i guess i haven't been living up to my title lately, have i? but it seems like a lot of shit's going down, and there's not an awful lot of space left in my head for the politics of it all.

the hell of it is that EJ's death, while certainly the biggest issue right now, is definitely not the only one. i think a lot of my friends are wondering how this semester is going to work on a really basic level. i am worried for my friends and, occasionally, for myself. will we be able to get it together and do work? will we feel frightened, or depressed, or overwhelmed? (maybe; yes.) i can only speak for myself, but at the moment i feel like i'm about a million years old.

i'm also starting to put my finger on some of the reasons that EJ's service was so strange for me. the difficulty, i think, is in honoring EJ's life without honoring his decision to kill himself. like the pastor said, we can't possibly judge a life by one moment -- but it's pretty damn hard to avoid it when you are gathered with a whole ton of people who have only been forced together by that decision. suicide truly is the most selfish of acts. i feel glad that i wasn't as close to EJ as some of my other friends--it means i can be angry about the path he chose instead of simply drowned by grief.

also...was it swat? was it swat? was it swat? some of EJ's home friends think he killed himself essentially because he couldn't face going back to school. why the HELL say something like that to his friends from school? "swat" includes a whole bunch of people who cared for EJ a lot. why weren't we enough? the array of scary questions attending the assertion that EJ's suicide was related to school is wide and for many of his friends, immeasurably painful. part of going to this school is the reality that we leave each other every summer. keeping in touch isn't always easy. and now we're left with the irrational fear that if we had stayed close, or emailed more, or called, or...something...maybe someone could have known.

was it swat? in the end, no way. i know that. suicidality is like cancer, in that sometimes it kills people despite their best efforts. it is unconnected to rationality and unconnected to the true dimensions of life's problems, and no one can care enough to fix that.