On Tragedy and its Responses

Why is it that whenever tragedy strikes, everyone gathers in one large mass around it? This is a phenomenon that I have witnessed many times now. When a girl in my grade was diagnosed with cancer back in 8th grade, every single graduation speech was written about her struggle even though two of the speakers had barely ever talked to the girl before. When my friend was killed by a drunk driver a few years ago, tons of people swarmed to form a large facebook group and offer condolences. I even experienced this flood of sympathy myself a couple of years ago when I was mugged and I got messages/cards from people I'd never talked to before and people who I didn't even know. And this repeats itself over and over again.

Call me unappreciative and uncaring, but is it so much to ask to die as just me? Not to sound terribly morbid, but when I die, I don't want people to like me more as a person just because I'm gone. Recently I've realized the transitory nature of life and that ultimately, people from high school will forget I ever existed and people from college will too. Everything as I know it now will only be this way for a short period in the grand scheme of time. The uncertainty of what will happen the next day is what makes life exciting but it's also what makes life frightening. I almost feel like sometimes it's one big game of catch-up and you just have to keep going in a confused frenzy of sorts.

I still remember all of the responses that people had for the drunk driver who died in the crash that killed my friend. I still hold that anger inside me at all of the condolences that flooded in for that guy. That happened three years ago and I still cannot get over the one nagging and undeniable fact that he knew what he was doing was wrong and was putting the lives of others in danger and he still did it anyway. Here I am retreating to this blog to write these angry thoughts, just as I did on my xanga back then. I still believe that everyone deserves forgiveness for their mistakes and I'd like to make it clear that I don't think the driver deserved to die. I know there's no use playing the blame game anymore anyway. But it still stings now to think I could have stopped my friend from dying if I had asked her to stay over longer; I still put blame on myself and the drunk driver.

I have always had a hard time letting go of the past.
I think it's time that I start.