It's hard when you know that someone you know is alone. Doesn't matter if you like them or not, the fact is there's someone suffering out there and absolutely nothing you can say or do would help them.
You can't talk to these people. It's futile. They're not looking for a friend. You're not looking for a friend. There's no way they can take solace; they can only look on as all those around them comfort one another. There is nothing that any person can say that will make things right. This is one point where time is not on your side.
It's sudden. Split-second and you realize that you've got to deal with something new here, something mature that you shouldn't have to handle. You want to scream that you shouldn't have to adapt, that this is unfair or wrong—thing is, if we don't cope, we'll never grow up. Half of us never grow up anyways, until we have one of these moments. Maybe we should seek them out. Maybe we're supposed to.
The point is that we don't get to choose our moments. We're actors with some shite script. Convenient plot devices run amok.
The ultimate example of helplessness is the accident. Leagues of people could be standing by; you could have a whole fucking Senate of bystanders next to you, and yet you're the one that has the moment. Every one of them could see, could strive, could want to help you. It's the bloody alacrity with which the moment flies that does you in. Our bodies aren't built for reaction—we've got to train ourselves to move and dodge and notice. We can't push until it's but a second too late. And yet you can count them: one, two, three—three and a half. There were three and a half seconds that stood between you and what could have been.
This is why the accidents should always go to Heaven. People can live good, pure, biblical lives because they want direly to have a nice death, but in reality it's the average people lost while striving to get by that should get in. Those striving to get by while having a little fun along the way. We're not meant to be perfection incarnate. We wouldn't have our moments otherwise; we're imperfections just waiting for some cosmic accident to happen. Maybe we're mistakes.
There's a reason we associate death with dreams. Unconscious thought is the essence of the startling rapidness of the moment. You see a funny face on the man that stabs you; while jumping to your death, you think of what to have for breakfast tomorrow. Accidents aren't everyday—they're so extraordinarily short while we're so amazingly slow that we can't react. Un sentiment d'impuissance. It's why crimes take ages to solve, and nobody really knows what's going on inside your head. It's an attack on what is everyday. It's flipping off the identity formation process. It's callous.
And then, two days later, we forget it all happened. For some, it's but a brief moment of peace, but for the rest of us it is our everyday restored.
