Today, I spent time putting in job applications...a whole revamp of my CV and resume and cover letters...it's the first time in awhile I put in so many applications and the like. It felt nice.

And then...something strange hit me. I felt inexplicably sad for some reason. Part of it had to be that I had just gotten through helping my mom do home loan modification papers, and that's kind of iffy and unpleasant.

But the other thing...probably the main thing...it made me think about the fact that my friend, Steve, who died at 27...he doesn't get to send off job applications or go on interviews or make plans for the future. And it made me feel sad to think that. He's never going to turn 28, he's never going to have a career, and Steve now only exists as the past now. Which is crazy to me, because I've like said earlier- Steve was SUCH a "live for the present" kind of guy, while he mercilessly made fun of me because I'm so damn nostalgic for the past.

It's so weird. My life for the past year and a half after graduation has been a parade of disappointment after disappointment, and keeping my head up in the face of a mounting realization that I perhaps will never get the museum curator or archivist job I want to have. But I have hope, every time I send off an application, that someone might say yes. Hope for a yes, and hope for a better tomorrow.

Steve doesn't have that. He's never walking across the stage and accepting his master's degree in counseling. He's never becoming a counselor. And it just sucks, and it makes me sad and angry

It's interesting how the grieving process goes. I feel fine for awhile, accept that Steve's gone, make my peace with it, and got through a couple of weeks in January with no crying at all. But then...I don't know. First up, I talked to my friend Josh, who all of you know is struggling with health issues. We hung out at his apartment one last time while he was getting ready to pack up, and I just had this really long talk to him, about his own mortality issues, as well as dealing with Steve's death. He was pretty understanding, which I knew he would be given that this guy has been facing mortality since the age of 10.

The main thing I got out of that talk was accepting that I wasn't a shitty friend for not getting how fucked up Steve was, because even Steven probably either didn't get it, or tried his best to hide it. And there's only so much you can convey over phone or text, and I wanted to believe that my friend was doing great and therefore didn't try to probe him all that much about his issues. Maybe it was big denial on my part. I mean really, Steve was loaded every moment of the day in college, and I'm guessing that grad school wasn't all that different. I had hoped that Steve had grown out of it because I'm Mr. Pollyanna, but I was wrong.

The talk helped, but then it also put Steve back on my mind. And then I got a letter from Steve's parents, where they thanked me for the condolence card that I sent Steve and told me that his service is scheduled for August 9th, and then it just hit me again, harder this time.

I'm not constantly sobbing every day or anything like that, but I've been thinking about him again, more than I had until the past few weeks. Hence this whole "sad attack" that happened to me tonight.