Yet Again With the Heath Ledger Thing...

In yesterday's post (rant), it never occurred to me that Heath Ledger's death could have been other than a fatal miscalculation on how much of whatever he needed to get high. I think at the back of my mind, what was pinging away at me was the thought that it might not have been accidental. That the moron might have killed himself. And I was furious about that.

I don't know where my usually kind and compassionate self (cough, cough) has hied herself off to, but this really pisses me off.

If his shadow were to appear before me now, I would try to grab him by his ethereal shirt collar and say, "Are you crazy? Are you nuts? Just think about what you have. More than stuff! You have a family." (As much as you may think you loathe your family, when they're all gone, you do kind of miss them.) "You have a child who needs her father."

But I think way, way, way at the back of my mind is this:

I didn't kill myself in The Lost Years. And yet this idiot might have done that.

There were some desperate hours at Ma Maisonette between 2002 and 2007. I started working at Unnamed Co in 2006, but it took me until this year to feel just the slightest bit of security about it.

There was terror, there was utter aloneness, there was pain, fear, the darkest doubt I have ever known, and no belief that it would or could get any better.

And yet, I'm here. I'm alive and lately, I'm actually here feeling pretty darn good, knock wood. There is joy in my life again, and fun. There is hard work, for which I am well-paid. I'm here, I made it, I survived what I hope are the darkest days of my life.

And he didn't?

How bizarre, how weird to think that I, a middle-aged, overweight, middle-class, not particularly attractive bat, could be made of sterner, stronger stuff than a 28 year old millionaire with an apartment in NY and the respect of his peers, with an absolutely golden future?

How bizarre. How very odd. But there it is.