what i felt on Australia Day 2008
February 5th 2008 01:19
Australia Day 2008
its weird
i consider myself a patriotic australian. i am passionate about this beautiful country and its troubled, yet important history. today should be the day that i relish. i should be draped in southern cross tats and have flags all over my car. it seems to me, celebrating this day would be so odd and unatural to me. today i feel like im sitting in a wake.
i have never been much affected by death. it was always happened to someone elses family. but late last year i experenced the sharp sting of a shocking death. it rocked me like i never could have imagined. like something just came into me and turned a key and suddenly i was depressed, sad adn with an indescribable feeling of pain. i always thought i understood death, it was something that physically happened, not something to be mourned but celebrated. when it happened to such a young life, a young life taken by drugs there was no celebration. no feeling at all, maybe just a desperation to be free of the burn of loss. to watch a father, a family, a community cry for the loss of their son to his own demons is a thing that cannot be theorised or explianed in any language, at any time.
its a blank.
i got rocked again, this time by a perfect stranger. it seems cliche and almost dramatic for me to be so driven to emotion by a celebrity death, but i am. when i heard that heath ledger died, naked and alone to drugs, i felt the same impossible departure from any knowable feeling. the similarites between the death i experienced personally and that of the superstar were immense. both young men in their twenties, both overcome by nameless demons, both alone with their drugs.
there are no questions that can ever be answered correctly when it comes to loss like this.
this is why this australia day i am a proud australian. im proud of this country that is free and diverse. a counrty that is beautiful and breathtaking. a country that is home. but i am still in mourning, i mourn publically for a hero, i mourn quietly for another kind of hero. this hero is not impressive because of who he knows or what he does, he was impressive just because.
both are clear examples of the tragedy of solitude and lonliness. life really is too short to be pissed off, to hate, to be ignorant or to hold grudges.
these people died because they fought their battles alone.
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