Amor E Morte

I had some pretty dark thoughts as a kid. I don't know if it was normal because I never talked to anyone about them, but in retrospect it's weird to realize I thought about death when I was 7 years old. I'd never known anyone to die or had seen a dead person or had even known about anyone dying. And yet, I wondered what it would be like if I ceased to exist. What would my friends and family do? It was never an actual emotional desire to be dead, but it was still a curiosity that peppered my usually innocent thoughts.

Up through junior high I used to leave my room just-so, so that if anything did happen to me people would be able to tell what I was doing last. Coloring in my book, reading, listening to music, doing homework. Odd that that was what was important to me. I used to make lists in my head for who would get what: Lynne would get my music, Mae would get my stuffed animals, Tina would get my notebooks. I never regarded these thoughts as strange, though I never told anyone about them. They were always just kind of latently there. A passive kind of wonder at what life would be like without me.

I also had a 'feeling' that I would die young. In my thirties so I believed. Who knows what influenced me to think these things, or if they really did come from my own imagination, but this one stayed with me for a while. At least into my mid-twenties. If I was feeling dramatic it would be after I had married and had children, a tragedy for them, and if I was feeling melodramatic it would be just after I fell in love, more tragic for me that way you see.

Anyway I suppose like most things with me I kind of forgot about my 'feeling' after a while. The odd thing is though, I had it for such a long period of time and it never motivated me to somehow do the one thing on the top of my list of things I always wanted to do before I die. Like every hard-core romantic, all I've ever wanted was to fall in love.

How does that make any sense you ask? Coming from someone who seems to have the inability to open her heart?

Excellent question. If anything, I should have been first in line to fall in love with every boy who ever looked at me. After all, I believe love is something different for everyone. I even believe there are people who talk themselves into being in love and eventually believing it even if it's not true. And yet...and yet...never have I known, or talked myself into believing I've known, love in any other form than platonic.

I guess I missed the live fast part despite 'feeling' the die young. Or was I just being true to my independent self who always believed I'd eventually get the fairy tale love? Good things come to those who wait, good things come to those who wait, good things come to those who wait.

That got me through a lot of insecure times.

Was there a time limit on it?