A few days before the new year began a senior from my old school killed himself. Without signs to his teachers, without big inklings to friends and family, he killed himself by stepping out onto railroad tracks.
A kid I never knew, never will know, probably never even spoke more than a few words to, ended his life. This did not get me thinking about the nature of life, or the tragedy of all existence. It didn't get me thinking about how life is filled with some unspeakable joy or anything grand and adventurous. Nope, all it did was encapsulate the prospect of a new year.
Most people on New Year's Eve have romantic dreams of kissing someone special when old haggard Dick Clark croaks out digits, and cracking open champagne in celebration. However some, a select few, think of the New Year as a means to change over a new life. This is not the crowd that vows vehemently to lose weight, stop smoking, or some other miniscule task that they forget about in three months. This is the crowd who for some reason had a terrible life or some awful gathering of days. These people need the "New Year" as a turning point for the way things have been going.
I think there is something to be said for the very latter.
Every human agrees life is too short, especially college students. We here at Bloomsburg often say things like "f*ck my life" or "I'm gonna kill myself" about finals or simple daily problems like being a few minutes late to eat at the Commons. We don't think that tomorrow is going to be a new day, that perhaps our lives will get better. Our lives don't get better, they are just as they are, hundreds of days strung together like a quilt.
The kid who killed himself: he never went to college, hell, he never finished high school. He never saw the things we have seen, he'd never dealt with a college professor or a walk of shame. He'd never did a keg stand or went to University Seminar. But somehow, around finals, we all say the things he was clearly feeling, or at least thought. Who the hell are we? We're supposed to be a bunch of educated people having an opportunity many of people don't get, yet we say idiotic things like "f*ck my life" or "I'm gonna kill myself."
Everyone at finals week doesn't think "the New Year is around the corner, I'm so home free." Nope, all we think are morbid and often disturbing images of us getting violated by grotesque objects. Instead of being the educated "adults" we are, we poke fun at people who have it worse than us. So how about next year in Fall Semester, instead of being caught up in how terrible it all is. Let's at least be happy we can see the new year, and look at it like it's a point that things will get better. Let's not let that kid's death go to waste, and use it as a point of origin for the moment we stopped being fatalists, and started being okay.
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