Saturday, June 26, 2010

Anniversaries

An anniversary, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is “the annual recurrence of a date marking a notable event; broadly: a date that follows such an event by a specified period of time measured in units other than years

Today I have been thinking a lot about anniversaries. First it was in disdain and annoyance, because my current home church is celebrating its 25th anniversary this weekend. Second it was in melancholic remembrance, because I realized a few hours ago that today marks the one month anniversary of my friend’s passing. These completely contradictory responses to anniversaries has me wondering how one common event could elicit so many conflicting emotions, and how have we allowed such a thing as anniversaries to take such hold of our emotions?

I will start first with the annoyed feelings I get when thinking of anniversaries and move on from there.

To explain my feelings in a clearer manner about my church: since the beginning of the year, each Sunday a lady has come to the front of church and read a “historical moment” about the church, leading up to the eventual celebration of the church anniversary tomorrow. The actual anniversary celebration is this whole weekend: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The church is pretty much obsessing over the anniversary, and I am left wondering what exactly the happiness is about. For the past 25 weeks, God has rarely been mentioned in relation to this anniversary celebration. It’s just all about partying, being happy the church has been around 25 years, etc.

It is because of this that I feel annoyance in relation to anniversaries. It seems that sometimes people get so caught up in the celebration of anniversaries that they forget the original purpose for why they are celebrating at all. Celebrating the anniversary of a happy and good date is not a bad thing, but sometimes people lose sight of what is important. With the example of my church, it seems they have become so caught up in celebrating, that they are forgetting to focus on the important thing: God has blessed the church spiritually and financially to survive for 25 years to spread his gospel to this world.

Happy anniversaries should be something special, focused solely on the event being commemorated, and should not be cheapened by over-indulgence in the moment.

Happy anniversaries should also not be cheapened by bad attitudes because someone may have possibly forgotten the anniversary. We are all humans, and prone to forget things. If an anniversary is important to you, and you wish someone to remember it, make sure to remind them. Just because a person forgets does not mean that the original event that is being commemorated was unimportant to them. They just have a plethora of things to remember. Specific dates from the calendar may get misfiled in their memory-laden brain.

On the other side of things, we find anniversaries for less-than-joyful events. In my case, it would be the passing of a friend. For others it may be the anniversary of a divorce, or the anniversary of being fired, etc. I don’t know. Whatever it is, these anniversaries seem to always effect our emotions adversely. It seems irrational that such anniversaries can completely ruin a good mood. Until I realized it had been a month since my friend has passed, I was having a good day (boring, but good). Now it’s like happy-sad-okay-sad-happy-crap!-meh-okay just because I remembered my friend died a month ago?

It seems like anniversaries for bad things should not be remembered at all, but the dates are not something you can forget. Why should a day bring you down? Why should I let this day make me melancholy? Today is a good day, because I am alive and healthy. Should I not rejoice over that instead of mourn over the loss of a friend?

It is weird how anniversaries can control our emotions so completely. What is it about anniversaries that can cause our moods to shift from bad to good, good to bad? It's just another day in the year, and while it is nice to mark momentous events, should we really allow anniversaries to take control of our emotions the way that we do?

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Today Has Been OK

Emiliana Torrini has a song titled "Today Has Been OK," and lately I feel like that's been my life. Granted before May 26th my life was boring, but it was good. Since May 26th it's been OK. A friend passes away, what do you do? Some days will be good, and then night comes and I'm left in bed thinking... thinking is no good. I mean, I guess it's gotten better. For the first two weeks I would wake up and count the hours until I could go back to sleep. Now at least I don't go through the day waiting for night to come so I can go back to dreamlands where he might be there alive waiting for me. Nighttime is still the worst, though.

I thought it was getting better, but early Friday morning I had a meltdown and just laid in bed crying, and when I stopped crying I had a headache, and then I was angry because I had a headache and couldn't get to sleep, and I cried to God. I still have no answers from Him. Probably because my questions were selfish. On the bright side, today has been ok (of course, it's only 2am, so today hasn't had a chance to go downhill)

I realize I should be all “count it all joy when you fall into various trials” and stuff, and I’m trying, but it’s not exactly easy to be joyful that my friend is freaking dead! And it’s not easy to not talk about it for fear of ruining people’s happy moods. Other than my mom, I don’t really talk to anyone about how I’m feeling because I’m not going to be the one to be like “Yeah, that was a hilarious joke, and by the way I feel like crap because my friend is dead.” And then people can be like “Thanks Hollie, way to be a joy kill.”?

I know usually my blogs have some sort of insulting point to them, but I’m just venting right now, so get over it.

There are just some people in life that are easy for most anyone to befriend and open up to. Those people should never die, especially not young. It’s sad that anyone should die, but people like my friend dying is a tragedy. I’ve thought why not one of my others friends? Why not me? Out of all the billions of people in the world why the heck was the one person who was freaking loved by everyone the one who had to die?! I’m pretty sure it would have been less tragic if I had died, even. I did not touch as many lives as him by a long shot.

No, I don’t want to die, and I don’t want my friends to die. I’m just trying to understand why we are alive and he isn’t. I know people die all the time, too, but this is the first time I’ve ever had a close friend pass away. It’s not really something one learns how to deal with in school. Although now that I think about it, why isn’t there a Grief 101 course? Sure everyone deals with it differently, but it’d still be nice to know what thoughts are normal and which aren’t and stuff. Stupid American schools.

And oy vey with the haywire emotions. The other day my dad said I couldn’t drive him to Wal-Mart, and I had to leave the room before I started crying. I was watching Ernest one day, and I started tearing up while watching the movie. Ernest! Who cries while watching Ernest? Really? It’s kind of funny to think of now, but on the Saturday after May 26th my little brother ate my bag of Twizzlers my dad had bought me as comfort food, and I pretty much blew up at my brother, and then I went to my room to sit in anger as I tried not to cry. I obviously wasn’t angry about the Twizzlers, but it was a way to let out some emotion. Of course, I try to hide most of my emotional spill-overs, because I don’t want my family being uber-nice to me just because I lost a friend. That would probably be worse. I’d rather they treat me normal. Life isn’t normal though. I don’t know when it will be. Another month from now? 6 months? A year? Why don’t people have timelines for this?

I don’t know. I could go on writing for paragraphs more, so I'll stop. Kudos if you read through that whole ramble. It's really long and rambly.

"...all the same I miss you. Today has been ok. Today has been ok."