Author: Michelle

I have trouble knowing when I’ve had enough.

Food. Drink. information. Togetherness. Whatever.
Actually, that’s not quite true–i am usually well aware of when I’ve had too much togetherness. My mental state starts to fray pretty dramatically when I overdose on company.

I don’t think I’m a very balanced person in general. I tend to skew intense. I tend to skew obsessive. I tend to skew all in or all out.

I suck at many of the things that normal, civilized people do every day: chatting, remembering to brush my hair, not staring at people, pretending that I am paying attention. It makes for fun times in meetings, where I am as likely as not to answer a question with “I’m sorry, I was watching that squirrel over there and didn’t hear what you said.”

And even though there are aspects of my lack of balance that I work on, like a tendency to be negative, and not pay attention in meetings, I am not particularly motivated to become less intense or obsessive. It’s my character. If I change it, I would be someone else. Or so I like to think.

Actually, I’m not really even all that inclined to work on the daydreaming. I suspect that if I stop daydreaming and start focusing, I will turn into a monster. I don’t have a stitch of empirical evidence for that though. I mean, I’ve never turned into a monster. It’s a theory. Some people think it probably isn’t very likely. Other people think that it’s not that fucking hard to pay attention in meetings, and I should have to do it like everyone else.

But…

Well..

I keep going back to that theory about turning into someone else (or a monster) and so I stay the same.

Which makes me wonder what it is that makes us uniquely us. I don’t really believe in a soul, exactly, but I do think it’s the closest term for our ‘me’.

It probably doesn’t matter what we call it though.
Much.

Everyone probably has a bit of a list of what makes up their self. Character. Brains. Humor. Looks. Some people probably wouldn’t count looks. Some people think we have a soul that lives both before and after our physical bodies. Some think it’s only here while we’re alive, and then goes off into some sort of after life. Some people don’t think we have a soul at all, but there’s still clearly something there that makes us all individuals. What?

My theory is that it’s just part of the bio-chemical soup that makes us up. “Just” being immensely complicated, and pretty miraculous and unlikely. The whole universe seems sort of unlikely to me. Unlikely in a way that’s explained by a Creation theory? No. Unlikely in a way that defies either a religious or chaos theory of creation. I have no idea how we got here. Why there are dogs. Why poppies have furry stems. Evolution, sure. But that each of us ended up just exactly like we are? I don’t think it could have been planned.

Of course, this has nothing at all to do with the way I have trouble recognizing the concept of enough. Does it?

I certainly don’t recognize when I’ve gone beyond the limits of a possibly allowable tangent and right onto some other topic entirely.

Well. I start out wondering about something. Then I wonder about something else. Eventually I am a long way from where I started and sometimes there isn’t a way back.

Will I edit?

Will I stop?

One thing I know I won’t do is have a shot of tequila. For once, I recognize that I have already had enough tequila this week.

Huh. Maybe I am capable of learning after all…

Out walking, I was looking around at the new leaves on the trees, and the flowers popping out, and smelling newly cut grass. As I passed underneath a tree, birds were singing so loudly I almost had to cover my ears. When I stopped to listen for a minute, they quieted down. So I started walking again.

They cheered my departure with another burst of song.

Bastards.

There was a tragic story out of Florida recently involving a police officer and some teenage lovers who were running away from home to be together. All three ended up dead when the boy shot the officer, and then his girlfriend and himself. The letters the two had written each other are touching, and sad and reminded me how incredibly intense life and love are when you’re that age. And how easy it is for kids in love to do something horrifying when they feel like someone is trying to come between them.

Things are so much harder emotionally at that age. Before you learn to dull things down so they are more bearable. Before you learn that things get better, that things change. Before you learn to put up a little bit of shielding between your heart and the world. Before you learn that things will be OK.

You may disagree with me about this, but I think that teenagers can fall in love. I don’t know if it’s common, but I have no doubt at all that it is possible. I don’t think it’s “Puppy Love” or a crush, or “just hormones.” It’s real, and it’s overwhelming.

When very young people do fall in love, it is particularly intense and hard to get over for a lot of reasons. How many people do you know who have never forgotten their first love? There is a lot of emotion that is hard to let go of. It’s a combustible time. Combustion is memorable. It leaves a mark. In the case of these two and the officer they killed, the combustion was deadly.

Did it have to be?

Part of the tragedy here relates to how easily a kid was able to get his hands on a gun and use it. Someone else can have that discussion.

When you’re a teenager, you’re a hormonal and emotional hurricane in a body that is changing every minute. Everything is new. Everything is big. When you fall in love it seems like that is all there is. It feels like you will die if you lose it. You hope you do die. You just don’t have the kind of shielding to protect yourself from the flood of feelings that an adult does. That makes an already intense feeling even more so. Much more so. Add in how hormonally souped up you are, and newly discovered sexual feelings directed at someone you just can’t keep your hands off of and you have something that will be hard to recover from if it ends. Which it almost always does. Usually not in a tragedy.

So these two kids wanted nothing but to be together, and their families wanted them to be apart. For reasons that seem totally rational to an adult, but insane to a teenager.

To them, it must have felt like the whole world was against them. It kind of is. The world isn’t kind to kids in love. They aren’t kind to the world, either.

Three people are dead because no one could figure out what to do about a couple of kids who loved each other. It isn’t a new story.

Maybe someday we’ll figure out what to do.

Note: this started life as a bit of an ode to how wonderful and overwhelming first love is. Then I read this story, and it wasn’t anymore. When I compare my own experience with this, there’s obviously a very different outcome…but I found myself really identifying with the poor dead girl who just wanted to be happy writing lists of things that were going to be wonderful in their life together.