Loss

Just walked back from the post office. Doesn't sound so bad, but the temperature is -4 out there. To put it mildly, it's damn cold.

Couldn't sleep last night, even though I went to bed about an hour later than Prime. It was nearly 2am when I slipped beneath the blankets. I was exhausted as hell. Even then I didn't go to sleep; I merely sat up in bed and stared out the window, looking at the moon and the stars and the snow-covered rooftops and the denuded trees and the ever present steam from the paper plant by the river. I sat there for Primus knows how long. Fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes maybe? I don't know; I didn't even bother looking at the clock. When I finally laid down I couldn't sleep then, either. I didn't want to sleep. At least twice I yanked myself out of dozing off (at one point I had begun to snore lightly), just to stare out the window and sigh.

How do you measure a life?

Is it measured in the number of breaths you take, or the number of times your heart beats? Is it measured by how many people love you? How well you love your job? How much wealth you've amassed? In the end, does it even matter?

No one is supposed to die at age twenty five.

At twenty five, you're supposed to get married, find a house, have a few kids, enjoy the better part of your career, hang with your friends, and plan for your future. Cancer isn't supposed to enter the equation and if it does, you're supposed to make a full recovery. You're not supposed to die.

But whoever said the Fates played by anyone's rules, except their own? Even the Gods could not oppose their will.

Prime's back at work today. I'm glad he is, but then again, I'd rather have him here with me. I don't like being alone.

I'm still pissed off at work; we've had other employees who have had minor tragedies (compared to this) befall them and management holds pot-lucks to raise money for them. There's a death in my family and I get squat. No wait, that's not fair; I did get something. I got yelled at by the head cashiers and I got my breaks cut short. Management wonders why our morale is so low.

Prime wants me to call a few Wal-Marts and look for some new Transformers. I'll do it later today. I'm thinking that this will be pointless as hell; Wisconsin is the ass end of nowhere and we rarely get new toys in our area. But I'll do it to make him happy.

All I want to do is crawl back into bed, stare out the window, and sigh.

--Weasel, trying to make sense of it all.