I just learned of the suicide of yet another close friend of mine. I'm mad, hurt, and so, so, so sad. Part of me thinks, "I don't get it, how do you get that low? How does not existing anymore seem preferable to your troubles?"
Of course, my two friends who killed themselves believed in God and an afterlife. So, in their minds, they were not ceasing to exist, but just changing planes in the great jetway of the cosmos. But I don't get that either. Doesn't every belief system preach that killing yourself is a one way ticket to pain and suffering. Surely an eternity of suffering is worse that trying to figure it out here. Right?
I'm back to where I don't get it.
Obviously, after you learn something like this, you mind goes looking for clues, "could I have foreseen this?" prevented it? Were there signs?
Of course there were fucking signs. Everyone has their bad days, the key seems to be getting past the bad days. A super long string of bad days or a few super bad days seems to bring out the urge to live no more. I'm sure everyone has had at least that in their life, even if they never thought of taking their life.
I never got to say good bye.
In 2008 I learned that one of my dearest friends, O, had killed herself in 2007 after a long bout with Schizophrenia. We'd been estranged for many years, but I always imagined us together as old people, as friends or lovers, once all the other stuff was out of the way, careers, kids, the things that can get in the way of living.
I'd been searching for O for a long time and the internet always held promise, but I never figured out how to use it effectively. She was private and paranoid, even when I knew her, so it was always going to be hard to find her, plus at least one other person shared her name and career path, making searches more difficult.
I eventually had the idea of looking for her sister and was talking to said sister on the phone within a day of finding her. If I'd thought of that a year earlier, I could have spoken to my friend, as she would have still been alive. It was my belief in Facebook that lead me to look for O's sister. I truly feel, in the Facebook era, you can locate anyone, as long as their name is unique enough. By contrast, good luck finding the John Smith you're looking for.
Hearing of O's demise I felt robbed of my future with her. She was a fighter. I couldn't believe she, of all people gave in. Still, there were those signs, the paranoia. Part of me was not surprised at all. It seems 911 was the trigger for her downfall. Evacuated from her home she took the attack personally, internalized it, and never really came back to reality, at least the reality we all accept and know. It seems she'd never forgot me either, meaning, I could have made some difference, maybe not "the" difference, but some.
Yesterday, I learned of the death of my mentor, who killed himself decades back, though, as I said, I'm only just learning of it.
G was my counselor at camp the last year I was able to attend. He was magical and magnetic, everyone was drawn to him and uplifted by his optimism and good cheer. Being the oldest of his campers he made me his unofficial assistant counselor, since he hadn't been assigned one. I'd always wanted to get to know G better, but fate put us in the best possible position to become friends. In time my great respect for him was returned as he seemed to take a liking to me too. My camp session ended and I left, but my little brother was attending the next session, meaning I'd return a few days later, only to say hi really, but it allowed for another turning point.
One issue G had helped me cope with was a girl named L and the demise of my relationship with her. He didn't have a high opinion of her, so I couldn't figure out why I liked her so much. She was beautiful and she showed an interest in me, need I say more? But I didn't see it like that then, so in the day between my session of camp and my little brother's session of camp, I wrote out a seven page, college ruled, history of my relationship with L (which had spanned two summers and letters in between).
When we went to pick my brother up I asked G if he'd read what I wrote and our friendship took another turn because he was, as he described it, dumbstruck with the quality of my writing (I'm not going to say I've maintained that quality, as I haven't kept practice, lol). Not only that, but regardless of what he thought of my ex, L, he now understood why the relationship had meant so much to me. (On I side note, I now believe that my relationship with L was sabotaged by one of my closest friends who actually wanted to be my girlfriend, as she often relayed messages between L and myself, but that's another whole post which I'm not likely to write).
I think those seven pages convinced G to be pen pals with me, and we remained in regular contact for years, right up to his death, as I now know, but back then, his letters just stopped. I assumed we just lost touch, because I was moving a lot at the time (my father was in the Army) and I changed addresses three times the year he died, so it was easy to imagine letters getting lost when they stopped.
In those letters, G helped me so much. It was the darkest time of my life (isn't adolescence the darkest time in everyone's life). And I came the closest to suicide I ever did while we were writing. He's the one who first suggested Lao Tzu to me, and it helped so much. But now, I'm looking back on that, realizing, while he was helping me to stay alive, he was within months of taking his own life. Read on.
And this is the ultimate irony. G was the first one to tell me "it gets better", long, long, long before it was an internet meme. And, having guessed at the circumstances which lead him to take his life, I only wish I'd had the chance to tell him, "it gets better". Because it does.
Don't kill yourself!
Don't kill yourself!
Don't kill yourself!
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