Ode to Imette

I admit it. What happened to Imette St. Guillen scared me a bit. Not enough to make me stop going out alone, or compromise my life in any way, but it was certainly more than enough to give me pause.

It hit home when I read Anna Quindlen's editorial in NEWSWEEK this week. You can read it here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11785818/site/newsweek/.

This article, more than anything, talks about how we are a faceless society. Now, we can wound each other without having to see what we're doing to someone else. This is certainly true for the blog; its easier to make commentary on my friends from behind a computer screen than to their faces. While I pride myself on being honest and only saying things I would tell my friends, sometimes that does slip and I'll say something that, when I think about it later, was pretty careless.

What Quindlen approaches in this essay, among other things, is why women actually go out. She says they are looking for "someone who will see them across a field of restaurant tables, really see them. In a society that has too often become isolating and inhuman, they're looking for that one face in the crowd. Maybe everyone is."

Isn't that why we came to the city anyway? At least us transplants do. More opportunity doesn't just mean more jobs, better money and culture. It also means more people that may be like us when we've felt isolated and alone at home in smaller places. Crimes like St. Guillen's happen in rural areas too (IN COLD BLOOD, anyone?) but the cities are often held up as dangerous because it happens here too and everyone knows about it in the whole country rather than just the county.

What I wanted to say on behalf of Imette and especially her friends, I'm sorry you had to be the ones who had to pay. I know that most of us twentysomethings leave our friends at the bar or let them leave with someone thinking that they will be hungover and at least have a good story to tell the next day. All I thought about with Imette was what her friends must have left on her voicemail. I'm sorry for them especially.

On a selfish note to end this otherwise concientious blog, I hope that my friends and I will never have to feel that dread when your friend can't be found.