Is this just normal life?

[CavingSiberian]

It seems like so many things keep happening around my life. I honestly feel like I live in some sort of soap opera sometimes. I don't know how to summarize this very well... but I've known a lot of people who have died personally. Cancer, car wrecks, suicides, murders...

Is this normal and people just choose not to talk about it? Or maybe I have an unhealthy obsession with tragedy. IDK.

Just this year my little sister's school had a kid come to school with a gun. He ended up not hurting anyone, just running from the cops and committing suicide. Last night one of her swim team mates was found dead after he went missing the day before..he was 17. Cause of death isn't known yet.. A couple months ago a guy who was in the military and graduated with a degree in geology from UCM with my classmates and I committed suicide. On this same campus they found a baby's body thrown in a cave with trash and burned within the same month. This is not a huge city, it's a small urban area of about 18k people. This is just the past year...in 2012 a local bar owner, and one of my customers, was murdered in this town as well.

When I was in HS my neighbor committed suicide. My Aunt died drunk driving. I lost my maternal grandfather to a heart attack, my paternal grandmother to cancer and 3 months later my paternal grandfather to a heart attack. One of my HS classmates was murdered because he was black... I graduated HS from an even smaller town, graduated in a class of 56 people.

I could list a couple dozen others I knew that died tragically young but who needs that long list.

I get that this happens in big cities, but in small areas like this where you know everyone it is a bit disconcerting..... and I am honestly curious.... Is this normal? Does this honestly happen to everyone or is this just a tragic coincidence that I know so many people that have died like this? I keep thinking that perhaps everyone else just doesn't talk about it....

[SKS]

I think tragedy is common just about everywhere. You can't avoid death really, it's always going to happen. I believe that everyone with a pulse has suffered from something in any shape or form, and it's tough. But a lot just don't want to talk about it. I try not to worry about these things because it's inevitable whether I want it to happen or not, so I just aim to live every day to the fullest.

[Kirbi]

I get that this happens in big cities, but in small areas like this where you know everyone it is a bit disconcerting..... and I am honestly curious.... Is this normal? Does this honestly happen to everyone or is this just a tragic coincidence that I know so many people that have died like this? I keep thinking that perhaps everyone else just doesn't talk about it....

Honestly, it's both. As in, life isn't usually like this all the time, and I'd imagine some people may never go through these periods - but it happens to a lot of people. When I was around 14 I felt like people were dropping like flies, but it passed; the feeling, and the absurd amount of deaths.

It's really horrible that this is happening; but it really is just life, and coincidence.

[PorkChop]

Genuinely read the title of this thread to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody.

[Viazon]

I'm this sort of stuff happens every where, but living is a small place as you said you do, it's more noticeable. People are more likely to know everyone when they live in a small town.

[Camstud]

Genuinely read the title of this thread to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody.

Me too.

Then I read the post and got sad

[Locke]

Seems the OP and I are having a similar thought process lately. Then again, we both grew up in roughly the same area, so that might explain it.

I've come to realize it's just normal. Sadly, that doesn't make it better or easier. It makes me rather fuckin' paranoid.

[CavingSiberian]

No joke, Rob.

Ugh... I wish I could just go back to bed and start these last few weeks all over. Somehow I have to get by without having a paycheck for over a month... and still manage to get a deposit down on a new place in Nashville..... Thank you, academia. Your payroll department SUCKS!!! So glad I get to work for a month and a half with no pay....