my heart goes out

My heart goes out this week…
…to Sweet Lucy who lost her dad on the Fourth of July.
…to people living their lives in London. People going to work, people going on holidays. I wish I could keep everyone safe.
I used to feel like a very lucky person. Fortune shone upon me. Blessed with good friends, swept up on lovely adventures, family members who share my sense of humor. Even when bad things happened to me they were so weird that I could only attribute it to the fickleness of Lady Luck. For instance, I have experienced many “freak accidents.” At camp one year I was blowing out a candle in my teepee, and the angle and power of my blow forced the accumulated wax to fly up into my face and seal my eye shut from the inside. Another time (also at camp) I fell off a ten foot ladder with 40lbs of climbing gear strapped to my harness. Random, right? Even more random (and indicitive of my amazing luck) was the fact that the only injury I sustained was a small scrape on the palm of my hand. I fell FAR, you know?
My amazing good fortune (real or percieved) led me to believe that I existed in a constant orb of safety and light. And not only that, the people I loved were also contained in my orb, because tragedy befalling them would devestate me as well, and so thus they too were protected. I believed I could keep everyone safe, simply by loving them.
Then, in college, a friend died. Sara Vreeland, who was so dear to me, died at 22 while living abroad. A couple years later Meredith Russell, who I grew up with, died in New Zealand. And September 11th happened, and though I didn’t know anyone who lost their lives there, everyone I knew was somehow changed by it. Everyone felt scared and sad. And it’s not just people dying. Relationships that I believed in (mine and friends of mine) ended in ways that were painful and hard. Friends got robbed, and lost their jobs, and moved places that made them feel lonely. And I couldn’t protect them. I couldn’t keep them safe. I started to feel like maybe I didn’t have a light, after all. I started to feel very ordinary, and vulnerable. And scared.
“Bad things happen, Willow. The only remarkable thing about you is that your naiivity lasted so long.” That is what I imagine people saying when I admit this stuff. “You will yourself to ignore what is ugly in this world, and it makes you a weak, dumb person.” I have dated boys who have essentially told me this. One college boyfriend was driven crazy by the fact that I wore my heart on my sleeve. He wanted me to toughen up, and fast. He was trying to protect me, in a way I guess. He thought it would be easier for me if I looked at the world squarely, in all it’s imperfections, and just accepted it. But god, it feels so much harder.