A list I didn't know I had

Ryan Martin hanged himself last night.

I'm not sure we were ever really friends, but I think maybe something in us wanted to be from time to time. I wish I had known him better. Looking back, I realize now how often he appears in my memory and just how much time we spent together in high school, that time that already feels like a lifetime ago. We had small problems which we often pretended were big problems, tiny little grievances that were left behind along with most everything else from high school, and I think it's sad that the entire span of my knowing him took place during a time that feels so completely unreal to me now. How terribly real this is now.

I just turned 21, and I just heard about the death of my high school friend. That makes two things scratched off a list of inevitable things that somehow still managed to surprise me when they finally came to pass. Barring major incident, of course I'd be 21 one day, just like one day in the future I'll no longer have any means to deny the fact that I'd become an adult somewhere along the line. Of course my friends and acquaintances would someday die; the Flaming Lips even told me ahead of time. But I know now there was definitely a part of me that didn't want to believe it, that has only now been forced to face the truth.