i am not overwhelmed; i am just fine. that in itself is pretty overwhelming. at the moment (2.29 am), i'm sitting in palmer lounge, trying to get motivated to make up cute little decorative door signs for my hall. fat chance.

RA training ended early yesterday, but Tedd kept us for a few minutes: "blah blah blah...very sad news...Eric Johnson...a senior...killed yesterday....train...blah..." now, for some reason my heart started pounding much more loudly than usual. strange, since all i could think was, I don't know any Erics, right? Right?

then Tedd said some sentence ending in "...Massachusetts," and my breath kind of caught. of course I know Erics. Which Eric? my mind still wasn't making the connection. after most everyone walked off, I kind of tiptoed over to Collin Peng-Sue and (stupid stupid stupid) said, "which Eric is...was...that?" he did a mild and well-justified double take and said "EJ, it's EJ."

click.

yeah, EJ, one of Paul's closest friends, a friend to me as well. always good for a conversation about the Red Sox. weird, dry, smart, acerbic wit. hall crawls, apple tobacco from the jordanian hookah paul gave him, candy stockpiles. EJ.

so my heart sank. i thought of paul and went home to my phone, finding a shaky-sounding message from paul, who had already heard from dan schwartz. the conversation with paul was the worst moment of the day. dreading the answer, i asked whether the accident was...an accident. but no. and of course the details just make the reality more daunting. i guess i should feel thankful that suicide seems so horrific to me, to most of us, but all i really feel is...horrified. were there signs? could anyone have known? could anyone have stopped him? above all, why would he make that choice? impulse?

what i am thankful for, in an utterly selfish way, is that i was not closer to EJ. for the last two days all i've wanted is to pull my friends into a nice, tight huddle and keep them there. as i talked to alyssa yesterday she said, "why does everything now have to be so serious?" it's true. like i wrote to my closest high school friends yesterday, at the moment growing up seems to be a process of collecting evidence about the fragility of lives. fuck the "evidence," though. i can do without it. EJ was a good-hearted and decent and smart person, not a data point to remind me to stay in touch with my pals.

in any case, i'm impressed with all the legwork that has gone into sending folks to EJ's memorial on sunday. it looks like a relatively large number of us are going. schwartz writes that the memorial will have music, and maybe even beer, "just the way EJ would have wanted."

NB: wayne has a better remembrance than i could possibly offer. well done.