I Cried

Tonight I had to cry.

I had to cry for Cory Monteith, who died too soon.

I had to cry for my cousins, who died too soon.

I had to cry for my friend, and our family friends, who died too soon.

It's hard to lose so much at a time where everything already sucks. Your teen years are supposed to be that time where you try to figure things out, try to decide what you wanna do and all that crap. It's hard to do that in high school. To try and figure things out while at the same time, trying to process so much grief.

The end of freshman year brought five deaths. Five deaths of people I knew and cared about. And after a year of silent grieving, after I thought that I couldn't possibly take any more bad news, I found out that Cory Monteith, an actor I respected and loved, had died.

I never much talked about all of this, maybe because it's hard to process the fact that six young people lost their lives for stupid reasons. But I feel like now I have to talk about it, because if I don't, who will?

Sometimes in life you have to deal with hard things. Divorce, exams, and yeah, death. I just never imagined that by the age of 15 I'd be worried that every time my mom said "Molly, I need to talk to you" she'd be telling me someone else died instead of asking why our phone bill was so high. I never imagined that whenever a friend said something like "Hey I have to tell you something" my heart would race with fear that another friend had lost their life. But those are the cards I've been dealt.

So I've dealt with suicide, infant mortality, overdose, murder, car crashes, pedestrian fatality. And now I'm 17 years old and I'm about to start my senior year, and I have to take with me the knowledge that at any given time, someone I love could die. And I'm kind of freaking out, because no matter what I am always surrounded with reminders that life is fragile and I can't protect everyone, and at any given moment someone else I love could get hit by a car, or shot, or get cancer.

It's a little numbing, being surrounded by all that death. Having a set outfit for every single memorial, every single funeral, because buying a nice new dress every time someone called to drop the news would put me in debt. Knowing that these people had so much potential, did so much good, but their lives were cut short.

It's hard for me to really talk about any of what happened in detail, and that's something I'm working on.
But I just thought that someone should know that those six, those amazing six, were all fantastic people. One was just a baby, my little baby cousin, but I know she would've been amazing. I know because she would have had the best parents. I bet she would have been funny and charming and adorable. But it doesn't matter. None of it matters because she wasn't even given the chance to survive. None of them were given the chance to survive, and that sucks, because they all had so much potential. But they were all great. They were all genuine and helpful and inspiring. They all had families and lives and people who cared about them that were gutted when they found out that they wouldn't get to see them ever again. They all had people who cried when they realized that the last goodbye they'd shared was really actually their last goodbye. People who couldn't control their sobs when they saw them in the hospital, or when they heard that they had died upon impact, or that they'd suffered.
I just want them to be remembered, because sometimes I'm afraid that people will forget them, and I don't want that. I want people to know that there were six amazing people who effected me in one of the worst parts of my life, and now I'm a senior, and I want them to know that I'm okay. I'm doing okay even though I'm falling apart, and I don't want them to worry because I'll take care of everything down here.
I just needed somewhere to put this because I couldn't just sit around and pretend that I'd said everything I needed to say, because really I haven't said anything. I've kept quiet, and it was tearing me apart.

So yeah. Tonight I cried. And there are plenty more nights to come where I'll do just the same. Because grief isn't one of those things where you can one-and-done it. Grief lasts a lifetime and if you don't nip it in the bud it will continue to drown you.

xoxo