So there was this chick (not me) in my grade who ran away with some boyfriend of hers to Lord knows where and stayed with him for around a month. She recently came back and is doing class normally. She wasn’t hurt or did drugs or drank or anything big like that. In a way, she was gone and then she was back. When she first left, people were posting on their SnapChat stories on how they missed her for less than five hours. Then they started talking about something else and everyone forgot.
Even I forgot until I saw her in the gym sitting with some friends talking like normal. It was like a dream. My mom, a teacher who taught her, didn’t say a thing about her return. No one did. Of course I’m sure that her sister and mom had some things to say to her and had their share of grief, but everywhere else? It was like a dream. It was like nothing even happened. Just some story you’d tell people at a dinner party to get thirty seconds worth of attention followed by one “that’s crazy” before moving on to the topic of a popular movie.
It made me think, what if I was gone? Would people put on their stories “RIP my friend, I’ll always miss you <3” and then forget about me? Would they forget the date of my funeral if I ever had one? Would it be like nothing ever happened?
People talk about school orientations and dumb shit like that… that girl that went missing got none of that. And she was far more popular than me. It shows you that people really just don’t care. It’s scary, you know?
Who would miss me if I died? Who would remember me when the season of going to the beach with friends came around? Would they just go without me and post on their SnapChat stories “this was our favorite place” for a year and then forget? Or would they post at all?
That’s enough about social media though. What about real life? Would they talk about me? Would someone say “oh my god I can’t believe she killed herself” and then move topics? Would they tell my mom “sorry” in the halls and then forget along with herself? Would my old ex talk to her friends, find out, and feel anything at all other than surprise? Would anyone think about it more than a minute? The answer: probably not.
So why am I not dead yet.
6 comments
I guess it depends if anyone truly cares about you. Or you care about anyone.
But I don’t see why it matters.
It’s obvious no one cares too much.
Each person is something like .000000000000003333% of the human population
I mean it’s only a month. It’s not like she was dead.
I’m the type to not give a shit what people think or what they care about. Because I don’t give a shit.
You must be young?
You have made a good point with this story. I went back over what it was like to see so so many of my acquaintances, colleagues, friends, and family, even close family, die off over the decades from mostly natural causes but also accidents and even several suicides. Guess what? Yes each one stung a bit, or quite a bit sometimes, but nothing like the years long agony I read about in the survivor stories people write for the survivor sites. I don’t deny that that agony exists but I venture to guess it is harder for these folks than most. Maybe it is not such a big deal most of the time, not really.
Even thought this story is about a runaway who returned apparently unharmed, it got me thinking about so many people who I never see on this earth again.
As I mentioned somewhere before no one truly cares you’re part of the moment and you’re no longer part of it, you’re just gone and everyone has to move on at a point.
People will be affected, there will be people who are truly hurt by what happened (such as your family), then there are people who will use it as a topic to start a conversation, a deep talk.
It’s all twisted don’t even pay the slightest attention to how this is, because this is how life is and there’s nothing we can do to change, sadly.
But eventually everyone moves on, and/or they end up killing themselves to.
Interesting story.
I think it’s worth bearing in mind that unless you believe in an afterlife of some sort (including reincarnation), no one who has ever died knows anything about what happened afterwards. I mean, obviously, because they are no longer there. So none of them are sad that they weren’t remembered enough or whatever.
I think these rituals, these superstitions (IMO), we have them to make OUR lives easier. They are for our comfort. We don’t have burial rituals for the deceased, but for everyone left behind. Similarly, I doubt a lot of babies care much about their baptisms. They’re too young to really know what’s going on.
But yeah, it’s strange when people leave. Not just people who die, just people you lose touch with. Because my life has been such a mess, I’ve lived a bit like a drifter. Worked various jobs, tried various courses of higher education and so on. Every time, I meet people, get to know them, move on, lose touch. It’s strange and sad.
On the other hand, it makes sense to focus on what is right in front of you, instead of being stuck in the past.
I had a friend who supposedly committed suicide when I was younger. Didn’t even know he was depressed.
I remember my parents talking about how much of a coward he was for taking his life. The things that happened to him leading up to it would’ve broken anyone. Don’t want to get into any specifics, but he ran into a lot of bad luck that had nothing to do with him. If he was already dealing with clinical depression, it’s not hard to see how it got to that point.
I still think about him all the time. I never talked to him about my depression. He was also one of the few people that didn’t ask me what I was majoring in, what I planned to do for a living or any of those stupid questions that people of his generation think are good conversation topics at parties.
Looking back on it, it’s another example of how good people aren’t made for this world. He was the kind of person that could make anyone laugh. Didn’t gossip about other people. But when you’re a nice person, you have a habit of attracting toxic people.
To answer the OPs question, it all depends. Not a week goes by that I don’t think about him, though. If by some chance there’s an afterlife, he’s the first person I’d like to meet and find out what really happened.