I was thinking last night--at 2am, exhausted, while I was so ragingly upset that I could not breathe--about an old friend who died a few years ago.
I say "died" like it happened to her by accident, but she killed herself, in her late 30s, after a short life of frustration and disappointment. She was weighed down by a lot of things: an inability to extrictate herself from toxic family, repeated disappointments in her career, failed attempts to move out of rural Tennessee, and a constant, grief-deep desire to find love, which never seemed to find her. She was perpetually in a place she didn't fit: too smart, too liberal, too weird. Not a looker, not timid, but neither burdened with confidence. She kept reaching and snapping back.
It was the longing for love that always resonated with me, and that in my imagination killed her in the end. It preoccupied her constantly. She had crushes on many mutual friends, and was always politely rebuffed. She was a friend but never anything more, and that killed her. I can vividly imagine the impulse to end things, just to make someone care. You are indifferent to me now, but we'll see how you'll feel when I'm gone. You will feel how alone I feel. You'll see.
But nobody did see, I think. We were all sad, it was shocking and tragic. But nobody was connected to her so strongly that there were ripple effects, or lasting damage. Before last night, I had not thought about her in some years. She was a lovely person, but I don't miss her.
But maybe that wasn't her motivation. Maybe she just didn't want to hurt anymore. That's usually the case. Maybe she found peace. Here, along the living, she faded from our awareness so fast, like she'd barely even been.
That is almost more depressing. How can we be so slight? How can we live a whole life and leave nothing behind? Leaving damage is at least something.
But both scenarios are stupid and tragic, and once you're dead, legacy doesn't matter to you anyway. It isn't what any of us want. We want to matter while we are alive. We want to feel like our steps leave prints, like our wake makes waves. Like someone is following, or looking back to make sure we are.
We are going to struggle to matter, to ourselves or to others, one way or the other. Giving up is a short cut to the opposite. Nothing can make you matter less than vanishing from the board. Your wake stills to nothing so quickly. All there is for it is to keep trying, keep struggling, keep reaching, keep touching. And try to feel the ripples. Notice them. Maybe there are more than we think? God, I hope so.
