wow. so i went home friday after my senior seminar. i went to huber's and met up with katy and did the whole viewing thing. i didn't think i was going to cry, but i did. they had three big bulliten boards filled with pictures of jay and his friends and family. it was so hard to look at. i think i was basically sitting here all week thinking that this was all just a sham. that someone was going to call me up and tell me that jay was playing a prank on us all just to get us all together in one place to party, to drink, to enjoy life for a change. but that wasn't what happened. what i saw were the "last pictures" of jay - pictures of him on the cruise... probably pictures of him right before he got into the water and was killed. i thought they were horrid. i didnt want to see pictures of him right before he was killed. i felt like i was staring into his frightened eyes just as his eyes saw the boat coming right at him. and i wish i knew exactly what happened to him. the article i read said he died in the hospital, so i'm assuming he was alive when they got him out of the water. but what happened to him? did he bleed to death? was it shock? did a limb (or multiple limbs) get cut off? was it quick? was it painful? did he even know it was coming before it did? was he conscious? did he get to say goodbye to anyone? so many questions that i'll probably never know the answers to.

and all this makes me feel so selfish. like i really need to know any of this stuff - of course not. i felt so selfish crying at the viewing... just because we grew up together - i wasn't his best friend by any means. we were friendly, but i never really hung out with him after grade school. i felt like i shouldnt really be there. but at the same time, i was angry with some people who did show up because i know they didnt really know him. maybe they just went because it was a tragedy... or because bucky died last spring (he was in the class above me in high school). i also felt angry because it was getting to be like a class of 2000 reunion... and i wanted to talk to people and find out how they were doing, but i felt like that was SO disrespectful, so it made me angry that everyone kept hugging me and asking me how i was doing. just hugging would be ok, but obviously i can't answer "how are you doing" truthfully... i still cant. all i can say is "not good" but even saying that makes me mad. should i really even be upset? do i have the right to be so upset over jay? i can't help but feel like it's my pure selfishness that's making me wish i had been a better friend to him, kept up my friendship past grade school... been more than an acquantance through high school. been more than just locker-mates because we had lockers near each other... and more than just in the same homeroom for our whole lives just because our names were near each other in the alphabet.

i feel like i have no right to be so upset... to sit here moping like i have been practically all day. i feel like i need to just suck it up and forget about it. but at the same time, we DID grow up together, even if we weren't best friends... like if my neighbor died, i'd be really upset even tho he and i weren't the greatest of friends. i dont know. i'm having a hard time i guess... blah.