What if?

These are the kinds of things that make you really think how different everything could be, if something happened a second sooner, or a second later. How a life could go on, or end; how relationships can get stronger, or weaker; how one person's whole world could get a little brighter, or significantly darker. Today, I learned that the life of someone I do not know of at all, have never met nor talked to a day in my life has been taken, thanks to anger and envious thoughts. But just think; what if her life wasn't taken? What if in some strange way, I could have met this girl some time later in my life? The saddest thing is, I'll never know. I'll never know what a good friend she is, or the little things about her that most people don't realize. I'll never know what she likes to do on the weekends, or the people in her life that she couldn't live without. No one else ever will. And the people who were there for her all along, the people who know those things already, have to suffer knowing that they'll never get to see her again, all because of one person's stupid actions. It's just not fair, right? I guess you could argue saying "no one said life's fair" but that doesn't mean that these kinds of things are allowed to happen. Death is such a scary issue, and even writing all of this scares the heck out of me. Every time I'm faced with things like this, I can't help but wonder, "What if?" What if she never associated herself with this boy? What if she was with someone at the time? What if she survived the bullets? Exactly. What if? If things were to happen a second later, or a second sooner, maybe she'd be home with her family right now. Maybe she'd be out enjoying her summer, instead of suddenly shutting down in a cold hospital room. I guess I'll never quite understand how different things could really be if they didn't happen at the exact moment they did. I strongly believe things happen for a reason, but I never knew that some things could be this incredibly hard to handle.