Live

I went to kindergarden with a pretty little brown-haired girl named Jeri. I can't remember how often we played together, but I do remember that she had warts on one of her thumbs and the skin was always light pink, shriveled and cracked looking. Someone told me it was because she sucked her thumb too much. After that, my thumb never found its way into my mouth again.

Growing up, we went to the same schools until graduation. I'd see her occasionally in the halls; we shared a few of the same classes in high school. We were friends in the lightest sense of the word, but I always liked her -  a feeling linked with some indeterminate memories from kindergarden. After college I ran into her somewhere and discovered she was studying forensic and criminal science at a graduate school near where I was living in DC. Last year, at our high school reunion, she told me that she was doing forensics for the CIA in Virginia. I admired her. A decade after graduation she was still smart, beautiful, confident, and doing what she loved - something at which I imagined she was very talented. I was impressed and happy for her and a little bit envious that she had it all together, that her life made seemingly perfect sense. I got a text from a mutual friend this past weekend. Jeri died in a car accident on Friday.

We struggle so much in this particular decade of life to find ourselves, to figure out our purpose and who we are. Sometimes it feels like a waste if we can't reach some kind of conclusion at the same speed as everyone else. But regardless of how well you're doing, how successful you are, or how long you've had 'it' figured out, life can end in a second. I've been running around feeling sorry for myself for not having a concrete plan or direction, but even if I did, it wouldn't matter. Having it together wouldn't lengthen my life any more or make me any more invincible to the physical frailty of being human.

Hearing about Jeri made me feel odd on the inside. Like it wasn't real or was some kind of misinformation. Then someone else from home verified it, and in that moment, the surreal feeling didn't disappear, but I stopped feeling sorry for myself. Life has been good, has been great for large chunks of it. And I can start today, right now, living it more. What I'm doing, where I'm working, how I'm managing to pay the bills isn't that important. What is important is that I woke up and took a breath this morning and my friends can still see my face and my mom can still hug me. While I'm not necessarily a fan of the phrase "Live each day like it's your last," because let's face it, a lot of times it isn't and there are consequences, I would say live each day like everything is possible. Because it is. And you just don't know how many chances to "live" that you'll get.