ANS

I know this post is going to sound absolutely insane. That could be because I am somewhat depressed and writing this in the darkness of the moment. And it could be because I’m not even going to proofread it after I write it. I need to go to bed and get up early tomorrow for my Sociology exam.

I’m taking Anna Nicole Smith’s death hard. I’m not sure why. I’m trying to analyze it, but every thing I uncover seems to lead to another question. I know I’m very attached to celebrities. As I’ve mentioned many times, I cried more when John Ritter died than when my dad died. I don’t think this means I cared less for my father. I think when I feel personal pain, I am blank on the outside. But, when I feel some emotional pain, it comes out physically. I connected to John Ritter on an emotional level. I never really felt I knew enough about my dad to have that emotional connection. I loved him dearly and I felt the pain immensely, but it never came out in a stream of tears.

Now, as for Anna Nicole Smith -- well, there are many things that cause me to feel this depression. I haven’t cried, nor will I. (Perhaps the tears for Ritter were actually for my father and needed another outlet?) But I am hurting because of Smith’s death. Maybe it’s just the tragedy of it all? Her life was the classic Hollywood tragedy. And maybe, on some level, I can relate to this. I’ve been on a somewhat similar path to self-destruction. Sometimes our own self-destruction is hard to see since we do it in such small ways. I have been doing it -- with the games I played with anti-depressants, with the massive amounts of soft drinks and food, and now I’m doing it with the extreme dieting. What causes the self-destruction? When you look at the lives of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and even Anna Nicole Smith, you can pretty clearly see they died, partly, because of their success. It seems that they couldn’t emotionally handle it and needed some substance or other substitute for reality. They had everything and nothing at all. They each were deeply lonely in various ways. And this I relate to. I have everything I could want, but due to my own mistakes, and the blessing of my own life, I am lonely and spiraling.

I guess I connect to the death of Anna Nicole Smith like I connected to the death of other people recently. Like Spalding Gray. It feels personal. Like it could have just as easily been me.