scene... either one, really. And then it hit me. I checked my belly button, and bam; I found the source. I was bleeding out of my belly button. It was happening... again.

***

Two years ago, I was sitting in the student center of my college listening to all the rules and regulations of being a third year resident assistant. By the time you're a third year RA, you understand all the ins and out of what RA training week means. You talk about rules and how to hold a fire extinguisher and what weed smells like. On the heavier days, you learn about sexual assault and emergent situations and what to do if someone tries to kill themselves, which we were promised rarely ever happens. (In my three years, I had three... so that's a big lie). My favorite part was when the dean of students told us how important we are because I like validation, but at the end of the day, third year RAs just hoped that whatever room they were in had enough signal that you could get on Facebook on your phone. 

We were on day 4 of 6, so at that point the veterans had all but given up. I was particularly exhausted after watching a video of a man getting hit by a car and no one doing anything about it. I thought maybe that's why I was feeling light headed, but I put my hands down in my lap, and I felt something wet. I opened up my jacket and the bottom of my shirt and the top of my pants were covered in blood. I'm still not entirely sure how you accumulate that much blood on your clothes without knowing it, but sometimes blood happens and you're not really concerned with the details.

After zipping my jacket back up, I walked up to my boss before our next session and said, "Ben, I think I need to leave." He quickly responded, "I told you, you're not going to leave. Go sit down," and I said, "No, I really think I need to go," I opened up my jacket and stood there like a nonchalant horror film victim. Apparently, if you make it appear that you've been stabbed, you get what you want. On the way out, I ran into my friend who drove me to the hospital. I called my mom and said, 

"So, I don't want to worry you, but I think I've started bleeding out of my belly button, and it's not stopping." 

"You think you're bleeding out of your belly button?"

"Okay, I'm definitely bleeding out of my belly button. I'm going to Blount Memorial."

Considering the general blood flow coming out of my navel, in addition to the morbidity/mortality rates of Blount Memorial Hospital, my chances of living until the end of the day was about 43%. I waited in the dank waiting area attached to the emergency room filling out papers, which was extremely easy considering that I don't have health insurance. Eventually, my friend had to leave me, and I laid on the hard plastic table lined with butcher paper. I was hoping that if I laid on my back that the blood would just kind of drain itself back in. That, unfortunately, did not work. My mom busted in and held my hand, watching me essentially die on the table, and her absolute panic made me think... Is this how I'm going out? Am I going to die via uncontrollable bleeding from the belly button? It was kind of devastating and hilarious at the same time.

After nine hours at the hospital, a CAT scan, an x-ray, and at least 492 q-tips driven into my belly button, the doctors had come to a conclusion: they didn't know. By this time the bleeding had stopped because even my body's will to kill me had become exhausted. No one knew what was happening, so I took antibiotics for two days, forgot to take the rest, and then I thought it was over.

***

That is, until I woke up covered in blood this morning. I called my mom to let her know that the whole scenario was happening again, but in the course of two years, I wasn't so much concerned with dying as much as I was upset about having to wash my sheets when I get home at 11pm tonight. There was much more blood than before, and I have white carpet. I had woken up to give myself twenty-five minutes to get ready. Cleaning up a mess like this was going to take at least fifteen. I had been down the bleeding-out-of-your-belly-button-and-can't-get-it-to-stop-road before. There was no way I was going to the hospital. Quite the opposite: I took a Kleenex, folded it twice, taped it to my stomach and went to work. If waking up bloody wasn't enough of an indication that it was going to be a tough Monday, on the way to work I also hit two squirrels playing in the street. RIP Carl and Demetrius.

Most of the morning, I was lightheaded--not sure if that was about Carl and Demetrius or the lack of blood. Regardless, I was going down. After toying with the idea of seeing if I was going to actually bleed out, I decided that I should probably just go to the doctor. I still don't have insurance, I still don't know what caused me to start bleeding out, and I still am taking antibiotics that I will probably forget to take after about two days.

In short, life is a horror story, y'all, but as you get older, the scary parts change. Once you've nearly bled to death out of your stomach twice, the thrill of dying is kind of shot. Real horror begins to set in when you think of how pissed your roommates will be if you leave a stomach blood stain on the eggshell carpet or how ironic it is that you need health insurance when you've been trying to log on to healthcare.gov to sign up for health insurance for the past four days. Worrying about whether or not my purple gingham shirt is going to get bloodstained throughout the day gave me an all too real insight into what it must feel like to be a teenage girl. And that's one thing that never changes--no one ever wants to hear, "They're all going to laugh at you! They're all going to laugh at you!"

The Taking of WMATA 123

I just wanted to go home.

I could see them eyeing me from across the car, one of the most unfortunate times to be a bigger guy. I was a meal--a Thanksgiving feast to all these drunkards, and in the midst of all their McDonalds munchies, I looked like a combination Big Mac, Supersize Fry, 20 piece nugget, Diet Coke smorgasbord. The white people were, officially, out of control. I had always wondered what it would be like to be in this moment--the day that people reverted back to their animalistic ways. And all I could do was sit there and think, How did I get here? What led me to this moment? Let me tell you.

***

About six hours earlier, my roommate and I decided to go into the city for a Beerlympics competition. Sure, it seemed a little college-y, but I'm an addict for competition. Shortly after we arrived, we were sorted into teams, and the games began. After a handful of beers, we decided to go and meet some friends in another part of the city. After navigating the crowded floor of Cafe Citron via a combination of walking/salsa-ing to Jennifer Lopez hits, we finally found our group. As a classic group of 20-somethings, we danced awkwardly in a circle for approximately 20 minutes, fist pumped, and then decided to leave. No one was inebriated beyond help or anything, but it was obvious that we wouldn't be driving--there were only a couple options left and, sadly, one of those was taking the metro back toward home.

The Saturday night metro isn't really a place that you ever want to be because it's a completely mixed bag. Sometimes people throw up; sometimes people are making out; sometimes you don't even want to know what happens. So before we got on the metro, I called our other roommate, our last hope, before we got on the train headed toward our apartment. Normally, I would have given up after one call, but the mixture of competition and low-grade beer made me more optimistic than usual. Five calls later, there was finally an answer: a groggy roommate who was not going to pick us up. The moment had come to face what would be the most absurd and slightly dangerous Saturday night metro yet. Most of the time, if you just keep to yourself everything turns out fine. I mean, sure, you might get awkwardly approached by someone, but it's a relatively painless process because the metro runs on a timetable, or at least that's what we like to believe. We transferred over from the red line over to the orange, and it seemed as if the ride was going to be relatively patient, until the next to the last stop. On the way to the station we needed to get off at, the train came to a halt in the middle of the tunnel, and we were stranded in the car with a train full of people and a faulty speaker.

Whenever the train stops in the tunnel, I immediately imagine that we're under the Potomac, even if we're not. I imagine that the walls are going to cave in, and then I'm going to have to swim out of the tunnel Fear Factor style--and then I immediately regret smoking because I'm going to lose and then there's not going to be any trained swimmers to save me. And then something happened on the metro, as if everyone else was also thinking that the walls might cave in to. Essentially, everyone went bat shit crazy. It all started when two large women got up from their seats and addressed the young men who kept staring at them. They had green and purple tubes coming out of their hair, kind of like The Hunger Games, but without any regard to trying to look glamorous. This only caused the guys to egg them on more, which caused the one with green tubes and suspenders to get up and start grinding on the pole, which in turn caused everyone to pull out their cameras and start videoing the entire thing. I, too, pulled out my camera because I knew that if I made it out of that godforsaken train car, I wanted to write about it--our fear and our pain. 

My friend Samantha sat their, her eyes full of worry. We've gotten close, but none of us wanted to go out like this, and under the influence of alcohol, it seemed all too real that this could really be it. Suddenly, one of the guys next to us announced, "Maybe we need to start voting people out." This seemed like my moment, so I began working with the gay guy and his overbearing friend next to us. If I've learned anything this summer from watching Big Brother, it's that America LOVES the gays, so that's a good addition to my alliance. We also decided to include the girl who was passed out in the seat in front of them because, well, God only knows what would happen to her if we didn't... but it was at that moment that we heard screams from the other side of the metro, and we looked down  the car to see that the two large women were pulling away from each other and saying, "We'll give you something to take pictures of!!" and then they started making out again. The guy they were with who was wearing a Juggalo shirt stood propped up against the door nodding his head, and someone screamed, "Let's eat someone! Let's eat someone!"

It was at that moment that I realized that we weren't on Big Brother, nor were we in a metro car anymore... this was Lord of the Flies kind of stuff. Over the course of 20 minutes, we had progressed from a normal, semi-unstable Saturday night metro train to an island full of one-time-young-professionals contemplating who to kill for food. I worried first and foremost about the girl who was passed out. Being a young female passed out in an urban setting is already dangerous enough, but being in this urban setting only made the situation more pressing. I knew the obvious choice was probably the outlandish lesbians, but I couldn't help to feel paranoid: I was one of the meatiest options. I would provide the most nutrition--I could sustain at least half the car for at least thirty minutes. I thought about the future and what it could have been, and I began to actually wonder if that train car was where it would all end. In the mean time, everyone was screaming, begging the metro car to start moving, and the speaker would occasionally erupt into a loud noise that mostly sounded like, "Passengers...time...sorry...thanks."

And then the train surged forward. All the lesbians, alliances, and Juggalos couldn't keep me from the excitement I had in my heart. It was as if I had been saved, and once the doors opened, I hugged Samantha goodbye and ran out the doors with my roommate. One young man stopped to tell a metro worker that he was an "inbred piece of..." well, you get the idea, and in a last moment attempt to restore civility to the world, I yelled, "Everyone has lost their damn minds. Go home. Everyone go home," and people started moving toward the escalators. You never know what the future holds, but when you're stuck on a metro of potential-cannibals, you do learn to appreciate whatever is ahead. Again, I survived the Saturday night metro, but as for the next one... you can never be sure.

Suspension

On Friday, I didn't go to work--I wasn't feeling well, and I already woke up late, so I texted my boss to let her know that I would be about 30 minutes late, and then she told me that she thought it would be good if I took a day to myself. I just finished up finals for my summer class, and I've been relatively busy, so I took her up on it. I went over to our apartment's pool because I hadn't gone swimming all summer--there was always something more important to do. The lifeguard looked like he could care less about pool safety, and the kids at the pool were on the shallow side, so I took my shirt off, and I jumped. And down there in the deep end, I let out as much breath as I could, and I floated down toward the bottom... gently abandoning the air above for whatever was resting down there, but I couldn't completely hit the concrete. I could feel my stopping point just inches below me, but I couldn't quite get down there: I was suspended--stuck somewhere between the top and the bottom.

And outside of being in the water, being suspended is one of the worst places in the world to be. My favorite definition, according to The Free Dictionary, of suspension is: a postponement as of a judgment, opinion, or decision. See pause. It reminds me of one of the most humanizing days of my life. The first time I ever watched someone die was the first time that I really ever understood what the definition of suspension was. Because as my friend and I took turns diving in to the Little River looking for this man neither of us knew, I would take these moments to just exist in the middle of the water--mostly because I was afraid of what would happen if I found him. We were diving to the bottom, stirring up all of the silt and the algae, so the water was thicker than smoke. I would dive and search, mostly feeling around for a stray hand or perhaps a foot... maybe a head, but to keep my sanity about me, I would also just wait. I would stop in the midst of the silt and pray that the river might pull me away... to someplace where someone wasn't dead, I guess. I suspended myself from life, and for the few seconds I did, I didn't have to be apart of a world that I didn't want to. But the last time that I dove in, I paused for too long; I found myself at the bottom of the riverbed without a single breath of air left in me, and I looked up to the top of the water, and I could see the blurriness of the sky. I grabbed at my throat and pushed as hard as I could toward the top, unsure if I would make it or not, and inside the goggles I could feel tears start to scorch the corners of my eyes. I had paused too long. I was caught in a point of suspension. I began to feel my throat close, but I wouldn't open my mouth--I refused to be the second body we were searching for, and once I finally made it to the top, I pulled the goggles off, and I said that I couldn't search anymore.
Within a minute, we found the body, and once it was pulled to the surface, I was the one who pulled him out. And that's when I watched him die--suspension was over. I think we knew that he was going to be dead within the first couple minutes of searching, but it's nothing that anyone wanted to say. And even in the less extreme cases, it seems that's the way it goes. We find ourselves suspended in every stretch and aspect of life, but it's never something we want to admit because we would rather live in the comfortable hysteria of life instead of figuring out a way to potentially deal with it. But for me, the only place that I can comfortably be suspended is, in fact, in the water. I sat there in the middle of the pool, letting all of my air out and waiting for my body to respond to what it wasn't getting--and that sounds morbid. It's morbid, isn't it? I wouldn't dare tell that to someone outright because I'm sure it sounds like I'm trying to off myself or something, but I feel like it's the opposite. I think the reason I let myself float in the middle of the pool, as what little air in my lungs decreases and decreases, is because I want to remember what it's like to value life so much. I want to be reminded of how scared I was to stop living because, as of late, I've been stuck in that metaphorical suspension--I've forgotten what it's like to want to live for something bigger.
I suppose it's something that happens to all of us from time to time, but for some reason, I've become so self-aware of it. I'm not the most conventional Christian that's ever existed, but at one point, I went to church every Sunday, and the only sermon that I remember is one about being comfortable. Our pastor, Corey, told us about how dangerous it is to be comfortable, and whenever you become comfortable with your life, you should take a moment to enjoy it, and then find a way to make yourself uncomfortable again because nothing gets done when you're comfortable. And I'm going to take a moment to step away from the Millennial stereotype and respond to all the people who are saying, What do you have to complain about? You're in a giant city with a great education and a job. And to that I would say, you're absolutely correct. By all standards, I have nothing to complain about because there are people in the world that have barely any of their needs met.
But no matter where you're at in life, we all have needs: we need to feel like we're alive or that we're working toward something with greater meaning than we understand now. For most of my peers, that's a spouse... or at least someone to share their lives with. And I respect that, and I guess I want it too, but not now. That's what makes the feeling of suspension more terrifying. When you're suspended with company, you don't feel as compelled to move--we're a species who loves company. That's why we throw dinner parties and call our friends when we're drunk. But when you're suspended, as if you can't breathe with everyone else, and their oxygen comes in the form of intimate relationships, you feel even lonelier. You have to make a choice: acquiesce to what is normal, or rather, should be normal... or you rise above the suspension. You find the bottom of the river or the pool or what-have-you, and you push harder than you ever have before... because you want to find the happiness you're searching for within yourself. If you can get to the top, there's got to be some other people up there who feel the same. They want to be excited about life; they want to work to achieve something bigger than they had ever imagined. And what makes us so essential to each other is that we want something that everyone else seems to be desperately trying to escape from: most of us like people, but right now, in this body of water and confusion, we want to find the answers we want inside of ourselves.
As I semi-drowned myself in the pool, the lifeguard who didn't originally look that interested in saving lives started taking notice of me. He eventually asked me to come out of the pool to show him my pool pass, which I think was his way of saying, Listen, I'm really not up for pulling your body out of the pool, so I'm going to need you to cut the shit. I didn't try and explain what I was doing to him because I don't feel like he would really get it: I wasn't trying to kill myself; I was just trying to remember exactly what it was like to be alive. I think we need to be reminded what it's like to be alive sometimes because if we aren't, we're just going to waste it. And the light at the top of the water may be the only light we see--we can't be sure that there's anything bright and shiny on the other side, but in my final moments as my respiratory system starts to seize and my brain begins to shut down and I float into that place where your body calms itself to pass peacefully, I want to know that I was reaching for that light. I want to know that the person I share the rest of my life with was right there, pushing for something more as well. I want to go out fighting.

God and the Stars

For Mom and Max and anyone who has ever been confused

I don't pretend to understand the world or how it works anymore because there's not a lot about it that makes any sense--I suppose that's something you learn as you get older. Every day is kind of a mystery, and it can get the best of you. Yesterday, someone in the world decided to set bombs off in the middle of a marathon... just athletes running for the sake of being alive, for the sake of being a human who can. And then out of no where, someone decided to change the course of too many lives to count, and we're left wondering what happened. There's still no one to blame, and even when there is, what are we supposed to say? There's nothing to say because life, again, failed to make any kind of sense.
The night I left to move up to DC, the car was almost completely packed; I hadn't shed a tear up until that point because I was more excited than I was scared. I was about to start this journey away from everything I had ever known, but then my mom told me to look up into the sky. I stared up and the night was as clear as it had been in weeks--every star possibly visible was shining brightly against the amphitheater of trees that surround our house. When I looked back down, she was staring at me with tears in her eyes, and she told me, When you look up at those stars, just know that those are the same stars I'm looking at, too. Look at them every night and know that I'm right there with you. And then I cried.
It's really no surprise because I've cried my entire life. I like to believe that it's become less and less frequent the older I get, but it's a recurring theme of mine that's haunted me since that first time I threw up in kindergarten. And a lot of times I've cried, I do it because I haven't understood what was going on in the world--things that other people come to accept pretty easily. It took me years to understand the concept that if my mom left me at school, she would eventually come back. Why that was such a hard concept for me to grasp, I really have no idea. It's like I believed that Kimberlin Heights led to Hell or Mexico or some other place that you don't come back from. But then, without fail, after one hour of throwing up and crying, two hours of learning, three hours of me showing people my puppy wallet that had a picture of my family in it, and an hour of recess, my mom would come back and get me, and we'd do the whole thing over again the next day. But when my mamaw died when I was six, I specifically remember crying once. I cried because, even at six, I understood that I wouldn't see her alive again, and after that, I didn't cry about it again.
The concept of death made sense to me because our bodies have a timeline, a specified amount of time that we are allowed to live, and then like all other things (puppy wallet included, though I miss it so), the wear and tear becomes too much. My papaw died seven years later, and I'm not even sure if I shed a tear. It was never the expected things that were difficult for me to handle, and at times, I had trouble relating to other people who cried when those things happened. We weren't meant to live forever--but we were meant to live for a while.
Things like Boston, or 9/11, or Newtown happens and the whole structure of things gets screwed up. The world's plan gets all screwed up, and we don't understand the whole of it. And though those events are devastating and stupefying, it happens every day. People are killed in car accidents or get cancer or drown or die in some other way that was never expected, and it doesn't make any sense why it happened, or specifically, who it happened to. And then I meet people, and occasionally they tell me that they are thinking about suicide. They've thought about ending their own life, prematurely, and it breaks my heart because I know they didn't decide that on their own. I know. My heart pours out for those people because it's another mystery of life--it's a catch 22 of sorts. And I know because I've been in that position where the only thing that breaks your heart more than the idea of being dead is the idea of having to stay alive--it's not a choice to feel that way. It is however a choice to choose life. But it doesn't change the fact that there is a God, or whatever force you choose to believe in, out there that allows these things to happen. When we're not being shaken by a freak of nature, we're attacking one another, and when we're not attacking one another, we attack ourselves.
So it makes sense when people give up on God or hope or life because, honestly, there's a lot of reasons to. But then with all the pain and hurt we experience, I have a friend who has been consistently updating Facebook with the status of her infant son, and when we're talking infant, we're talking baby. He had a lemon sized tumor at the base of his brain, and his chance of living was pretty much slim to none... but every day I'd get on Facebook, Jessica would be asking for prayers for Max and maintaining that God was watching over them. Max, against the odds, has steadily been getting better and better, and there's a very real chance that he could go on and live a normal life. And it's the first time in a while that I thought to myself, Maybe, in a way, God doesn't have so much to do with all the pain we experience in the world. No, I don't get it, but it's God or hope or whatever you believe in that makes life okay when everything else doesn't seem to be making sense. Yeah, there's the things in life that confuse us, but if we take the time we use trying to find someone to blame and use it toward finding someone to lean on or believe in, then it makes the healing time that much more bearable.
And then I return to the stars. I stare at them, and I know that scientifically the only thing that holds them up is nothing--the lack of gravity, and I've been told that the stars we're staring at have already burned out. But still, I use the thing that everyone says is already gone or non-existent as a way of finding my way back home. In that non-existant thing, I find love and comfort and peace, and whose to say that star that I'm staring at tonight is one that is already depleted. We see the stars in the same way that we sometimes look at the world: hopeless and all but gone, but when I look at them, I see something that isn't supposed to be. Something that defies the odd. Something that shakes me to my core and helps me believe in something bigger than me. And sometimes when I see them, I still cry.

Death and All His Friends

Last night, I was sitting with my roommates, talking about our lives in the context of a television show, which happens pretty regularly around our apartment. At first, I think they loved it, but I can tell from their lackluster reaction that it has become white noise like most of the things I do and say around the apartment. But last night, as we were commingling life goals and television talk, I said that you can't just settle for something in life because you don't know how long you're going to live. Eventually that led to me asking What if one of us died tomorrow? Wouldn't that be a huge plot twist in the show? What if it's me? to which Ben responded, You can't die. That would be like killing DJ off in the first season of Full House. It was reassuring because I always considered DJ the most integral of all of Danny Tanner's daughters.

It's not the first time by any means that I've contemplated my impending death. At six-years-old, I specifically remember going up to my mom and telling her that I was going to die when I was 29, which is super sketchy for a six-year-old to drop in casual conversation. That moment always stuck with me, and it stuck with my mom as well, so we don't talk about it. And the idea of 29 haunts me every birthday because I know it's getting closer and closer each year, and as silly as it sounds, I don't really feel like getting to 29 to find out if my child-in-a-horror-film-esque proclamation was right.

Death has always been a tricky thing in my life because I've seen so much of it, so in a way, I never really thought much of it... almost to the fact that I've been obsessed with it. Death and Justin are a bit of a roller coaster because when it comes to the topic, I've always been a bit up and down on the matter. One of my favorite anecdotes I've ever read (about my silverfox mancrush, Anderson Cooper) was that he became so obsessed with journalism and taking in sights that he would take pictures of all the things he had seen throughout his line of work. One day, whilst taking a picture of some dead bodies he had come across, a friend took a picture of him and gave it to him; it was to show him what he had turned into, and from that day on, he has supposedly drawn boundaries for himself. In a way, Anderson and I have that in common. I become infatuated with death and the emotional consequences it can have (i.e. One Tree Hill school shooting) that I sometimes forget how incredibly real death is, and then like clockwork it comes rushing back, and I witness something death-related--and all blog candor and humor aside, it's not a joke.

So when I woke up this morning, I was weary of even getting out of bed because I had this inclination myself that this is going to be the day that I die. I suppose it could be a lead-in from the conversation that I had last night or maybe that the bed was just really warm and that my subconscious went to a really dark place so that I would stay there, but I really did have a gut feeling that this was going to be my last day on Earth. So naturally, I reset my alarm for two more minutes... and for twenty minutes, I laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, hoping that my intuition was wrong. In essence, it was very Meredith Grey in the bomb episode of me (2.13 "It's the End of the World," for those interested). And after resetting my alarm ten times over the course of twenty minutes, I admitted to myself that if this was really going to go down today, and this was my time, I couldn't really intervene fate when I don't actually know what the fate is. 

On the way to work, while very consciously watching out for other drivers, I thought about what I would want to do--how I would want to act--if this was the end of my road. So I called my mom, who started talking out of the blue about how she was happy that nothing had happened to me since I've moved because she has no idea how she'd get to me. Needless to say, when you have the pressing feeling in your gut that a catastrophe is bound to happen, and you're going to be its victim, the foreshadowing of your mother's praises don't help matters... so I told her I loved her, and I got off the phone. By the time I got to work, I had decided on my game plan... just be kind.

I didn't want to go to a special restaurant for lunch or take the day off (mostly because if I took the day off, then my chances of dying would have exponentially increased). I just wanted to be kind to people because I think that how's you should want to be remembered: kind. And it was probably the hardest thing that I did today because apparently no one else thought they were going to die today, or at least, they had a different approach to humanity if they did. I didn't want to tell anyone about my unconfirmed fate because I didn't want to taint the day, and I didn't want anyone to respond to it one way or the other, so the only person I told was my sweet, sweet coworker Liz who was mildly concerned and mildly frightened. As for everyone else, I just wanted them to act as is. I made an effort to call people on my breaks today to tell them hi or that I loved them, but it seemed as if everyone was busy or, honestly, just didn't want to talk. I made an effort to talk to an ex who would only respond in one word answers and quickly reminded me why we probably broke up. Others that I would hold the door for were downright hateful. I thought to myself Wow, you guys are really taking a giant shit on my last day on Earth. The climax built up to the walk to the metro when I nearly got hit by a car who sped through a red light. After I got to the metro, I accidentally backed into an Asian woman who flipped out on me in the middle of the car. 

That's when the take away kind of hit me: you don't live your last day on Earth (or at least act like it) for the praise of other people; you do it because that's how you're supposed to be every day. And for the logically-minded, I apologize for wasting your time with a whole bunch of nonsense revolving around potential death. If I had wanted to be logical, I probably could have spelled out all of the reasons that I wasn't going to die today (even though, today isn't really over. I still have to drive to class and back). However, and I may be stretching it, I don't think that feeling like I was going to die today was really the end-all-be-all lesson that came from my experience. People can be kind of cruel without even thinking about it, and it's even easier to notice when you honestly believe that it may be the last time that you'll ever see them again... even if it is just the door people at your office. But as crazy as it sounds, I really did believe when I opened up my eyes this morning that there was a good possibility it could be my last; it's a numb pain that's been with me all day. And as logic would have it, this will ultimately probably not be my last day, but it's a good reminder anyways because any day that you take out one minute, just sixty seconds, to remember how very fragile life can be... well... I would consider that a day well spent.

If Sandy Gets Friskier Than Expected

If you've been watching the news, you know that there is a little mess called Hurricane Sandy headed up the East Coast; if you're really into meteorology, then you know there's also a cold front busting in from the West. Essentially, what's supposed to happen is those things are supposed to meet up, and in about four days time, yours truly will be playing the part of Jake Gyllenhaal in a remake of The Day After Tomorrow. Essentially, it's supposed to be a hurricane with winter-like conditions which has me boggled as to whether I should purchase a parka or board up my windows.
As an English and Writing major in undergrad, I'm staunchly opposed to burning books, so once we run out of wooden things to burn in the apartment, we're pretty much done for. And as for food, I'm down to a box of Strawberry Frosted Flakes, 9 mini bags of Doritos, some pesto, pretzels and hummus, and some Disney Princess Spaghetti-Os that is dented on the side. Knowing myself on a hungry day, those perishables will be gone in approximately 4-8 hours. I'm not eating Andrew because I theorize that he tastes like cardboard and long-standing disappointment, and I'm not eating Ben because sometimes he growls at me when we're not in a crisis. So that leaves me with a laptop to catalog my dying thoughts, however many Schweppes ginger ales I can acquire between now and Saturday, and all those pictures I have on my wall. After that, I suspect it will be pretty grim, but I will do everything in my power to maintain as much humor and handsomeness as Leonardo DiCaprio did when he froze to death/drowned back in 1998. And hell... I might be so resourceful in this whole mess that I could survive to see another hurricane.
So with all that being said, I want to get some things out there that I may not get the chance to later, but I think they're important. This is a moment where I'm going to be so honest with you that it may hurt, but I need you to remember that once Wednesday comes all you'll have of me is memories and whatever you can find of my frozen-Jello-Puddin-Pop body. Turn to these stories and think of me fondly. Laugh at and/or with me, and if anyone can ever figure out my Gmail password, I encourage you to continue telling my scandalous stories as a ghost writer... but do it well, because if you don't, I will haunt your ass and give "ghost writer" a whole new meaning.
First and foremost, if things don't go so well, don't look at my search history on Google. Actually, don't touch my computer at all... just throw it away, preferably in a recyclable and safe area so that otters don't choke on it or that its chemical contents don't taint the drinking water of future children. It's not so much for the standard "don't look at my computer" reasons, but more so because I think that some of the search queries in there (without proper explanation) have the ability to defame my reputation for years to come. Some examples: how to make meth,   Columbine and other school shootings, Ryan Gosling, "kitten cannon," and one of the most atrocious "Who is Kim Kardashian dating?" My computer is my fortress for all the knowledge that I'd like to gain without actually having to ask other people. It's full of my utmost personal writing, letters that I've written to people but refuse to send, blackmail pictures of people I don't like, and too many screenshots of Kittens Inspired By Kittens to count. As my dear friend Bridget once said in regard to anal sex, Don't touch it. Don't look at it. Don't even think about it.

If in fact the worst does happen, I respectfully ask that my tombstone is engraved with the message He Went Down Hand Jivin', which I find to be completely appropriate considering that I will have met my demise via a storm named "Sandy." Sure, there will be some people who believe that the entire thing was done in poor taste, but those who know me best will understand just how poignant and fitting it is. I love to dance, specifically things that already have a set rhythm and form. It wasn't but just two weeks ago after two Long Island Teas and some wine that I felt it completely necessary to only ballroom dance at the bar that my friends and I went to. Yes, it embarrassed them (and me, both) once it was all said in done, but if you could have seen my frame when attempting to waltz to David Guetta's "Without You," you would understand.
And over the next couple days, when you think of me as you're sitting in your non-East-coastal homes in the luxury of windows that are not blown out and floors that have not become the lining of a makeshift kiddie pool, understand that this is exactly what I've been hoping for since the inception of Grey's Anatomy and every other TV drama I've watched since circa 2004. If all goes as planned, I will survive because in my mind, this hurricane Sandy business is just the November sweeps episode of this season of my life. Something big has to happen to get the ratings up, and sure, I may overdramatize the next couple days... and yes, my roommates may find me laying in the floor, completely uninjured as I'm listening to an Ingrid Michaelson song, but that's just kind of who I am. They'll leave me there, as I imagine that I have a broken leg or that I'm drowning, but in my mind, that's just the character arc that I need to go through while we're out of power for the next couple days.
In essence, the next couple days may be difficult, but I'm going to go ahead and take a guess and say I'll survive. There will be a lot of wine consumed and probably a lot of time spent reading. When I found out today that I got off of work and school, it was really exciting until I realized that there was no other place to go. So, if you don't hear from me for a while, the power has probably gone out and you can rest assured that I'm just sitting in the living room, staring at my roommates. But in the case of my untimely death, follow the two simple rules listed above, as well as these:

• Give my brother, Casey, full rights to all those Beanie Babies in my closet at home. Most of them were his anyway.
• Make a fan page for me on Facebook. Don't stop promoting it until I have 500 likes.
• Work on getting an annual holiday for me at Maryville College. I would say it shouldn't be hard, but let's be honest... there's like 1,000 hoops you're going to have to jump through.
• Sprinkle my ashes at Dollywood, preferably off Daredevil Falls.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Wish me luck.

Apparently, I'm No Sarah McLachlan

I keep telling everyone that I want a cat, and in essence, I do. I love the idea of having a cat in the same way that I really like the idea of having over-sized glasses or actually being compelled to read past page 24 of Anna Karenina. I like cats in the same way that I like black coffee or doing yoga or having a legitimate interest in craft beer. All of these things come to mind when I think of ways to describe myself, but actually, those things are all lies. Maybe that's an issue, that I describe myself with interests that sound appealing as opposed to the things that I actually do. But at the end of the day, I think I want a cat because I once had a pretty cool relationship with a cat, and I'm kind of blocking out all the other pet experiences I've had in my life. My cat Skeeter was a boss. He laid around a lot, mostly on his back under the ceiling fan. I didn't really have to take care of him, so it was more like having a really quiet brother that I would talk to sometimes. Most of the time, he didn't want anyone around and considering that he was obese, I didn't really want him on me either. Skeeter and I got along because most of the time, neither of us really wanted the other one around. It kind of worked the same as most of the relationships I had in middle school.
But when it comes down to it, I'm really not a pet person. Most of what I have owned I ended up killing. For instance, when my mamaw died, I had really bad emotional backlash, so my parents bought me a red beta fish. Essentially, you can't kill a beta, even if you don't feed it for like three days. I know because I was really bad at feeding it. I named him George (after George Strait, naturally), and he was good people. After a while, I got the hang of taking care of him, and like most of my pets, he quickly became my best friend. Then, like a thief in the night, my dad bought himself a small catfish. Dad decided that it would be a good idea for them to share an aquarium, so when I came home from first grade and found half of George floating at the top of the water with the other half inexplicably missing, I panicked. Had not feeding George resulted in him eating the top half of his body? When I approached my dad with tears in my eyes, his only explanation was... and I quote, "Catfish domination." From that point on, pretty much everything I owned was destined for some terrible fate.
My dog Sable died of parvo. The dove I found outside our house died from some bird disease. The next dog I had, Roxie, died of parvo. My pet rabbit, Grace, was attacked by one of my dad's hunting dogs. When I buried her, I cried so hard that I covered my face with my hands. It then took a subsequent two years to convince me that I wouldn't die myself via facial exposure to dead rabbit germs. The pet turkey (a seemingly indestructible creature) we had was eaten by coyotes. All the quail we owned started disappearing... years later, I found out that I ate them. However, the most devastating fate was probably the first cat that I ever had, Tiger.
After a moving sermon at New Hopewell Baptist Church, I had acquired what I call "the baptism bug." As soon as I got home, I started looking for things to baptize: action figures, my pillow, my brother Casey... you name it, and I redeemed its soul in the name of Jesus Christ. Tiger, however, was a tricky target. He had been scratching things for some time, and the most logical eight-year-old solution was to wash those demons out of him. So eventually, after hours of work... I caught him. I filled up the bath tub beforehand, understanding in previous attempts, the sound of the bathtub filling up only induced the demons within him. His demons were no challenge for me though. The day that I baptized Tiger was one of my proudest; nevertheless, Tiger clawed his way up my arm, over my shoulder, and ran out the door. I never saw Tiger again after that day.
With a pet resume like that, I was honestly surprised that anyone would ever allow me to babysit their kids, but throughout high school, I babysat two kids who have grown up to be seemingly halfway decent people now. I like to think I had a pretty heavy hand in that. I would make them food sometimes or turn off the television and make them do homework. Essentially, I was the closest thing to Maria Von Trapp that someone could be without making a new wardrobe out of the drapes. So when my former boss presented me with the opportunity to "dog-sit" for her, I embarked on the opportunity with open paws (several puns intended). I had, at some point, blocked out all of the horrible things I had done to animals over the years and assumed that if I could watch kids a couple days a week that I would surely be able to watch dogs.
But it didn't take long to realize that maybe this wasn't the kind of a job for someone like me. When I walked into their house, the couch and chairs were covered in hair, and I mean, if that's what you're into then cool. These people had a baby though... a little tiny human that I had watched eat her own boogers on several different occasions. I rarely ever saw the kid, but I always saw the dogs and it only took me a couple minutes to realize that these dogs are the stars and the baby is kind of like a recurring character. I know that wherever this couple went, they didn't take their baby, but I was also unsure where the baby actually was. After some contemplation, I assumed she was in the mailbox... I didn't check to confirm or deny that theory. My job was the dogs, and that's what I was going to attempt to do. I was instructed to stay in the house with them and that I should sleep there.
After one night of sleeping in the house though, I knew that I would never dog sit again. I don't cuddle with humans, let alone dogs. I have boundary issues, and maybe that means I wasn't hugged enough as a child, but we can't really do much to remedy that now. As I laid there trying to fall asleep, these two full sized labrador retrievers boxed me in, similar to the way that football players would sandwich me in the hallway as a high school freshman. I felt intimidated and uncomfortable, especially when one of them would start pawing against my butt... the dogs, not the football players. After night one, I decided that the best option would be to lock them in the basement at night. It was only like... eight hours. They'd be fine because normal living creatures should work the same way as humans, right?
Wrong. One of two things happen to dogs at night: (1) They poop on themselves mid-sleep or (2) Dogs are oddly nocturnal. I never thought to check the basement the next morning because I was using human mentality. I don't poop on myself when I sleep, so surely they'll be good to go once I get up in the morning. After my four day stay, I picked up my compensation and went on my way. Later that day, I would get a call from their owner that went something like this: Justin, do you enjoy abusing my dogs? I mean, did you even take them outside to use the bathroom or did you just lock them in the basement for the entire week for you to go off and do God knows what? Seriously, what the f*%& did you do this week? You will never get near my dogs again. How would you feel if you were locked in a basement for an entire week? Well, I probably wouldn't mind it because I could get some serious reading done, but that was neither here nor there. At this point in the conversation, I laid the phone down because this was obviously a battle I was going to lose. I began to wonder what exactly was in the basement... did they really poop feet upon feet of feces or was this like... one poop pile left unattended? Maybe my theory about the baby was wrong, and they made the same misconception that I did and the baby pooped everywhere. Yes. That was the theory that I would follow.

Needless to say, I've pretty much stayed away from the idea of having pets since that debacle. I'm pretty sure my name is on a list somewhere that prohibits me from getting in a seven feet radius of a dog and the owner of that list is our very own, Sarah McLachlan. I'm like 98% confident those dogs were alive when I left that house, and if they weren't it was because something terrible had happened between the time I locked up the house the last time and the time that their owners got home. I actually wouldn't have been surprised if they held all their poop that week, unlocked the basement with their secret human capabilities, and went down there and pooped for like two hours straight. Those dogs were evil, and they gave me evil labrador retriever eyes all the time. And as much as I showered, they always wanted to smell my man business, so honestly, I should have remembered to mention how much that bothered me during our conversation about my inability to take care of animals. But I didn't... the past is the past, and all we can do is learn from it. That's why I have the opinion I do about getting a pet. I know that if I got a cat, it would probably meet a similar fate as the others, and even if it didn't, I'd probably try to baptize it in a religious daze and never see it again anyway.

Will You Still Love Me Today?

A couple nights ago, I was talking to Nam about some boy she was talking to... Nam and I had a conversation about finding that special person and about how fate and circumstance has to work in your favor: the right time along with the right place along with the right person. It's a lot of alongs, and it doesn't really seem fair to anybody in the world who would ever want to leave one place and go to the other. The whole thing is so chancy, and it always seems so... pointless. I guess if you talked to a cynic, it probably is because how often can we ever expect to find someone at all the right "things." Nam and I have been taking turns battling back and forth with her theory; less about the logistics and more about the struggle of dealing with such intimidating circumstances.
After a three year hiatus, I dated someone my senior year--a freshman, the cardinal sin of a college senior. Multiple times, I was told that the relationship was pointless and in the aftermath, I probably would have agreed. At times, I still find myself holding that sentiment. However, I did it. I dated a freshman, and when it was great, it was great, and when I got into grad school... well... it wasn't. Now, with me being in DC and her heading ever so quickly into the Peace Corps, she's met this boy and it could be something, but with Nam being Nam, she makes it a logical puzzle. There's obviously no reason why she would ever go through with anymore than a brief make out before calling it quits. And as I texted her, nearly falling asleep because it was so late, I sent her this message,

We never really know what our futures look like, or if we have one, so I say enjoy it while you can. end it when you absolutely have to, and never regret that you took a moment out to care for someone. there may never be a good time for potential love or even companionship... so you have to take it when it arrives.

And, like most things that I internally contemplate, I asked myself as I was falling asleep that night A) Who the hell is the person that just said that to her? and B) Did you give someone a complete sense of false hope only to be let down? It's human nature I guess to err on the side of cynicism, but it really was too late to correct any possible mistake I made. Soon after our conversation I fell asleep and had one of the most startling dreams I've ever had in my life.
Patrice was the first person I saw in my dream; she ran up to a police officer standing at the edge of a taped off intersection. Smoke could be seen rising from the ground, and she asked him What's going on? He turned around and said There was a bomb in the metro; we're trying to get down there. Patrice pulled out her phone and began to text someone while saying to the officer My friends are on the metro. I'm guessing that the timeline went backwards from there, only on the basis that you just kind of understand what's going on in your dreams without any kind of explanation.
I could see everything that was going on--the day was as average as any other day in DC has been so far, and I remember looking up at the sky, blue and bright, the kind of sky that almost hurts to look at it because nothing is standing between you and the rest of the universe. Andrew, my roommate, had just called me to tell me that he had some issues going on at home with his girlfriend and that he was going down into the metro. I, however, was walking with someone I had never met before... hand in hand, as if I had done it for months and months leading up to the dream. Sure, I had never met the person walking with me in my dreams, but at one point, I turned around and leaned forward for a kiss. The kiss was nothing extraordinary, just a moment in the middle of a city that I barely know anything about. I said that we would meet up later to tell everyone about our news, and then I let the other hand go, leaned in for one more kiss and got on the escalator leading down to my own metro.
The last thing I remember before I woke up was watching the doors of the metro close behind me as I boarded at the last second, and then I woke up. Waking up from dreams like that usually send me into a panic, as if I have some ability to channel premonitions. But, the whole scenario didn't actually imply anything for certain, at least in the premonition world. I don't know if it was my train that had the bomb in it, nor did I know if it was Andrew's. But in the back of my mind, I had this gut feeling that it was mine. It was as if I knew that those doors were closing behind me for a reason, and that I didn't need to finish the dream to know what had happened. In dream world, as far as I was concerned, I had died that day on the metro... and in an odd way, I was okay with it.
The only reason that I wasn't in some kind of dream-induced panic attack is because, whether it was a dream or a premonition... or if I died or lived... that version of me that lived in that dream was happy. I could feel that happiness as I boarded the dream metro. I could feel that happiness as I leaned it for a kiss from the stranger that I obviously was about to bring further into my world. Somehow, in a world full of people that shoot up public places and a world full of war and disease, I had found some semblance of happiness lurking on the outside of a metro, and even if my world were to end directly after such a simple kiss, it would have been okay because for that moment I was happy.
And not by any means am I saying that I'm not happy now, but I think it's so easy at this point in our twenty-something lives to forget that there might be things to be happy about right now. And we spend all this time trying to fool proof our lives: we try our best to make relationships work that just aren't working anymore and in doing so, we ruin any chance of being able to look back upon it with a favorable perspective. We are hoping that by doing this or that we will solidify our futures to a point that we can ensure comfortability without knowing if we even have a future to be comfortable in. We hope for money and possessions, and we sometimes attempt to turn intangible things into something that we can see or feel because it's a better way to gauge our futures. If life were done on paper, it would be so much easier, but it's not.
After days of not posting and feeling completely blocked as to what I should write about, it came to me. I spent the day touring thrift stores and antique shops looking at furniture that I couldn't come close to buying. In my pursuits, I met an old woman who was giving away a record player. She gave me her address, and when I got there, she invited me into her house introducing me to her partner and her dog. She gave me the record player and told me that if someone didn't come pick up her records, I was free to come back by and get them. I thought about all the antiques and the record player and the life that woman and her partner had developed in their beautiful home. And though some of those things came from homes that were wealthy, surely, there were at least a couple things that came from someone who didn't have much. They live on through these people who purposefully go and buy their possessions in an attempt to own a part of someone's life that has already been lived out. The idea seems so comforting to me, that even after death, our lives could continue on through the things that we've left behind.
And I'm sure that all that I've been thinking about is a lot to process for one twenty-two year old boy in just a couple days, but while in search for the preliminary album to test out my new record player, I came across Carol King's Tapestry, which could be one of my favorite albums of all time. Going over the songs on the back to refresh myself, I came across "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" I found the whole concept to be a little farfetched... why ask someone to love you tomorrow when you have the opportunity to love them wholeheartedly today?

Virga

virga (vur-guh) noun: streaks of water drops or ice particles falling out of a cloud and evaporating before reaching the ground


A lot of people died in my life before I could even comprehend what death really was. That's the burden of having parents born to exceptionally older parents. Funerals were nearly commonplace in my life, and even though it hurt to lose people that I had grown up with, I was oddly okay with it all. Everyone that was dying was old. They had lived these event filled lives and had these children and passed on all of these stories they had created. Their funerals were heavily attended, and everyone that was there had some story to tell me about any decade of their life I was curious about. These deaths were not terrible things; they were memorials to people that had an amazing impact on the lives of those blessed to be around them. That's why when my aunt and uncle recently passed away within just a couple months of each other, I didn't think too much about it. They were old and had lived. They generated from this cloud above us, fallen from the heavens, and had splashed onto the ground. We had noticed their descent.

I wasn't surprised or startled by death until I was around nine years old. On a routine Friday night trip to pick up Burger King for our family, we were driving home in some ugly green car that was all of 500 or so dollars. The engine was extremely loud, and it embarrassed me to even be seen it it, but the brakes on my mom's Crown Victoria had gone out. As we were coming up Chapman Highway, we saw one car try to shoot across the traffic as another car crashed into its side. Mom slammed on the brakes, immediately stopping the car. The cars had joined together and starting sliding toward us. The car beside us didn't brake as soon, slamming into the wreck stopping the cars from moving any further. Before the whole event was finished, five cars were in a mound, some turned over. Mom pulled to the side of the road and put the car in park; she looked at me and told me to stay inside and not to look. I watched her run toward the highway, and I couldn't keep my eyes from glancing over. I saw a man about my dad's age hanging out the driver window, bleeding. He was screaming for help, and even at nine years old, I knew that he wasn't going to live. Shortly after, Mom came back to the car and said she couldn't leave me behind like that. We drove home, and I spent two hours on the couch by myself; I didn't even eat Burger King that night. I later heard that two people died in that wreck, and I thought about the man who probably was in his late thirties at the time: virga. And at such a young age, I wondered how it was that we had ended up with a car, just days before, that had brakes. How was it that we stopped before the accident, and who exactly was the man in that vehicle that stopped that screaming mess of jagged metal from sliding into us?

A couple years later, I was sitting on my couch watching The Price is Right. It was the first summer that Casey and I had been allowed to stay home by ourselves. Throughout the summer, I would be picked up by the preacher's wife so that I could hang out at their house with their daughters. In retrospect, there weren't a lot of things that I liked about attending the church that I did. Most of the people there were judgmental and snide. I didn't feel comfortable there, but I did love the preacher. Corey had been the pastor of the church when I decided to publicly confess my love to the Lord. He eventually convinced my dad to let my brother and I have a cat, and after even more work, convinced him to come to church too. Corey was loved in our house; he was so much bigger than I imagined life could be. The day I got the call that the jack his van was on had slipped, I nearly spilled my cereal right in the middle of an installment of "Plinko." If God couldn't protect a preacher, who exactly would he protect? Death had taken on quite the jaded perspective; it seemed to me that there was no explanation or science behind the length of human life. And at times, it seemed to me that maybe there wasn't a God at all.

I hadn't thought much about the wreck or Corey since I was little; as I child, I tended to mull over things longer than other kids my age, and without another answer, I chocked it all up to fate or God's plan or something that was so much out of my control that it was frivolous to try and answer it. Death continued to be kind of commonplace growing up, as I watched more and more people pass away. Always of old age, but pass away nonetheless. I began to count people at funerals that I had never met before. The stories seemed to matter less because what is a life essentially lived the same as all the others? That's not to say that all life isn't important, but on the sound of a tin roof, it's hard to distinguish one drop from the other. They all plink and pop the same way, making this harmonious noise that provide the comfort necessary to rock me gently to sleep at night.

The memory of the wreck had all but faded until about a year ago. On a standard trip to Coulter's Bridge in Maryville, my friends and I had embarked on a swimming day. The air was muggy and thick, and at times, it almost seemed that the water was the only salvation from the thick blanket of air that sequestered us to our air conditioned rooms. Not long after we had arrived, a man asked us if we knew how to swim because they believed another man was drowning in the river. A friend and I dove in, searching the water for some kind of body. We didn't know what we were looking for, and in all honesty, I didn't want to be the one to find him. Eventually, another swimmer found his body, and it was me that drug him from the water onto the bank. No one else was strong enough, and just like that, I found myself in my own mom's position; my brother and I were raised to try and do the best we could for other's. I could carry the most weight, so I drug this rag doll of a man from the depths of the river to the rescue squad that would pronounce him dead at 27. His name was Hanin.

I've lived on the outskirts of Knoxville my entire life, and sometimes, on rainy nights, I go out on our back porch and listen to the rain on our tin roof. As my weeks left in Tennessee wind down, I find myself getting up in the middle of the night on stormy evenings so that I can sneak out and catch every last thunderstorm that East Tennessee has to offer. Most of the time, I smoke a couple cigarettes and watch the smoke float up and around the porch ceiling toward the rain falling down. I like to imagine that it can make it all the way up to the virga: meeting it in the middle before those water droplets dissipate into the atmosphere. And then I think about the man in the car that day, and I think of Hanin. I wonder what their lives would have been like if they had lived on until their droplets found the ground like most of our's eventually will. I've never found virga to be fair because it's as if saying that some droplets are more important or stronger than the rest. All rain should be allowed to fall, but alas, it doesn't. Before I go back inside to climb in bed, I make sure to remind myself that I am indeed mortal. Young people for generations have faced the invincibility complex, oftentimes forgetting that we are subject to be deprived of life at any moment.

And a couple nights ago, as the valley has been getting hit nightly by rain, I think I came to some kind of revelation. I've focused so much on this virga: this overlooked existence that is often forgotten because it never is seen by the eye. I'm guilty of doing the same thing to the drops that hit the ground that others do to the drops that don't. I reached my hand out from under the tin roof, and I caught a couple drops in my palm and thanked whomever is up there for giving them the opportunity to splash onto the Earth.

I would like to dedicate this post to poet, Claudia Emerson, who introduced me to this word that has been on my mind for months. Whether I end up being rain or simply virga, I hope my words inspire as many people as her's have.