THE OLD SPIRAL NOTEBOOK

Today I was helping someone in their office electronically document transactions that were only written in ​an old notebook. Since I'm pretty good at Excel, I offered to do it. Plus, I didn't really have to think about anything other than just typing in what was in the book. Until... I got to April 25th. Another one of the "unexpected moments" I hate so much. Random, every day things that hit me like a brick along the side of my skull, that hurts every cell in my body like a school of piranha living inside of me, eating away from the inside out. It's the every day moments, that I've decided to document in this blog because it not only helps me heal (is that possible?) when I write, but hopefully anyone reading this will never take the "little" things for granted. I'll use examples in future entries, but for now - the old spiral notebook. So, today when I saw this notebook, full of handwritten transactions by date, I could not help but stop when I got to April 25, 2018 because that was the day everything changed. When I saw the date, my heart sank and I turned cold. I couldn't even blink. I just stared at that date, and so many things instantly came into my mind. That, the very second whoever wrote the entry into the book, Shane was still alive. He was at school, and I at work never EVER imagining the hell that was to come. Perhaps he was laughing with his friends with that infectious laugh that made everyone smile. Maybe he was at lunch eating pizza, or in ELA, or Science learning about how the class would be releasing the trout that they had been raising all year long. What if that was the moment that set him over the edge. The moment where young kids felt that making someone feel insignificant and inferior simply because he had things they didn't. What if that was the moment he decided to do what he did? I looked at the ink on the paper, long dried, and realized that there are so many things I'll never have answers to, but I will be searching for something - what, I don't know - my entire life. I realized that there are going to be tons of things during the life I have left to live that will rock me to my core. I realized that I cannot enable this to engulf me into the darkness that is calling to me every day. That tiny, insignificant entry into an old spiral notebook...Changed everything. ​Sandy