by Jessica Kuzmier

Created on: August 06, 2010   Last Updated: September 03, 2010

So, you see some college girl spacing out, and you think, oh here we go again.  That old teenage angst.  You know kids today, they just don't seem to appreciate all the things that were handed them, these spoiled brats.  You see this kid that seems to have it all; she gets to go to school, she lives in a free country, youth is on her side, all the happy go lucky nonsense that basically is meant to say demographics determine the proscribed mental state a person is supposed to be in.  Man, this girl just isn't there, and what the heck is wrong with her?

Sure, she had a whole bunch of problems.  But who the heck doesn't?  Why can't she smile, why does she seem so ticked off, why does she act like no one else has any concern but herself?  That's just not the way the world works.  

This college kid, this one who supposedly is too blind to appreciate how the rosy world is sitting at her feet, is not so blind or deaf that she doesn't hear all this coaxing and prodding.  To her, it's just another weight upon the plate that she is supposed to be dealing with.  Not only pick up the pieces of her family's losses and illnesses, be the top student to seal the legacy of the dead, and realize how everyone else has been devastated and check herself at the door.  No, on top of it, she has inconvenienced everyone because she isn't happy while doing it.  The long term numbness she feels, the anxiety on whether the stabs in the dark she makes to get her out of this state and back into normal life, no, this makes people nervous.  It's just too much.  If she were grateful, she would smile.  If she really had God on her side, she'd smile.  It's been months, and where is that beautiful smile, and how is your dad holding up, anyway?

So this is the biggest thing that she goes through with all of this.  She hears all the statements about denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance, and they all become a monologue to her and a broken record she tells herself over and over again, in her head.   Somebody came up with this junk to make the surreal seem manageable.  You know, like a diet or something.  Just count calories, lose weight.  Just see what stage you are at.  She tries it all on, for size.  Anything: she’ll try it, to escape the zombie land of numb pain she is in.  So here she goes, right thinking leads to right action, all that jazz that people

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