This past month has just been rife with oddities.
I’m having trouble grasping what’s real and what isn’t. Aside from that, the semester’s drawing to a close, and that always feels unreal to me.
bettymonroe called last night and told me that Wes had hung himself in jail on Monday. He (as she mentions in her entry on the same subject) was a big part of my social development when I was in high school. He was the guy who’s house it was always cool to crash at. He dated Trina (which takes the patience of a saint – or a complete lack of mental stability). He was always a bit “off”, and confessed to me about eight years ago that he wanted to kill himself. I think he struggled with suicide more than a few times.
He was one of the many people I’m surrounded with who aren’t happy here, and cannot see a way to ever be happy. I deliver pizzas in the evenings, and as I’m traveling back and forth between the southeast industrial sector of town, and the southernmost neighborhoods filled with upper-middle-class families, I wonder. I wonder how it is that financial and emotional stability -happiness, essentially- seem so far from my grasp, while all these people are living just that dream. They probably don’t even realize that the simple foundations of their lives, the things that they don’t ever feel especially greatful for -are things that some people long for all their lives. I wonder what he was thinking about, alone in that jail cell. He’s been trying to make ends meet by illegal means the entire time I’ve known him. I’ve run into him here and there over the years, and he’s always running the same games.
I tried to convince him not to hurt himself all those years ago, when I dropped him off at home crying. No one was there this time to argue.
I’m almost afraid of the effect this funeral will have on me. I’ve buried grandparents, friend’s parents, distant family members… I’ve never really been to the funeral of a person I really interacted with personally. Someone who took part in the formation of who I am today. I got a lot of worldly experience in Wesley’s circles, and now I have to pay my respects and witness the close of a painful life. The whole situation is made more tender by the knowledge that he died in such a way. Such a sad, profound, and cliche way. I’m not really sure how I’ll react, but I know I’m going to want so badly to comfort the living -and most likely will not be able or know how.
http://cf.rrstar.com/obituaries/fullobit.cfm?obitid=29006 (The Obituary)
Seeing as how my child and I are alone (and doing fine) I think it might be nice for him to have a family dynamic. It won’t be the typical family, but it would be a social situation within which he could learn about relations between people and not just from me alone. Children sometimes need different interactions to learn about.
