19 and Life...

Tonight I was Reflecting again. Digging as deep as I have ever tried to. Reconciling. Trying to Heal. Remembering what it was like to be 19 again. So out of touch. Surrounded by rebellion. Insecurity. Dark Forces. So lost within. So lost, that when your best friend asks you at a party, what would a .22 caliber bullet do to your brain. Would it come out the other side. Would it bounce around inside your skull and kill you. That you didn't give it a second thought that he might be contemplating suicide. That the every day lamentations of being losers blunted any recognition that all was not well. That the obvious signs were so easily ignored. 

Then on top of that, you go out shooting a few days later with a stolen rifle. Shooting road signs hanging out of a speeding car window along a desolated beach coastline. That no further warning signs emerge to a self-absorbed clouded brain. Of macabre inquiries. Of Depression. Of access to a weapon. Until a few days after that, you see on the news, a body being carried on a stretcher from one of our hangouts. Only to find out the next morning, it was your best friend who shot himself in the head with that stolen rifle. Not too much to reconcile here. Except everything...