Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Mourning

I never know the right amount of sad to be. There's this strange grey area.

Someone I used to know died and I'm not sure how to feel. He was my age, in my homeroom at school, and died in a tragic accident far away.

For a little while, before people knew what really happened (he died halfway across the world, so facts were pretty sketchy at first) I was hoping it would have turned out to be some kind of mistake. A prank of some kind, a really mean one, but still better than the truth. I hoped and maybe even believed a little that he'd just pop up somewhere, claiming the rumors of his demise were greatly exaggerated a la Mark Twain.

We were never really friends, at one point I think I may not have liked him much due to some friends of his I didn't get along with, but by the time high school ended I came to think of him as a kind person who'd matured and grown since 9th grade and realized I'd been wrong about him initially. I ran into him at a bar a few years after high school and we had a drink. I think I half-laughingly brought up something about old friends of his picking on me in school and he began talking about how no one can really know what another person is really like or who they really are. It either went over my head or I shrugged it off as something said after one drink too many. I think I was more concerned with proving I was no longer a scrawny, awkward nerd anymore (or at least, no longer scrawny) than really catching up or having any kind of deep conversation. I feel bad about that now, though I doubt it bothered him much. We barely knew each other, after all, and who really lingers over a fuzzy conversation with a former schoolmate at a bar?

Well, I guess I do. Now.

And now I'm not sure how to react. I'm sad, sad enough that I feel even less like chatting with passing coworkers than usual and just want to sit here quietly, contemplating. But for some reason I'd feel bad if I were to act TOO upset. I wouldn't want anyone wasting any time to comfort me, someone who barely knew him, when there are real friends, family, and loved ones out there truly grieving.

So I guess for now I'll just sit here and contemplate, write maudlin things in a blog one person reads, and try and gauge the appropriate levels of strange feelings that I don't really know the names for. I think mourning will always just feel weird.