July 1, 2002
3:20 p.m.

Sherri just got back from spending a week in her hometown near Toledo. Unfortunately, the reason for her visit was a sad one. One of her friends from school had died. Her name was Jessica. Apparently, she had eight blood clots in her brain.

Eight!

As Sherri told me about the untimely death of her friend, I was struck by deja vu. It was during this time last year that Shannon died. Like Jessica, Shannon was a childhood friend of mine. Like Jessica, Shannon was in bad health her entire life and living on borrowed time. Like Jessica, Shannon did not die from what we expected her to die from. And like Jessica, Shannon was a young college-aged woman. The more Sherri told me about Jessica, the more I thought about Shannon. I wanted to mention these similarities to Sherri, but I thought better of it. Many people told me about the deaths of their friends after Shannon passed away. To tell you the truth, I really didn't care about their friend's deaths, or what they had to go through. I was dealing with my own pain. I thought Sherri may be feeling the same way, so I said nothing and just listened.

My mom took me out for dinner and a movie. We saw Minority Report and dined on pasta at Bob Evans. The movie was pretty good, though confusing at times. I was never entirely sure that I really understood what was going on. However, it all came together in the end. My mom and I agreed that it was pretty good. The advertisements in the movie kind of freaked me out, though. They're omnipresent. I hope advertising of the future isn't really like that.

I just finished reading I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb. It was an epic book, almost as big as a Bible. It took me almost 2 1/2 weeks to get through, but I was determined to finish. It was very good. It was about both a man and the family he came from, and covered three generations. It must have taken forever to write.

The main character, Dominick, had to go through a lot of crap in his life. It seemed as if his life was a series of tragedies. However, my favorite aspect of the book is what he learned from them. It made me think about why God allowed the people of the world to suffer. Without suffering, we wouldn't appreciate anything. We wouldn't realize how precious things are. We probably wouldn't even learn anything.

I remember thinking along those lines when I was at the height of my anxiety disorder. I always had a strange feeling that I was going through it for some purpose - that struggling through those overwhelming problems would have greater significance later on in my life. If it had any greater significance, I haven't seen it yet. It was an interesting thought, though.