Day By Day (Godspell)

I'm ready to die. Not right now or anything, and I'm not actively seeking death, but I accept that one day I'm going to die, and it may be sooner rather than later, and I accept that. I do believe that I'm comfortable with dying at this point in my life, because while I may not have reached my goals (be on Broadway, be a soap star, win an Oscar, have children...) I know that I pursued my dreams full force and lived my life on my terms.

I've been thinking about the notion of dying at this stage of my life for over a year now. I think it all started the winter before last when that guy came up to the counter at work with his hand in his jacket and said "Give me all your money or I'll shoot you." Or maybe it was that delightful spring afternoon a few months later, when I was walking down Yonge street, on my way to work, and I heard gun shots and three people were shot about ten feet away from me. Yeah, that might have been it. It also could have been that between that time span, several people in my life began to die unexpectedly, each for very different reasons. I'm not going to lie, all these events overwhelmed me to the point that I was certain that I would be next, and it was a scary feeling. I knew that the only way I would feel safe walking to the subway station again would be to come to terms with the fact that anything can happen at any time and accept that. (Also, I told myself that lighting doesn't strike the same spot twice, which did the trick for a while, until the Boxing Day shootings in the exact same spot later that year, which killed an innocent girl. So much for that theory.)

So, I'm ready. I don't want to die, but I'm not gonna cry about it if I do. The funny thing is that my only concern about dying is that if I go before I parents, I want the be easily accessible to them before I go. I tend to shut them out and cut off contact with them for prolonged periods of time. When I wasn't living with them I would avoid their phone calls or not return their messages or emails, rarely visit... And now living with them, I don't talk to them much and snap at them every time they speak to me, even if they're just saying good morning. It's not for lack of loving them. I just don't relate to them like I used to and they're so controlling about everything in my life that I feel like I can never tell them anything because they'll find some way to make it about them.

I don't much get along with my parents and yet I need to be near them if I die before they do. I feel like I owe them that much. They gave me life, and a really really good one at that. They love me, even though they don't show it the way I wish they would. With me moving away (again) and my sister living half way around the world for the last 6 years, if any of us should die, it would be absolutely devastating because we wouldn't all be together. After the five of us spent almost twenty years together, growing up, hating each other, laughing together... how depressing that we've all gone our separate ways. I wish family wasn't important, because that would make my life so much more simple. But I need those people. They're why I am.

I realize this blog wasn't really focused. It was pretty much stream of consciousness writing. I don't even know where I was going with this when I started it. Huh. Maybe I'm not so ready for death after all.