Happiness ---> Guilt

This is something I've been feeling lately. Guilt as a result of happiness, or fun, or anything positive.

It pains me to think that, while I'm over here having a great time, somewhere, someone is hurting. A lot of people. It makes me feel like I should be grieving with them, rather than living my life as if none of it phases me.

Because it does. I mean, especially in times like right now, when it hits a little closer to home than normal.

A girl I went to school with for three years died yesterday morning as a result of drunk driving. No, we weren't friends. We talked occasionally while we were in school, but I didn't really have any kind of relationship with her... But all night, every single time I smiled, laughed, felt content, happy, satisfied, I couldn't help but wonder about her family. Where they are, what they're doing, how they're feeling, how they're handling it, how they're telling other people about it. And her friends. I've always wondering how I would handle it if I lost one of my friends in such a tragic way (not that I want to experience it). I can't imagine how they're coping.

I just wish I didn't feel like such a terrible person for being able to laugh and smile and be happy. Something inside of me is telling me that I want to be sad about this, I should be sad about this, and I am, but I guess I'm used to letting something like this consume me, and since it hasn't this time (yet), I feel wrong.

I'm sorry. It's just insane when you hear about kids you know dying. And in the worst ways. Statistical. Their deaths will be referred to as statistics. It's so sad. Drunk driving. She will be used as an example. And another person I knew, gang shooting. I want to say something along the lines of, "It isn't fair," but for my entire life, I've been told that life isn't fair, and that's something we have to get used to. I can't, though.


I sat on my bedroom floor with my yearbook in my lap, flipping through the pages, staring at the kids I spent three years (or more) of my life with, wondering where they're all at, and if they ever wonder about me.

I saw Stefanie Andrews and I remembered her voice. I'm sad for her family, and I'm sad for her friends, and I'm sad for her. Lives get cut short before true potential is reached, even if that potential is touching one more person's life or saving the world.



"Such is life," she often said
With one day leading to the next
You get a little closer to your death
Which was fine with her,
She never got upset.