Weight

It feels like I've been obsessed with mortality lately. April does that to me, since it's the month in which all females in my family seem to die. My own health weirdness has been prolonging that general funk this year, and the book I'm currently reading (Eat, Pray, Love) is playing into it somewhat as well. I would say that overall, I'm acutely aware that we're not guaranteed anything past this moment. Sometimes that inspires me to be the best person I can be. Sometimes it inspires me to curl up in a corner and hide, along with everyone I love.

I think there's a part of me that thinks that if I just don't take the future for granted, I'll somehow, cosmically, be allowed to live through more of it. I bargain that because I lost my own mother on the early side, and because I've lost two desperately-wanted babies, my living children should somehow be granted health and life, and I should be allowed to watch them grow up. I know this doesn't make any sense, and that in this country, we have a bizarre relationship with death. We pretend that we're in charge of it, and that it's not part of life. I know that as a rule, we experience fewer tragic deaths than non-industrialized countries, so while I may have had a higher toll than most people I know here, I'm still barely acquainted with death.

This morning, DT found out that a medical student he knows well, who was about to graduate and start residency here, died yesterday in an accident. She was married, she had a small child. Her family was about to come celebrate her graduation and now they're coming for a different reason. Some asshole cut her off and killed her, then kept going. She didn't get to bargain. It's over, just like that.

Processing this is impossible.