How Do You Measure A Life? January 29, 2008

It will have been about one year this week since he took his own life.

Which means that it has been about 51 weeks since I silenced a phone call on my cell phone. From him.

I had been at work. In the middle of finishing a busy project or preparing for an important meeting. He was an old friend from home who I hadn’t spoken to in a very long time. A long enough time ago for me to feel a pronounced flicker of surprised confusion when I saw his name appear on my Caller I.D.

My thumb hesitated a moment - hovered over Talk with curiosity and nostalgia - before I eventually selected Ignore.

I reassured myself that it must not have been too important since he didn’t bother to leave a voicemail. I told myself I’d call him later. When I wasn’t right in the middle of something at the office. To catch up and share stories. 

And I forgot.

One week later, I learned that he took his own life.

The instant I heard the news, the phone call was what I remembered. And I felt a type of crushing blow that rendered me incapable of doing anything but to sit at the same office desk I had sat at a week earlier when I had silenced his call and sob silently. And clutch my heart. And feel an amount of regret and guilt that felt multiples bigger than my body. That still feels multiples bigger than my body.

To think, What if?

What if I hadn’t silenced his call one week earlier?

Would he still be with us 53 weeks later today?
 
 
 
[Update: Some people can declare with all shades of certainty the things they don't believe in, be it God, TV, Tapered-Leg Jeans or Santa Claus. The only thing I know for certain that I don't believe in is regret - the ugly type of regret that sees you beat yourself over and over for so long that it transforms itself from a thing rooted in compassion or love to a thing of hate and negative energy. A song came on this morning that torpedo-ed my memory to this moment one year ago. And maybe it's because I've battled my own suicidal thoughts in the past, but - on this day - I do choose to ask What if. 

I know nothing can change the past. But I'm a dreamer, too. Contemplating the various possibilities of life - I think and I hope - can only make me a stronger, more aware person. This is in loving memory to my friend, Jake - who I fucking wish so hard was still around.]

[Update #2: See comment No. 31.]

A Digression About The Current State Of The World December 6, 2007

I cried when I heard another shitfucked person went apeshit with a gun in a public place and took the lives of too many people and shattered the lives of too many families. I think about how it’s all fine and great that we want to uphold the Constitution and give every American his rights to guns - a right that was established when our founding fathers was afraid of colonized opression - but wonder when people will stop fighting a fight for the sake of fighting and start getting their fucking priorities straight.
   
I rode the L the other night and saw a homeless man asleep on the chairs and my heart hurt. Yes, I smell them too, and yes, I can feel harassed and annoyed when it seems like the pestering for extra change doesn’t end. But my heart still hurt when I saw him asleep on the train. And when I see some asleep on the sidewalks during my way to work. Chicago has some damn cold winters. And thanks to the fucking incompetence of our fair governor and legislators in Springfield combined with the idiocy that runs the Chicago Transit Authority, the trains aren’t all that much better. I give change. Sometimes I buy them food. But, a lot of the time, it all seems terribly unfair and overwhelming. 
     
I saw a kid being picked on and yelled at last night, and I wanted to swoop in and save. I know that all kids have to go through some of that and it’s supposed to make us all better, stronger people eventually. But it still doesn’t stop me from wanting to save a kid who’s getting picked on by other kids because I’ve seen the 20/20 specials with the undercover cameras at the elementary schools. Kids can be cruel. And parents who pick? Yeah, I think I know something about that too.
 
I received an email yesterday that asked me to sign a petition to stop an effort by a group of (heinously rich and heinously callous) people trying to ban a heliport from being built at Chicago’s Children’s Memorial, and I became angry. And really fucking sad. It’s sickening to learn of people who have lost such touch with the world that exists outside of their comfort bubble that they find the precarious levels of noise in their neighborhood more of a concern than benefiting the lives of sick children. A person has to be pretty fucked in the head to not want to do anything they can to help kids who are sick. Kids are meant to be a lot of things, but suffering from deadly or painful illnesses just isn’t it. And if a child somehow had the short straw drawn for him when it came to his health, then that kid deserves all the help he can get. Online petitions to save one thing or another can be a bit thick sometimes, but this one has its heart in the right place. I’m not so presumptuous to think I should ever tell anyone what to do when it comes to what you want to fight and what you want to believe, but if you’re interested: http://www.childrensmemorial.org/newsroom/alert.aspx
 
I signed the petition, and I felt a bit better. Not about myself because this isn’t about me. I know there’s a hell of a lot more I could do, should do. But I felt a bit more hopeful about the state of things. I know what I did is not much. And signing this petition doesn’t do anything about all of the other problems that plague the current state of the world.
 
But it’s something. A start. A break from the state of passivity we can sometimes freeze ourselves into. A beginning to remembering that the little things can help and hopefully pave the way to bigger things. That there are other people that want to help too.
 
And that a lot of people doing a lot of little things together may become something very powerful, noticeable, perhaps even significant.  

   

A Digression About Good Intentions But Less Than Satisfactory Results November 26, 2007

Once upon a time nine days ago, I wrote that my blog would endure no lack of posting while I holidayed in Vegas (Viva Las!) and Utah (Mormon filled!) and sent that message out for all the internets to see.
 
Even when I knew that I’d be in Vegas - sinning: the seven deadlies - and Utah - playing: the golf, the thanksgiving, the role of angelic girlfriend. 
 
When I knew that unreliable internet connections and uncooperative laptops trail me as closely as the pavarotti do Britney’s britney (Ed. note: Celebrity Tabloids, it’s her vagina, we get it. Moving on, shall we, pretty please?). 
 
And even when I knew I’d be with my boyfriend who does not yet know about this blog and of course I should have known that insisting on sitting at my laptop (and lowering the screen anytime he came nearby) for at least 30 minutes everyday while on vacation would begin to look suspicious and odd.
   
One aborted post on Thanksgiving (Ed. note: I continue to have trouble distinguishing between the “Publish” and the ”Save and continue editing” buttons) and not another word from me again till today later, I stand (Ed. note: Sit) before you a humbled person because once upon a time some nine days ago, I made a bold claim that I emphatically failed to fulfill. And while this helps a little part of me now understand how Bill Clinton must have felt when he faced the world and admitted that he had lied when he had said he did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, I led you on and then I didn’t deliver and, let’s be frank, no one likes a goddamn tease.
 
So I feel bad. Because guilt and I, we’re quite familiar, what with me being a pair of immigrant parents’ first born, who: 1. Failed to apply to Harvard University as a senior in high school (on purpose); 2. Failed to follow through on any of her acceptances into several law schools two years ago (on purpose); and 3. Failed to mention Madeleine Albright as one of her heroes when interviewed by a local news station a few years ago for some feature on 20-something females and had to hear from her father for days after, But I give you her book! What if she watch? You miss chance to tell world you follow Madeleine Albright! (by accident because who in their right mind has Madeleine Albright on the forefront of their mind?).
   
But while I was unable to blog while in Vegas (Viva Las!), I now sit upon a small mountain of potential reading material for you. And while I was raised with too much of a good Midwestern upbringing to stay behind a laptop while my boyfriend’s parents - who are of the very nice, very sweet, very mannered variety - mingled around me in Utah (Mormon filled!), I am now back at my office desk where I have no moral issues with posting on my blog all day.
   
So enough with the excuses and on to some posting, yes?
   
   
[In all and complete seriousness, I hope everyone had a very happy thanksgiving. And remembered to say a little prayer for the Indians.]