Wednesday, August 24, 2011

and i just wanna get mugged at knife point, to get cut enough to wake me up

as i'm sure most of you know, the virginia/dc area had a pretty big earthquake yesterday (a 5.8). i've felt a couple of earthquakes in my life, both here and in california, but nowhere near the scale of this one. i was sitting in my apartment on the third floor going my turn on facebook scrabble games with my sister while my husband played crash racing on the playstation when everything started shaking. i was woken up yesterday by our neighbors downstairs who were getting new carpet put in and felt that in order to do that they should bang around and generally make as much noise as humanly possible. so when the shaking first started i just assumed it was from them. when it turned into a real things-falling-down-walls-vibrating-oh-look-my-chair's-moving sort of thing, i kinda figured what it was. so i sat in my chair, waited a bit for the shaking to go down to vibrating, said, "huh. that was cool," and finished playing my turn.

when i closed out of the games, statuses were of course talking of nothing but the earthquake. everyone was saying how scared they were, how they thought they were going to die, how their life flashed before their eyes. the only thing i felt during the earthquake was a slight annoyance that the harry potter plaque i made in high school had fallen down and i would have to go check if it was cracked again. (laziness at its finest, people.) and suddenly i was so incredibly jealous of these people. most of you probably weren't reading my blog back then, but i remember once wishing for a near death experience to kind of wake me up, if you will. i needed something drastic to happen to pull me out of my perpetual apathy. two years or so later, and i still feel that i could use a jolt that only fearing for my life can give me to really get my act together. after talking to my mom, mother-in-law, and grandma (thank god for voip phones when cell reception is down and you have worried mothers) my jealousy for lack of a better word just increased because here they were scared and worried when two of them are on the other side of the world right now and none of them felt the earthquake. if just hearing/reading about it could scare them enough, why couldn't experiencing it shake me at all?

i started thinking, and you know, i don't think i have ever actually been afraid for my life. i have been in countless almost accidents (my sister can be a crazy driver), a couple of accidents (nothing actually really bad to anyone but the car/bus), i've spent a night on the kitchen floor too sick to get up because all of the tylenol in my system i overdosed on, i ride on planes at least twice a year and haven't worn my seat belt on them since i was ten, my school has had bomb threats, i've had creepy people follow me to my car, and countless other things have happened that might make a normal person a little scared for his/her life... but me? nothing. i mean, sure, i'm terrified of death. i think besides failure and not measuring up it's the thing i'm most scared of. but i have never been terrified for my life, and i kind of want to be. i want to suddenly appreciate this thing that i have always taken for granted. i want to be forced to recognize that it is something precious. i want to be pulled out of this black hole of apathy and depression and realize that there's something worth living for, even if it's just life itself.

but i don't. i let opportunities for near death experiences pass me by. i let chances of fear turn into afterthoughts. i let the apathy win out every. single. time.

*This Week the Trend - Relient K

6 comments:

  1. apathy, that word. i think i've embodied that word from the inside out, i can feel it on my face.

    about the earthquake, my friend told me that i was the only person that seemed not so scared about it. in fact, i actually enjoyed it a bit. a poster fell off my wall and glass broke everywhere and i just stared at it until the shaking stopped, and then i stood there waiting for the shaking to start again. but it didn't.
    reading this post makes me realize that i think i felt that i needed something to shake me, jolt me into shock or a form of liveliness.

    apathy, goddamn it. that's the word for everything i've been lately. although unlike you i'm not so afraid of failure. i think it's because i've experienced it and i feel that i'm still in that long withdrawn experience. i honestly don't care for anything. sometimes when i think about it, i feel like my being a part of this world is just a waste. i really don't feel like i owe myself, anyone else, or my version of the world anything. more so, i don't feel like i have anything to contribute.

    i don't feel anything. and my lack of the tiniest hint of excitement frightens me. maybe another earthquake is what we need.

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  2. nope, you were definitely not the only person. i enjoyed it too and kept waiting for more. what is wrong with us? and yeah apathy has pretty much been my life for a while now. that not caring and lack of excitement is exactly what i'm experiencing - and have been. and feeling like a waste? you're preaching to the choir here. i think we may need something bigger than an earthquake. i mean, the world is ending all around us what with the sudden influx of natural disasters and human stupidity, and i'm still sitting pretty. we need something big.

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  3. Call me strange, but I want to experience an earthquake, or some natural disaster... you get bugger all in UKland - maybe some flooding if you're lucky... Never been scared for my life about anything

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  4. i don't think that's strange at all. i want another one. i've been through earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and blizzards and have yet to fear for my life. i'm starting to think it's not possible.

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  5. i was semi-scared. i think i laughed.

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  6. that makes me semi-jealous of you.

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