Ruby Tuesday
4.2.6
One of Autumn's friends IMed her while she was at work today.
Her away message wasn't on, so it appeared in front of me as I prepared to write a journal entry. Normally I just ignore these untimely IMs. It's not like these people are staring blankly at the screen, waiting for an answer...so I usually don't feel it necessary to inform them that she's not here. As far as I'm concerned, they can figure it out on their own.
Today, however, something compelled me to respond.
I told the unknown person that she was at work. When he asked who I was, I told him. He then said something about the Rolling Stones, and about how much he enjoys songs like Ruby Tuesday. As the conversation progressed he started asking questions about my relationship with Autumn, and whether or not I love her. He then informed me that he had one more "potentially strange" question to ask me.
To be perfectly honest, I was becoming a bit annoyed. I get this kind of thing all the time in the (cutaia-cam) chatroom: People who think they're clever for saying random or cryptic things under the protective shield of anonymity. I was starting to assume this was another one of those cases...
He then asked me his "strange" question. He wanted to know if I had heard about a 20-car pile-up on Interstate 80 this past week. I finally saw where this was going...
He then told me about the girl he had been hoping to marry. He told me about attending her funeral in Utah this weekend. Finally, he told me about his desire to join her.
I've actually had the anti-suicide pep talk with quite a few people in my time, but this was the first time someone had a good reason to be thinking about it. It made it much harder to know what to say. Of course, it also made it that much more important to figure out what to say.
I typed fervently...sentence after sentence spewing from my fingers. If I've ever had words of wisdom to offer, these were them. Of course, I wasn't really telling him anything he hadn't already thought of. It was more about confirming it all for him.
The conversation lasted about half an hour. I don't even know the guy, but I did whatever I could to help. I suppose I was just doing what I would expect any decent human being to do in a case such as this.
It's interesting how life works sometimes. The stories on the news are almost inconsequential when it has nothing to do with you.
I wouldn't have stopped on this article for even a moment if I had simply stumbled upon it during a random browsing session...but now I can't stop looking at it. Now that I've played a part in it (however minor my role may be), the whole story has evolved in my mind. It's no longer about a blizzard or the car crash it caused. It's about 6 people who, by whatever twist of fate, ended up right in the middle of something they couldn't control. It's about a boy who wasn't even mentioned in the news, mourning over his lost love.
And the biggest question in my mind right now is this: Why did I answer that IM? It would have been so easy to do what I've done dozens of times before and simply clicked the little red X at the top-right of the box. There was nothing particularly interesting about his first message. Nothing that indicated any sense of urgency. For some unknown reason, though, I went against my usual instincts and ended up getting involved.
Did I save someone's life today? I seriously doubt it. He seemed to be a smart enough kid, and I was really only telling him things he already knew. I'm sure he would have been just fine without my help...
...but it still gets me thinking that there just might be purpose in this world sometimes. That maybe things happen for a reason, even if we don't always know what it is.
"Dying all the time.
Lose your dreams,
And you will lose your mind.
Ain't life unkind?
Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday"
