Is the world a bad place?

 I still can't wrap my head around pain. Pain and suffering and death feel so foreign, so out of place in my life, and I'm sure that in itself is a privilege. I guess at some point you just have to get used to the fact that there is bad in the world, maybe even the fact that the world itself is bad. 

But if we look at the world as a bad place where bad things happen, where does that leave us?

If everything is arbitrary, what's the point? Are we just skating by on pure luck until one day we run out?

My existential ramblings are nothing novel, I'm sure; the human condition is made up almost entirely of wondering why we're in this condition in the first place.

There's something rather juvenile about the lens through which I view life. It's as though the minute it dawned on me that bad things do and will happen to people I know and love I started thinking of that as some sort of dream. If you separate pain from reality, it becomes distant. But it doesn't go away.

I missed the lesson on how to grieve -- does anyone know? Inside of me somewhere there's a fifteen year old girl who still doesn't believe that someone she just ate lunch with isn't here anymore. Inside of me somewhere there's a seventeen year old girl going through hell working a job at a place she used to love wondering how someone she grew up looking up to isn't here anymore. But neither of those girls are here anymore, either. Inside and outside of myself I exist as a twenty-year-old person, uncertain of what the world has in store for me, not sure exactly how things are meant to work.

And now I'm sitting here, crying, mourning those people who are dead but also grieving for the past versions of myself. If only I could hold that broken fifteen-year-old in my arms - I couldn't tell her it'll all be okay, because truthfully, I don't know if it'll be okay. The world might indeed be a very bad place. But I could tell her that, at least for a couple years, she'll be fine. She'll learn and grow and thrive and become a person who knows who they are.

That fifteen-year-old version of myself feels lost - I'm not in touch with her. It's almost like there's something missing inside me - a hole where a piece should be.

I'm in touch with the seventeen-year-old. She's tougher; she's gritty. She gave her pain to a future version of me, one whom I have yet to meet. Good for her, only taking on what she could handle at the time. One day I'll stand face to face with that seventeen-year-old and clean up the mess she packed up for me in a little box, like when my mom sent me a package of everything I left on my desk at home.

My mom is such a hero to me. I always think of her as so strong and powerful, just in everyday life, and I think I tend to forget just how deep that goes. There's a serenity to the way she goes about her life, just letting things be as they will, striving not to worry about things that are out of her control. I don't think I could ever understand the pain my mom has experienced. Her mother, father, and brother are all gone, and still she is so strong. I've never seen my mom in despair. I don't know how she does it, but she's always so wonderfully consistent. She makes me feel so safe, like I know everything will be fine.

I suppose all we can do is love people. I do my best to let everyone know I appreciate them, though I'm sure I could do more. Even if the world is a bad place, it's where I'll be for a while, and I'm grateful every day that I get to be here. I have so much love for nearly all the people in my life, and I guess that's what it's all about.