Sometimes, even the train is quiet.
Normally it screams. The wheels don’t fit properly on the tracks, or something, and the entire system is old so your ride is nothing but high pitched squeals. It’s normally not that bad. In fact, I rarely notice it because I have my headphones in. I just hit the volume button to turn it up a touch and then it’s no big deal.
Monday, I forgot my headphones.
Monday, I woke up to the news of a domestic terrorist attack in Las Vegas.
Monday, the train was quiet.
I shouldn’t be left alone with my thoughts for that long. It’s the worst. I started getting inside my own head, thinking about how dangerous BART could potentially be, thinking about guns and how we don’t need them to exist, thinking about this and that and the other.
We talked about it at work, we talked about it at home, we talked about it online. I was angry and upset and Monday wasn’t a great day regardless. How could someone do something so horrible? You spend hours upon hours thinking upon it, and there’s never any real answer to come up with. And even worse -- what the fuck are we going to do in response?
The answer is simple. It doesn’t take hours to decide that no one needs to own a fucking automatic weapon. It’s not about upping the security of hotels or whatever bullshit is being talked about in response to Las Vegas, it’s about guns. It’s always about guns.
I saw a lot of people saying Pray for Vegas. In fact, I used the hashtag myself. But it’s about more than praying. Yes, praying can be a way to focus your thoughts, to center yourself. Yes, to some, praying is incredibly important. Praying can be healing for yourself. But to only offer prayers? When policy could be changed? When action could be taken? Prayers aren’t enough.
I’m tired of talking about it. I recognize that I’m in a position of privilege that not talking about gun violence is something I can afford, but I’m tired. It’s exhausting. Every day is another fucking horror that we have to wake up to, whether it’s the government and that absolute garbage of a man in the White House or another natural disaster or something that humankind has done to one another. I’m just tired.
It sickens me and it makes me ache and this week has just been full of pain.
Today is the three year anniversary of the day one of the people closest to me ended his life.
I was talking to a friend last night about suicide and he briefly mentioned how he hated the phrase committed suicide because it sounds like a choice. I agree.
I’ve heard all of it. That suicide is greedy. That people who commit suicide are selfish. That people who end their own lives aren’t thinking of others. Every time I hear it, oh God every time I hear things like that I want to scream.
What’s selfish is a man with a gun who takes lives as though he has a right to do it. Someone who struggles with demons to the point that they can’t handle it anymore, that’s not selfish.
David Arthur was the least selfish person I have ever met.
It’s been three years and it still doesn’t make any sense to me.
I’ve been sitting at my computer typing different things, again and again, trying to get how I feel into words for what feels like hours now. I write something and I erase it, and I try again but it doesn’t feel right. I’m not sure I’ve ever been able to put into words the feeling of losing someone like David. If you knew David, I’m almost certain that you know what I mean.
I will say this: I see him in the sunsets.
At his memorial, I stood in front of a crowd and cried and said something along the lines of there are pieces of him that I want to keep for myself, and I want you all to keep those pieces too. I was hysterical. I was being selfish.
Here are some of my favorite memories of David that I should have shared, that I would like to share now.
David and I would sit in the Den for hours at a time, to the point where the guards would come in and kick us out because it was so late. Sometimes we would sit in silence and he would wait for me to share my story. Sometimes we would laugh. Sometimes we would play 2048 and be so still that the lights would turn off above us. - If I ever needed someone to do something with, David was always there. It didn’t matter if he’d already eaten or if he had something else he was doing, he’d drop all of it just to accompany me wherever it was I was going. Once he came with me to West Village to get a care package my family had sent me and refused to let me carry it. We had a good conversation about gender roles.
- Every week at building council meetings, David would suggest filling the vending machines with milk. Every week.
- I took David to my summer camp, one of the only people outside of camp (if not the first) that I’d taken to the mountain. He was like a freaking dog, running down the trails and disappearing behind the trees, too excited to see it all to wait for me to catch up.
- Sometimes I would walk in the union and find him playing the piano in the terrace. I’d sit on the bricks and listen to him play, and then he’d let me play Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah ten times in a row before shooing me back to the bricks.
- We ate a lot of Sweet Frog.
There are more memories that I value above those, but those I can share. (The others I will hold onto tightly as to make sure they don’t disappear.)
One of my favorite still has to be the time he didn’t tell me he was moving to Texas permanently and we didn’t talk for a few days.
“I’m still mad at you,” I told him once the sting had passed.
“I know,” he said.
“I’m not actually mad at you,” I told him later.
“I know,” he said.
This post, these thoughts, they’re very scattered. Grief is hard that way. One day you’re okay and the next the wound feels fresh. I may not have known him for our entire lives, but he’s impacted me in ways I will never be able to explain.
What’s that quote?
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
No, David wasn’t selfish. He had a way of making you feel like even the stars were your doing.
And in a world where I wake up every morning to news that weighs me down and makes me feel small, I try to remember what he taught me. To look for joy in small places. To give people the benefit of the doubt. To push on, even when it’s hard, even when I’m tired.
The sunset was beautiful last night. I miss you.
--
Suicide Prevention Hotline 1-800-273-8255
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