Or . . .
"Wisdom is the knowledge that is gained by having many experiences in life."
A old high school friend committed suicide a few days ago. Hung himself at 60 after having battled depression his whole life. I've been involved in a group email thread with people mourning, reminisicing, sharing funny stories.
The following passages I sent to people who reached out to me directly about some of the things I wrote. Mental illness, substance abuse, depression, grieving, these are all complex, profound topics that don't have easy answers, that can't be easily explained by acquiring knowledge. It makes me think about all of the shit I've gone through in my life to get to where I am, shit that I haven't always enjoyed enduring, shit that maybe gave me the wisdom to be able to speak to someone else who's in pain. When someone I know is going through a tough patch I've been known to say "Wow, you're really going to be able to help someone some day." Sounds shitty at the time but it usually comes true.
My experience is that people who suffer with mental illness can be very clever at masking it - they cope by presenting this front that everything is OK. I'm sure that when someone at work asked him how he was doing he didn't respond with "Actually I'm pretty depressed and I've had some thoughts of ending my own life." It doesn't go over well in the real world. So for those of us who were close to him I suggest that there was very little chance we could have done anything or said anything that would have helped in this case. It's not your fault. He suffered from the incomprehensible. There was no logic that could have helped. So I'm going to miss my friend - and right here at the start I'm mad at him - but I'm not going to blame myself. That won't help me at all. I do know that when someone talks about suicide I really try to pay attention. I realize that most of the time the person won't act on it but I never take it for granted.
I also suggest that grief doesn't follow a formula. It may come quickly and it may not show up for a while - it may manifest itself in an outward show of grief and it may not - it may pass quickly and it may hang around for a long, long time. There's no right or wrong way for me to do it as long as I'm open to the grieving. I have to grieve - that's all I know. If I'm angry right now or not especially sad or wracked with anguish it's alright.
The Fellowship has had a big effect on me over the years in regards to helplessness in the face of a irrational behavior. Irrational behavior that can lead to death, especially now that heroin has become so prevalent. All of the conversations I've had with people who are killing themselves slowly with alcohol - who know they are killing themselves - who want to stop but can't make that rational jump to actually stopping. I'm not sure if it has made me a little jaded or a little wiser but it has made me a lot more accepting about what I can and cannot do. I certainly don't blame myself, wonder if I could have said just the right thing to make a difference. If you've convinced yourself that sticking a needle in your arm filled with you're not sure what that you bought from some slimeball . . . you're pretty unreachable.
He hung himself. People that mean to go through with suicide use weapons or they use a rope. There's no cry for help, there's no hope that someone will interrupt the process like there is with pills or wrist cutting or carbon monoxide. He had a plan. He thought this through carefully. This wasn't a spontaneous act. He was beyond the point of saying "maybe I should call Jeff and discuss this with him, see if it's a good idea." This has nothing to do with intelligence or wonderful life circumstances, either. That's why it's called mental illness.
I recall the medication component of our talks, too. It's still amazing to me today how little the medical/scientific community really understands about the medicine they often prescribe - how it works, why it works for one person but not another with a similar diagnosis, why it seems to stop working after a while. There are many blind studies done - where one group is given the live medicine and another a sugar pill - and it isn't unusual for the results to be inconclusive. The medicine can't be definitively proven to do anything at all. Shows how hard it is to treat mental illness.
I'd be happy to talk with you or chat electronically. I know how tough this is.
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