This is one of those posts that I’ve been trying to write for weeks, one of these posts that I wonder if I should make at all because at the end of the day it straddles that line between personal and important and while the previous sentence doesn’t make any sense right now I’m sure I hope over the next couple of paragraphs it’ll all become a little clearer and I can finally get this down in writing.
About four weeks ago sometime early Monday morning my parents woke me up. That in itself isn’t so weird, but I remember not only being tired, but pretty irritated because they were being so pushy about it. My parents sat me and my younger brother down in the living room and gave me some of the most unbelievable news possible…
My two best friends and their girlfriends had decided to go on a trip to Kings Island in Cincinnati for a weekend since they had enjoyed Lollapalooza so much last year and of course just on general principles. I hadn’t thought anything of it really because I hadn’t managed to get a job, and the prospect of spending $300+ for something like that just didn’t seem financially smart, so I didn’t. So they went, and I stayed in Nashville. Nothing about this situation is any different than any other trip or excursion with my friends other than the fact that I had decided not to come along. While returning to Nashville, around 8, somewhere in northern Kentucky, their car crossed the median and hit a oncoming tractor trailer, suffice it to say no one survived but the driver of the tractor trailer. We still don’t know what happened, other than it wasn’t drugs or alcohol, all I know was the end result. I lost four friends that night, that was the difference, and that morning it felt like I had lost two brothers. It’s hard to convey the feelings I had for these people, but suffice it to say that we were about as close as unrelated people should be and still have lives of their own, if that makes any sense. I knew both them throughout middle school and high school and their girlfriends both graduated from the same school and while I didn’t know them quite as well, this Summer was certainly changing that, as painful as that is. All of these people were in the prime of life with so much more to to do and live for that it makes my head spin if I think about it too long. This just isn’t something that you think about or prepare for, I figured I would grow old with these people, that I’d be at their weddings, that they might be at mine, that I would graduate with my friend Ryan who was attending SCAD, etc, etc, etc. So many plans, so many things left undone and yet I was sitting in my living room left with this unnatural, unreal, truth, half expecting my parents to be playing some sort of horrible joke on me, but they obviously weren’t. So, it’s been a hard couple of weeks and one heck of a emotional roller coaster. I’ve been working thankfully, but it hasn’t stopped me from feeling awful at times. I’m not sure where all my sadness and anger comes from, it’s not like they were my son or daughter, but it’s there and I know that I care about these people and I know they cared about me too.
So, why am I writing about this now? What do I hope to gain from this post of mine…well, I’m not sure. I’m certainly not asking for anything but your thoughts. Because if theirs anything that I’ve learned through this is that everyone handles tragedies like this differently and talking about this is the best thing you can do.
Thanks all.
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