Inadequate

Here is a list of things I have helped various friends deal with over the course of the last week:

1. The death of a grandparent
2. A divorce (obviously this one is an ongoing thing, but certain events sort of made the whole issue worse than usual a few days ago)
3. A miscarriage
4. Cancer

What is going on? Why are so many of my friends, both long-distance and here at my university, having such a rotten time lately? I feel completely inadequate, too, because I can open a bottle of wine or a tub of ice cream and I'll sit on the couch with you for hours and listen if that's what you need me to do, but beyond that I feel helpless to do anything other than say, "Wow, that sucks, I wish you weren't having to go through this," over and over again. And that doesn't feel very helpful at all. Ultimately pain and loss and fear are things that we just have to get through ourselves, and I can sit there with my friends and try to take their mind off of things or hold them as they grieve, but all I can really do is watch and try to make comments that don't do more harm than good. Everyone has to go through the things on that list alone. That has really been driven home to me this week, and it sucks because I really want to do more for everyone. I especially wish I could do more because it seems particularly unfair that I have friends who are dealing with all of this crap when the biggest problem in my life right now is figuring out how I'm going to read 500 pages before Monday night. It puts any "problems" in my life into perspective, that's for sure. I know these things go in cycles, though, and I just have to hope that life will get better and easier for everyone, and also that they'll sit on the couch with me when I'm the one that's crying. Because like it or not I know I'm going to have crappy times of my own to deal with eventually...I'm just praying that I get to stay lucky for a little while longer.

Anyway, I have a lot of things I should be doing right now: cleaning the apartment, working out, picking topics for some class projects, figuring out what the heck I want to do in independent study this semester so that I have something to talk about when I meet with my advisor tomorrow, making some headway on the books I have to read this week. And I have done barely any work today because Penn came down and spent the night last night (not that I'm complaining about that! It was nice, I'm not used to seeing him in the middle of the week like this). In other words, life is back to normal for me. Now it just needs to get that way for everyone else I know!