Seriously?!

Cursed?

All sorts of shit went down this weekend that I didn't find out about until I got to work yesterday. One of my coworkers, Jeremy, 24, died in a car accident on Friday night (2:30am Saturday morning, technically). He and his cousin, Nate, 25, who is also a coworker of mine, were headed home after going out Downtown and a few miles from their home the driver (Nate) lost control of the car. The car went off the road and rolled at least once, maybe twice. Both were wearing their seatbelts, but Jeremy died anyway. Nate was treated for minor injuries and released into police custody. He was charged with driving under the influence, reckless driving, and vehicular manslaughter. They have him on suicide watch.

Brian's older brother was in a head-on collision with a drunk driver on Sunday night. B called me at around 4:30am yesterday completely hysterical. That was fun. I don't tend to be at my most sympathetic that early in the morning, but I did my best.

Then an aquaintance of mine and former coworker, Donny, 33 (who I probably haven't hung out with in about 6 months), stuck a gun in his mouth and blew his goddamn head off.

On his birthday.

His girlfriend said that he'd gotten into a fight with his dad earlier that day and that harsh words had been exchanged. Something along the lines of his dad calling Donny a "sorry-ass piece of shit".

Nice, huh?

Donny had lost his mom last year - cancer, I think - and they had been very close. The relationship with his father was obviously another matter.

I feel guilty that I had a pretty decent weekend. It's unsettling to know that while I was out having fun with my friends or sitting on the porch in the sunshine reading my book and sipping a Mike's, someone else was in such agony that the only option they saw for their life was to end it.

I'm beginning to wonder if my workplace isn't cursed. Last year there was this guy in one of the other departments that was struck and killed by lightning. That wouldn't have been considered very strange if he'd been hiking one of the neighboring 14ers when a storm blew up. (Lightning kills quite a few novice hikers around here.) But he was walking along a sunny stretch of beach in Florida on the first day of his vacation.

And I was totally just joking when I said in the last journal entry I was considering shooting myself. Somehow that statement doesn't seem so funny today.