First republish of several OG scribblings pieces

content/post/2017/12/3-one-is-too-many/index.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
++++
+layout =	"post"
+title =	"Frenetic Scribblings #3: One is too many"
+date =	"2017-12-04"
+categories = ["writing"]
+tags = ["freneticscribblings"]
++++
+
+The text prompt is menacing today. That little cursor blinking relentlessly. Daring me to say something, when I feel like I have nothing to say.
+
+I’m sure every other writer understands what I’m feeling. Better than I can write about it, ironically enough. But the whole point of this ‘blogthing’ is I write every day no matter what. So here goes.
+
+Yesterday came a bolt from the blue.
+
+*The calm before the storm. Still air, clouds billowing thick as smoke. Twice as dark.*
+
+*Silence shattered. An explosion of a thousand shards propelled on the sudden wave of sound. The breath the sky had been holding was exhaled in a roar as a peal of thunder tolled out.*
+
+*It accompanied a jagged finger of lightning stabbing downwards. Vanished as quickly as it had appeared.*
+
+*Then another. And another. Soon the thunder hammered relentlessly like the strike of an anvil, and blades of light lashed out at the land, cloaked in squalling rain.*
+
+Yesterday I discovered someone I know took their own life a few days ago.
+
+I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know them well. But the news still hit like… lightning.
+
+What does one do, now? How do you go on, without? How do you help others to carry on, in the wake?
+
+I don’t know.
+
+I’m not sure I will know. In one sentence, an otherwise mundane line of text on a computer screen, my entire perspective shifted.
+
+Strange, how death leads to the re-evaluation of life. We weren’t even exactly close, him and I. But now he’s gone. And I won’t ever know him. Freight train of thought.
+
+This is more than that, though. This is a reminder.
+
+**One is too many.**
+
+One suicide is far too many. And yet the actual figure is much higher.
+
+How? How can we live in a world where people take their lives every single day?
+
+Not just how. Why?
+
+I don’t know. And I don’t know what to do about it. Apart from scream ‘why’ — metaphorically, perhaps literally — in hope of an answer.
+
+Until the inevitability of tommorow, for some not all.
+
+Thought for the day:
+> “Everyone you meet is fighting their own battle, be kind, always” — Unknown