and acceptance

this has been bothering me a lot since a few days after Christmas.

in November 2008, a very close friend of mine killed himself. i never wrote about it--at least not here. my hard drive is home to any number of angry letters to him; i'm sure my paper journals have their say as well.

the thing about most suicides--and i would go so far as to say, most stories in which a person does nothing to prevent their own death--is that nobody wants to talk about it. nobody has ever said out loud to me, "he killed himself." i got left at, "we're waiting for the results" of whatever they do when someone dies. many of the people who were close to this person believe his death was an accident. that was how my mother framed it to me the night she called. i am certain that my mother still believes this, and that's probably better for her. the most i got in the days following his death was a, "you know he was really depressed, right?" from a person who was closer to him than i was.

i'm having the kind of day where i question how close to him i really was to begin with. actually, that's been happening for over a year.
i'd had no idea.

how can we possibly come to grips with suicide if we won't even acknowledge that it's suicide? how can we properly grieve?

the friend with whom i shared him most--the same one who told me about his depression--essentially stopped talking to me for several months. we'd been calling each other weekly for months before that. and i know we associate each other with him, and i won't fault him for it. but i still can't help thinking that we should have been helping each other instead of avoiding each other, whether we were doing it consciously or not.

the fact of the matter is, suicide is something that affects real people. it's something real people do, and it's something that causes real people to suffer. i'm never going to stop missing him. i still get pissed off sometimes that he never saw me graduate from college, never even heard where i got accepted for grad school, never met Dylan, and is never going to see me get excited about a real job, or meet my children. there is shit i'm going through now that i would love his advice on more than anyone else's. i am still hurt that although he knew more of me than almost anyone, he didn't feel he could tell me about such an important part of himself. and i am both sad and fortunate that i don't even have a voicemail from him.

suicide is not taking your life into your own hands. i've heard arguments that it is the greatest act of agency. but what could be more literally self-effacing? giving up your life is not a way to assert control over it--it is surrendering all control.

maybe i only feel this way because i believe that life is the greatest and most precious opportunity we are given. you can make literally anything of a human life. it displays far more courage and agency to make something from nothing than nothing from something.

if you or anyone you know is considering suicide, please be aware that there is a 24-hour helpline at 1-800-SUICIDE and resources available at www.hopeline.com. depression is real, and just like any other disease, it is treatable. there are tons of people out there who want to help you....please let us in.

i'm not trying to be an after-school special. i'm trying to be a real person who is honest about my hurt.