Sensitivity

I just had a conversation with someone I knew when I was younger, a friend who lived in the back in one of those back houses we have.  I’m not sure why or if my memory is playing tricks on me, but I believe when he moved out we weren’t in the best of terms, which knowing me as a kid was probably me blowing something out of proportion or just making something up for kicks.  Anyhow, my mom recently came in contact with him again and they got to talking and she gave me the phone even though I wasn’t really interested in rekindling out friendships because it’s been a while and I had my doubts as to whether we would have similar interests or values now.  But we got to talking and I eventually got his AIM screen name and we chatted for a while and it seems he just plays games for fun and does whatever work he does, which oddly enough as a part of my character, I don’t tend to indulge in people much.

Anyhow, that was mostly the introduction to my general point I’m making by posting this.  We had a chat today that eventually led to us talking about times at El Monte High School and apparently he knew of the time my friend committed suicide.  I guess it was pretty big news at the time and all the neighboring high schools took notice of it, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised at the fact that other residents around the area would catch wind of it too.  I think it might have even been on television but I refused to watch anything on the subject since I was having a mixed emotion of anger and sadness and didn’t need to be bombarded with images and interviews.  What’s interesting about our little chat is that he didn’t have much concern over the fact that my friend committed suicide and almost had a jovial attitude to the fact.  Now I don’t think there was much animosity to any of it, but it was just an inappropriate attitude to be having.  Sure it’s been four years, but after thinking about it in the course of our conversation it does seem that I’m still not over the fact and it does make me uncomfortable to talk about.  Since it’s against my nature to be confrontational, I just quickly talked about it in a respectful manner without pointing out any social ineptitude on his part.  I doubt it’ll be something that’ll come up anytime soon, so why make a thing out of it.

However, it has got me thinking about what’s socially acceptable as well as what place I’m at with my friend’s suicide.  I think about it more often than people would probably realize, but I’ve let go enough to not be depressed when I do think of it.  It’s probably not anything I would get over any time soon, but it’s sort of as a reminder of how I could be a better friend to those I still keep in touch with.  I won’t pretend to know his intentions when he did what he did, but maybe more support from the people around him would have prevented what happened.  It’s all hypothetical and it’s not something I want to divulge into much, but it’s still something that nags at me a bit every now and then.  As far as what’s socially acceptable in talking about an experience to people, I wonder what is acceptable.  It’s been four years, and I still don’t feel comfortable talking about it to anyone who doesn’t really know anything about the people involved.  I would just go as far as to say that he was my friend, but I don’t know what else to say about it without getting emotionally involved in the conversation.  I’m commonly known for how emotional I get sometimes.  It’s behind me and yet it’s sort of just there all the time.  Maybe it’s like my new acquaintance has said and that it’s like a ghost haunting me a bit, probably in a less literal way than he intended, but real all the same.  I haven’t visited the grave in a long while and I feel sorry for it.  Visiting the high school gives me the same feeling sometimes, I would love to visit, but sometimes I just feel uncomfortable being there and revisiting the high school that was responsible for a lot of pain, although a lot of joy came out of there too.  At this point I’m probably just rambling now, so I’ll just leave it at that.

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