Bad days

[darcydodo]

I don't know what it is about bad things happening. You (or at least I) never quite believe that it's real, whether you're there or not. The panic that you might feel later, or that you might equally feel in the abstract face of the possibility of disaster, is, initially, just a sense that there's this really terrible grief that you should be feeling. What it really is? Just confusion, the sensation that you've just fallen off the cliff-edge of utter unreality. So it was like that tonight when Michele got off the phone and said that Stephanie had been robbed, and sounded like she was about to laugh, and then later Mont asked how she could be so casual about the whole thing. But I don't think she was, I just didn't say so. Because it was like that two years ago (is it that long ago now?) when Abbie put her hand through the glass in the door, and we heard the shatter, heard the shouting continue straight on without pause -- no screaming, though, no crying -- and then later we saw the blood spattered on the pavement, saw the jagged black hole where the glass should be, and I couldn't walk by there without thinking about it for weeks, even though I passed there every day to get to Rachel's place. Unless I walked on the other side of the street, when I didn't have to see the little dark drops that eventually turned black and one day disappeared, so that a couple of months later I suddenly remembered, and looked down, and they weren't there. (It was easier once the door wasn't boarded up any more, when there were no obvious reminders unless I happened to be looking at my feet, or absently thought oh, that's Abbie's room I'm passing.) And it was like when Holly died. But it wasn't like that when Anne got cancer, because I kept seeing her, saw the confusion in her eyes, was there for the endless queries as to what was causing the seizures, and I was there almost every day while she was in the hospital. That made it real. But I still don't know why my first instinct, when disaster strikes, is to smile.

Comments

[spazatron.livejournal.com]

very profound post. i too smile immediately after hearing about something horrible. i always feel awful about it afterwards, but it makes me feel a little bit better to know i'm not the only one. i hope everything is alright with you.

louis

[darcydodo]

Yeah, I'm OK, just a bit disturbed that my cozy little world isn't quite so cozy as I sometimes think. And I'm figuring that mciac'll be alright if Stephanie's alright. :)

(God I hate giving in to the temptation of writing 'alright' as one word. My mom used to tell me every time I asked when I was growing up that it's two words, all + right... but even the spellchecker finds nothing wrong with alright these days.)

[chele74.livejournal.com]

My apparent lack of reaction probably has as much to do with having lived in a place where everyone - as in 1 out of 2 people I knew - used to get mugged regularly (Hyde Park). It is shocking just because I don't think of this area as being dangerous, not in the way that I used to think of Hyde Park. At least in Hyde Park, I would always assume that every person on the street was going to mug me. Ever wondered why I have a whistle on my key ring? Part of what makes this shocking for her & the rest of us is that I generally don't walk around here with the same anxiety that I used to have when I lived in Chicago.

I get criticized for being so non-emotional - and it's not that I'm not emotional, it's that things are what they are, and I tend to just deal with things on that basis. That's why I generally don't get angry at people, and I don't take things as personally as others might. I could give you a long explanation for why this is, but you don't want to hear about my relationship with my father, now do you?

Besides, Stephanie wasn't injured so much as traumatized, so she wanted people (i.e. me and Alyssa) to sit with her and make her feel safe. You can't really say much to make someone feel better, you try to inch them back toward normality. i don't think I'm capable of getting worked up over anything - too many years of getting upset have conditioned me to be calm as much as possible. We also kept track of all the places where she felt injured so that if she couldn't keep track at least someone else could. Oh, and I think asking for the Vicodin was Alyssa's idea. Always good to have more brains rather than fewer.

[dizzyditz.livejournal.com]

That was an amazing post. I must meet you, famous Darcy.

[darcydodo]

I think lj is very cathartic. There are things like that that I've been wanting to get off my chest for ages. The things that never get said out loud. (And now I'm just trying to figure out how many of those things I really can put in here, for fear of hurting people who may one day see this.)

Anyway, though, there's lots of ways you could meet me, many of which involve tagging along with Anna, and a number of which, equally, don't. ;)

[dizzyditz.livejournal.com]

Maybe I could just stalk you down in your place, hiding behind the trash bins, and then kidnapping you before you go anywhere at the break of day.

[darcydodo]

You want to head over here at break of day, you're perfectly welcome... but you could also come at a more civilized hour at some point, if you want. :) (Oh, and the trash bins are a bit difficult to hide behind, they're sort of few and far between.)