Too many people will ask “Why?” without wanting to know the real answer. It’ll be a rhetorical question, asked by friends and family and the handful of local reporters that come out to get a statement from your bereaving family. But it’s right here; you just couldn’t do it anymore. I don’t think many people will want to see, really see and understand what that means, no matter how confused and angry they are when they hear what you did. To answer the question “Why?” honestly is to put yourself right there, right in that moment with you, to feel it like a wolf breathing hot and wet in your face the second before the teeth clamp down on your neck. No one wants to think about it. A lot of people will say what a shame it was, how young, how promising you were, how much they’ll miss you. And it will all be true. But I guess it was your life, and your death, and if having more control in the exit of this fucking crushing world than when you entered it was important to you, I guess we’ll have to accept that. We don’t have a choice, really.
After I got out of the hospital a couple years ago, some people I loved and some people I didn’t love would ask me why I was there. They knew why I was there, I had been gone a while, it hadn’t gone unnoticed. They were prompting me to explain myself, and I didn’t have a good answer for a long time. Eventually I figured it out.
At some point, long ago, I became obsessed with astronomy and physics and, weirdly, religion. I read the bible and theories about the multiverse and watched documentaries about string theory and memorized all the statues in the grotto next to my church. I knew, even then, that I didn’t believe the whole God thing, but I loved the way that humans were desperately trying to find their perfect library nook in the universe, to convince themselves that they mattered and what they were doing mattered and the people they loved and fucked and admired and hated mattered in a cosmic sense, which is really what astronomers do as well, albeit with equations instead of stories. I read that if even a single photon shot the wrong way out of the Big Bang all those billions of years ago, it would have upset the balance of the universe and we wouldn’t be here to fart in front of company and blame it on the dog. So that’s the way I thought: everything that has ever happened or will happen has lined up to this moment, stars have formed and burst and black holes have set up just far enough away for me to exist in July in New York.
Then, so slowly I almost didn’t register it happening, that way of thinking went away, replaced by the awareness of some other randomness. Instead of that mystical sureness of purpose, I realized that we were just a calculator mistake, too small on the margin of error to even register.
If you shrink down all of known time into a single calendar year, all of humanity takes up less than a second. Less than a glimpse of a stranger in a subway for your whole year. The only two people that had name recognition from the last two thousand years are Jesus and Shakespeare. My ambitions paled and dwindled. I sat up late into the night and stopped going to class, sleeping in my car in a parking lot. We’re not important was the constant refrain in my head.I’m not important.
And then I was driving on the highway in the rain two weeks before Christmas and I wasn’t crying but I was going fast much too fast and I jerked my steering wheel to the right towards the fake forest lining the road and I saw the tree that was going to take my fucking miserable life and end it and my knuckles turned white and my eyes stayed open and then a squirrel fucking ran out into the grass and I braked. I still don’t know why I did. I braked hard and rolled to a stop and that dumb animal turned around and pranced back into the trees away from my car, cool as you please, and then I turned on my left turn signal and checked myself into South Oaks the next day.
But you’re gone. You got to that place and you’re never coming back. I don’t know your situation, I never heard you explain your sadness or rage or frustration or desperation to anyone. But I can feel it. Not just the world but the whole universe pressing in on you saying “Give up, give up, give up” because you don’t matter to it and the only thing you can think of is to say good-bye on Facebook to the small corner of the world that knew your existence in this eyelash blink of a life and then go.
I didn’t know you but I saw you, I heard you, you were tangible to me. But that’swhat’s important. You’re not important and I’m not important, but we are important to each other. That tiny vibrating string of light that runs from me to you or me to Gab or me to my mom or me to Obama is there and it’s real because we’re real and it is important. To figure out that you do not mean anything in this universe is devastating, but I wish you were around to see that you yourself are a tiny universe among billions, circling and pushing and pulling. I felt your gravity.
I still remember your laugh. I’m sad to see you go.
This is beautifully written. RIP Will. I hope you’re in a better place.
Argentina Passes Transgender Rights Law; Operation Covered Under Health Plan
Freedom from government intervention or religious persecution…Argentinians are now able to decide for themselves whether or not they think they’re men or women. This is a groundbreaking law passed by a 55 – 0 margin in the Senate. Let the people be. I can’t imagine how horrible it must feel to be trapped in the body of a person that you don’t feel is your own…hell in eternity times infinity + 1. If you don’t support the transgender community – don’t be a transgendered person. Stop worrying, have a smile and shut the front door.
The Washington Post has the news – article HERE:
Any adult will now be able to officially change his or her gender, image and birth name without having to get approval from doctors or judges — and without having to undergo physical changes beforehand, as many U.S. jurisdictions require.
When Argentines want to change their bodies, health care companies will have to provide them with surgery or hormone therapy on demand. Such treatments will be included in the “Obligatory Medical Plan,” which means both private and public providers will not be able to charge extra for the services.
Children also get a voice under the law: Youths under 18 who want to change their genders gain the right to do so with the approval of their legal guardians. But if parents or guardians want a gender identity change and don’t have the child’s consent, then a judge must intervene to ensure the child’s rights are protected.
I’m doing the Bernie
![damnthatswhack:
Post-it technology has come a long way
[via]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3x7e97PJr1qbbpaoo1_500.jpg)
Page 1 of 209
