I Am Alive

Today's blogger of note: Erin O'Brien.

Her profile statement reads simply: I am alive.

Well, that's a start. For the last few weeks, I've been sick, and sad, and feeling like I'm somewhere in the middle. Recently, my days have been virtually melting into one another, leaving me mostly confused about the date, time, and other aspects of consequence.

This afternoon, for no reason other than being so bored my brain started to hurt, I fell asleep and had about the most realistic dream I've ever had. Of course, it featured Donny, and unfortunately I awoke under the guise that we were friends again. Luckily, reality kicked in before I got a hold of my cellphone. Gah. Can you imagine? That would have been a complete and utter disaster.

I have a funeral to attend on Monday, and one I am not looking forward to. I've long considered myself lucky as for the vast majority of my life, I've gone about blissfully unaware of the consequences of death. Of course, when I was sixteen, a close friend died in heartbreaking circumstances, but before then, and since then, things have been going swimmingly. All of a sudden, two weeks ago, Ben got on the back of someone's motorcycle, they hit a wall, and since then we've been struggling to accept that one of the brightest stars no longer shines. And I'm not just crapping on about this because he was my friend, either.

Ben was, by all accounts, an exceptional young man. He left school, having completed seventh form (and graduating as Proxime Accessit, no less) while we were in sixth form. He spent a year in England on GAP year, before returning here to complete a Bachelor of Management Studies at Waikato University, as a Hillary Scholar. He excelled at hockey (playing for no less than three teams at once through most of high school) as well as at judo. And he did all of these things without managing to be a wanker. I think he kissed more of my friends than anyone else I know - at the time I considered him to be a manwhore. Now I see that he was just making the most of life, in the same way that he was when he told me he danced so hard at a club after work one night in London (where he was working as a graduate auditer at Deloittes, since early 2008) that he wore a hole in his work pants. That's Ben. Make no mistake. He who works hard, parties harder.

So it is with a heavy heart that I must attend this service to say goodbye to my friend (and, funnily enough, the first boy who ever held my hand... awww). And until then, may all my days melt into one another. I miss Ben.