Getting older sucks, but everyone's doing it.

Gosh time is flying.

I'm 30 years old now. Married. A dog, some cats. A mortgage, cars. Happy. For a very long time, I wasn't sure if I could be happy, at least not in the way that I am today. I still recall pouring myself into the my creative works, drinking perhaps a little too much, and indulging in hours and hours of video games several years ago.

Yesterday though, I was happy to lounge around the house with my wife. Without realizing it, I felt alive. I've had a few other days like that over the course of 2023, but each one only felt like a fever dream. Not real. And even the summer days would evaporate too quickly to latch on enough to realize this was real.

I'd say throughout my early 20s, and certainly before that, I had battled through depression. I quite literally remember telling myself to keep pushing on, it'll be worth it eventually. There were many many years it wasn't worth it. Now, I look to many years where it is. Now, when I want to do something drastic I look at Indeed (the jobs posting site), not a bottle of pills.

I read somewhere something along the lines of hitting an age where you people you know just randomly pass away. While I think I honestly hit that mark at 29, 30 is a good clean number to use as that baseline. Over the last year I've known 3 good men who have passed away. Not a single one an elderly fellow, all merely 40 at most. It's sad to say, one didn't have to go. Though I suspect another one also chose that destiny, I'll never know. Can't ask him now. And the last took too many risks that eventually got to him.

When I think of these people, from not so different walks of life (its Ohio, not that many options to choose from ), I get sad. The first really tore me up, since I felt like a horrible human being for surviving the war with depression, and he did not. I thought of any sign I could have missed, but since I wasn't around the gentlemen much, there's nothing I could think of.

The second was a shock. Dead on the office floor, Friday morning, getting ready to go home for the weekend in no more than an hour. A danged hour. Heart attack at work, jeez. That reminds me, I should probably not work as much. Countless better places to pass away than at work.

The third, my uncle, died in his sleep. Overdosed on uppers and downers from what I understand. I know he knew which pills were which. I can't imagine he didn't know not to mix them. But he's gone now. Can't ask if it was an oversight or something far darker. I didn't see much of him as I was growing up. I'm gonna guess it had something to do with his drug usage, but also him doing things like college and starting his life with his wife.

When I first heard the news, I was sad. Now just disappointed. It would have been great to have interacted with him any amount more over the course of his life. I told somebody, a friend I believe?, that I've seen my nephew more times this year than I've seen that particular uncle this lifetime. Having time to process that, it pretty much told me where his priorities lied, compared to my own.

Anyways, that's all for now. It was good to write down my thoughts. Stay classy, 'scapers.