Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio.
Finding out a classmate died is a jarring experience to say the least, and I cannot say – like, it’s thrown me for a bit of a loop. I can’t say I’m in like a state of grief, exactly. Like, he seemed like a nice guy, but again, I exchanged maybe five sentences with him over the past three years, like I don’t – I don’t know. Over the past three or four years. Like, I don’t –
Like, I – it’s, it’s horrible. It’s sad and I’m – I feel sad. I feel like – shocked, I feel whatever, but, you know, like, it, it doesn’t – like I mean, it’s not like this is gonna – you know. Again, it’s not like this is gonna send me into a state of despair. At least not this particular death, I guess. There are certain aspects of the death that are freaking me the f*** out, but – and again, like, I don’t mean to sound insensitive. I don’t mean to sound – like I hope I don’t – I don’t mean to sound – like I – it’s horrible. It is horrible, but like, you know, I cannot say that like I am gonna be the one –
I guess, like, that’s, that’s the thing. Like, I am not going to be the one most deeply impacted by this. You know? This is not the death of a friend or a loved one. This is the death of a guy whose face I recognize, which, you know, is still horrifying and sad and – I – you know.
But, you know, like, again. There are a few things, I guess, like, my thoughts. Like how this is connected to my own – and I feel like, I feel like it’s almost narcissistic to try to, you know, connect this to my own existential dread at this point. But this is what I’m thinking about. This is what it’s caused. This is sending me into a little bit of a spiral at the moment. Um, if you can’t tell by the kind of incoherent rambling, but, um, you know, like, on the one hand –
Like, on the – one part of it is, is more or less some of the same stuff that rattled me last February. I don’t know how it happened. And that bugs me. ‘Cause at this point it feels like the possibilities are endless. It could have been anything and that terrifies me, because anything can happen to anyone at any time, you know? Not literally. But, you know, like was it –? Did he – you know, was it, was it drugs? Was it sickness? Was it hypothermia? Or was it –? Like, he just went missing Friday and was found in a public park today. Like, was it an act of violence? Was it a suicide? Was – like, what, what happened? Did he just trip and fall at the wrong time while walking in a park?
I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t – I cannot tell you what this is, what’s happening right now. I could not tell you for the life of me. And it’s scaring me. It’s scaring the hell out of me. I don’t understand it. I don’t get what’s going on. I don’t understand this.
And again, like, it’s not as horrifying to me as the February thing because first of all, the February thing was a very clearly human act, but it was a human act without a motive and that – without at least a clear motive. Like, it was – you know, that, that terrified me because of just how truly random and meaningless it all was. It continues to terrify me, and, and to this day I cannot comprehend what was going on in that man’s mind when he decided to kill a bunch of people my age in my community but, um –
Oh God. Um, but. Um, you know and I – this will be, this will be cleared up, I’m sure. Like, it’s just, I don’t know and that’s bugging – that’s, like, nagging at the back of my mind, like, it’s gonna happen to me. It could happen to me. Anything cou- – any of this could happen to me. Or any of my friends or any of my family, like we are all on this earth for so short of a f***ing time. And it can be much shorter than we expect it to be. The guy was 24 years old. The guy was 24 years old, and that’s – now he’s gone. Nothing. Absolutely, like, just faded from the world. And that’s absolutely – like, that, that – I am staring into the void tonight, I guess.
Um, not to — I feel like I’m being a bit of a drunk, you know, about this, but I don’t know what else to – like, I mean, this is – it – terrifying. I am scared. And, you know, like, this feels so like out of the blue, random as – like, not as much as the shooting was, but it feels d*** close. You know? Um.
And I mean, I’ve already been feeling a little sad and freaked out because we are currently less than a week away from the one-year anniversary of the shooting. Followed by my, you know, third Valentine’s Day in a row alone. Followed by – I mean, like, this isn’t that big of a deal anymore but like, you know, the – you know, my ex and I’s anniversary – that I mean again, we’ve been broken up for over two years now. I mean, it’s what it is, but yet another one passes. A third one passed and I am once again alone. Would have been, you know, would have been, what, five years? Yeah.
Okay, that doesn’t really matter. But it’s just like, you know. Like, this week is gonna suck for the rest of my life. I – like, this, this week of February, like, you know. Or these, like, two weeks of like – the first two weeks of February are just gonna suck every single year, it seems. Um, yeah.