Fishing

Still no sign of the thing.

I re-read Icthyological again this evening. I think the last time I read it I only skimmed it...my heart broke. I think I would have liked Elizabeth a lot if I'd met her. She was a lot like me. Jill would have liked her too. We might have been friends.
Elizabeth died on August 10th of last year. I started this blog only 9 days later. More nines. That used to be my favorite number, did you know? I used to count things out into groups of nine and it would give me this warm, safe feeling. And now I can't look at it without feeling sick.
What does it mean that I missed someone like Elizabeth? That we passed each other like cars on the freeway, not even looking over as we sped away? What does it mean that she was from the same place as Jill and she had OCD like me and she was funny and smart and brave? Why am I so upset about her death, when I never knew her?

This is narcissistic, isn't it. I'm so affected by this because she shares attributes with me, and with my dead freind. She makes it immediate, present, possible...and then there's the fact that she's so brave and she just...gives up. She's surviving and then all of a sudden she isn't. And that scares me, because I don't even see myself lasting as long as she did...

Fuck. I hate this. I've got this helplessness burning in my heart and I have to sit here while you all fight and get hurt and die, and die, and die. And it doesn't stop hurting. Even the people who died before I knew this was real. Especially those people. I just...I'm being repetitive, and it's late, and my anxiety meds have not been enough lately (golly gee I wonder why) and Kevin...fuck. I saw him on campus and he said hi but his voice was flat and he barely even looked at me. I can't believe how much this hurts. It's so fucking stupid that I care, right? Just so incredibly dumb. I didn't have the heart to get angry at him.

Elizabeth died nine days before my first blog. She didn't deserve it- none of us deserve it- but that thing killed her and Jill and Darby and so, so many others and...

I'm just hoping that this story doesn't go the way it usually goes.