Vocational school and Sally Struthers
Every carpet commercial known to man
DuPont stain master
Crappy jewelry commercials
Things you see on Teevee when you cant sleep!
Bing Bing Bing Bing Bing Bing!
or in America
Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding!
and in Japanese
破損の破損の破損の破損の破損の破損 !
Sigh...german
Klingeln klingeln klingeln klingeln Klingeln Klingeln!
I can't sleep
I've tried counting sheep, cows, dogs, cats, snakes, brontosaurus's, sheep (again), marmot's and sugar gliders. Morpheus and Hypnos have forsaken me.
I don't like this much, when I can't sleep and no one else is on line. My mind flits hither and thither and yon and other fruity words. I think about stuff. I think about people I know or knew or don't know anymore.
I thought about my friend Jo tonight.
I still know her, though I don't talk to her that much. Schedules don't jive up, thats just the way things go sometimes, or eventually. I was remembering a party we were at a long time ago.
I had, at the time, known her for about 2 or 3 years already. We were both talking to our mutual friend Jim. It was one of those drunk conversations that you have when the party starts to wind down at four in the morning. I don't exactly know how it started, I've been sitting here trying to recall it but it won't come to me. I think we must have been talking about tattoos or something. Eventually the focus was on Jo and her wrists for some odd reason. Or maybe I just noticed something strange out of the blue when she turned her wrist over. As I said, I can't remember.
It's always weird the things you never know about someone until out of the blue, they open some hidden locked closet of theirs and all the bones come spilling out. Sometimes it's by accident, sometimes it's on purpose but made to look accidental. Maybe they're just ready to tell you.
I saw a small welt of scar tissue overgrown on the inside of her wrist. I have one similar on the outside my thumb where i was washing dishes one day as a kid. I put my hand inside a glass and it just broke apart and cut a small square right on the first knuckle closest to my wrist.
Jim saw it too and said "Woah, wha'd you do, try to slit your wrist or somefin?"
She turned her other wrist over. There was another one.
" Yep."
She said it was a long time ago, when she wasn't in such a good place. She didn't have an easy world to grow up in it seems.
Things get better. Scars heal. They're always there to remind you of the bad days. The ones that got away from you. The life that got away from you. The life that you almost got away from.
I wasn't so much shocked at the fact that she had tried to kill herself. I'm not so naive that I cant believe that people I know, probably more than I could imagine, may have thought about snuffing it. Or tried. That wasn't the thought that came into my head when I saw those fleshy little knobs of skin on her little bitty wrists.
This happened before I ever met her. Way before I ever knew she existed.
The thought that hit me was ...I almost didn't know her. I almost never met someone who makes such a difference in my life. It wasn't like someone whose never been born and never eventually meets me. This was a girl who was born and then almost .... wasn't. I suppose the same thing could be said for someone who died from cancer, or was hit by a car before I came along. This was her own doing, SHE almost caused it, not a car or a tumor. I wasn't angry at her, don't get the wrong idea. I was just suddenly quite saddened at how chance can just ever so slightly be nudged this way or that, like accidentally bumping into a chair, causing some slight change in the future.
I almost never met one of my truly most amazing friends.
I wonder sometimes, like tonight when I can't sleep, who I haven't met yet.
Who, but for a slight nudge of that chair, I almost never met.
Or, the person I will never ever meet.
I'm going to call Jo tomorrow and see if she wants to have lunch. And I'm going to think about people I'm very glad I know.
I'll make sure my chair is pushed under the desk before I leave.