Mirabile Lectu

I had originally planned on posting a picture of a nice clean desk on my last day at this job with something generic about moving on to something new. I didn't get the chance though, and instead got one last reminder of just how toxic and abusive the place I'm leaving has been. This book of poetry was given to me by my late friend Frank, one of the countless small honest and kind gestures that defined him. He was encouraging me to find passion and new ways to write, but I'm afraid in that I've let him down. It's becoming clear how much joy and life this job sucked out of me, shown in the fact I haven't written a word in years. But I'm going to read, and heal, and remember that Frank believed in me, and start again at the beginning. A new beginning, indeed.

A friend of mine died today.

It was cancer, fucking brain tumors that had no right to be in a young and healthy body much less shut it down. He’d been sick for a long time, but we all thought...we all thought we were still invincible. How does someone in college get cancer? How does it stick around for this long, seeming to go away and get better before it’s suddenly not? How does this happen?

I don’t know how to react to this, I guess because I’ve never done it before, or maybe because I don’t know what to call it. Because, if I’m honest, we weren’t friends, not really. He was friends with my husband, except for when they weren’t, and I was friends with his fiancee, except for when we weren’t. I suppose it was one of those weird growing up things where people come and go but stay in your social circle, and my mind just won’t get past it. How do I describe this? My friend, my acquaintance, a person I know, nothing feels right. 

But that doesn’t matter, even if my selfish stupid brain keeps coming back to it. What matters is that someone died and left a whole bunch of other someones behind. He was supposed to get married two weeks ago but they had to cancel because of his declining health, and I just can’t get past how fucking unfair it all is. How goddamned cruel and twisted and awful it is for his poor fiancee to live in a world without him, for it to be now, for everything to be like this. 

I don’t know what I’m trying to say or how to say it. I guess this is part of getting older, learning to deal with this and be fine when you don’t know what else to do. I’ll just hug my husband, kiss my cats, and call my mom. Be nice to each other everyone, because it’s all we’ve got in this fucked up world.