Morbid thoughts

After watching yet another episode of “Without a trace” I went to bed and wanted to sleep. However, my brain was not cooperating. (Could have been the fact that I have been sick the last couple of days and haven’t really though too much about work, or been outside the apartment…)

Anyway, the first question in this tv series is usually “how long have he/she been missing?”. A reasonable question since usually you aren’t considered missing until you have been gone for more than 24 hours. In my mind the question popped up “how long could I be missing before someone realises that I am in fact, missing?”. I know I thought about this when I first started university and moved away from home. I lived in a dorm and was quite happy about this fact since the courses I then took at uni was large ones where you don’t necessarily was noticed and especially since it was beginners level.

Anyhow, I figured that my dorm friends would wonder if they didn’t see me for a few days. And
I guess that was when I started thinking that it was nice to call one of your friends the morning after being out painting the town red and leaving to get home by yourself. (this was in the beginning of time so cell phones weren’t on the map… after they came along the whole “I’ll text you when I get home” which was a nice safety blanket for a nervous woman with too much thoughts in her head.) Considering that the town I lived in then is a smaller one with not too much violent crime I guess in the back of my head I always thought that if something really was to happen to me the newspapers would blow it up huge the next morning.

Then I went away on an exchange program across the Atlantic ocean to a larger city, where violent crime did happen more often but then I lived with a friend and there was never even an option to be able to disappear for more than a few hours before someone would notice. The thoughts didn’t really occur again until I moved here, to the Big country, in this fairly violent city (top ten of the “most crime cities of US) where I was starting a new job and living alone. Then I relied on the fact that my work would miss me if I didn’t come in…then again, it’s science and how many times have I come in late in the afternoon and worked all night or just worked the whole weekend and taken off one day just to rest? Or just never called in sick until the second day? (I am so good though, so I usually do the right thing and call in sick the first day, as one should.) but still, it’s not like my parents would notice if I went missing the first couple of – ehh let’s say four or seven – days. My friends here? Well, if I decided to disappear on a Saturday it would probably be noticed on the Sunday morning when I didn’t show up for church, then again I have done that and it didn’t create big ripples as in “she’s missing” (a fact that I am kind of happy about in reality but still…)

So, this is just a rant in the middle of the night and I don’t really know where I am going with it all apart from the fact that I don’t think it is too silly to text one of the people I was out with that night so someone would know if I didn’t make it home.

Although I guess it makes me a tad bit paranoid. Or anxious. Or it is just the fact of life and reality here in this city that violent things happen to good people and that the good people unfortunately have to try and avoid trouble.

Well, now it is time to sleep and try and think about happier things. Like the data analysis tomorrow :) or the fact that the paper seems to be written a little bit...