U: Life During Wartime

since I do so few posts in a month, I'm going around my usual convention of "New Naming Convention every month," which has been the case more or less since the inception of this blog.

Last weekend brought with it a Septembery chill that reminds one that we're coming to a place in the Earth's revolution around the sun that tilts our hemisphere away. It's getting chilly.

This is, if all goes according to plan, the last time I'll ever associate the chilliness of late summer/early fall with the return to school. This time next year I'll be finding my way in the world without the caveat of studenthood. The excuse. It's freaky. I don't want to think about it. Don't make it.

Unfortunately, this time of year has a habit of provoking thoughts I'd rather ignore. Aside from thinking about the far-flung future of 2011, there's the very near future of two days from now. I find myself constantly bemoaning the debacle into which I'm getting myself, working and going to school and having crazy-ass hours. Part of me believes this is all the work of a self-destructive mind. WTF am I doing. What the fuck.

But all that takes a backseat now. Nothing can really be done. Things are the way they are, all I can do is weather the storm. I've been working all week. I've got my head down, where it'll be for the next semester. Whatever happens will happen. Whatever angst is strangling me is slightly secondary to this:

Yesterday at work, I learned that a girl I worked with died. Cait, a girl who had made such an impact on me in a short time that I related the story of meeting her just a few weeks ago to talk about change in my life. She was such a force during the brief time that I knew her that I thought of her often and wished I could have seen more of her after we stopped working together.

Here was a girl I liked instantly, whose energy was pretty easy to catch for yourself. She made some of the dreary days of last year's holiday season a lot more interesting, and I looked forward to days I worked with her. I was actively bitter for weeks after she was not hired, even though she constantly assured me she was better off, not suited to the corporate store environment. still, she laughed at just about everything I said, and I wasn't afraid to say anything around her.

Shortly before Christmas, she got a black eye from falling off a barstool. It was pretty absurd to keep going about her business after that, but she did. On New Year's, a friend of hers committed suicide. I had made her a mix CD and was suddenly self-conscious about the fact that one of the songs on the mix (Bill McCai by the Coral) was a lighthearted ditty about suicide. She jovially told me to never mind, she was used to it (as she'd lost so many of her acquaintances) and was not overly sensitive. A long time later when she finally listened to it, she told me she liked the CD, although she never got around to making me mine.

One of the couple times we went to the bar after work, she lost her work shirt and I lent her my old one from 2006. For am long time afterward, it smelled like her, but since it's been 9 months, it doesn't anymore.

The last time I saw her, I had tracked her to the Booster Juice where she was working, just for the sake of seeing her. That was early in this summer. I was hoping to arrange a meet-up for drinks, but she got busy with her other job, tattooing and I figured there'd be more time.

When Gus had said he'd heard from Taylor that she was dead, Karen, Chantelle and I were all within earshot. After confirming this by calling Dorval, Karen and Chantelle went to the back to have a cry. I just stood there, contemplating it. I was sad, shocked, and all those other expected things. But it hadn't seemed impossible. Not that I'd thought about it beforehand "Yeah, she'll probably die young," that'd be insanely callous. But the way darkness seemed to cling to her, even despite her lightness. Sad, but somehow when I heard it, it didn't disbelieve.

Anyway, it's... it's very sad. Understandably, it's got me in a bit of a funk this weekend. It's heavy.

But do what you can to keep on rockin'
-Scott