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“He lost his battle with mental health.”
I guess that’s the contemporary Facebook suitable euphemism for “committed suicide”.
Some of you may remember the roommate that I kicked out last year. He took his own life on Saturday morning after a 10/10 argument and crashout with his daughter. Things had been rough lately but I’d seen him earlier the night before at the bar and he seemed more or less himself, just buried in his phone reconnecting with a woman from his past after her breakup such that we didn’t really talk much. The last thing I told him was that we should get together on Sunday.
What do you even say? This story was never going to have a happy ending, but those of us close to him figured that his health would take him first, or a plausibly-accidental overdose. It’s never good news when you get called to the hospital, an escort is waiting to take you back, and a police officer walks in with the doctor. “Was he depressed or did he seem like he would hurt himself?” “I’ve heard the suicide talk so many times either as his former roommate or working at the bar that I would just say that I’d see him tomorrow.” “Was he diagnosed with a mental health condition and did he take any medication?” “What wasn’t he diagnosed with?” “Did he own a firearm?” “Yes, and now that you mention it I don’t think I’ll soon forget what it looked like. I’m guessing this is why I saw a bunch of cops and crime scene tape a few blocks from where he’d been staying when I went to pick her up?” “Yes sir.”
“I wish he’d called/said something. I didn’t know things were so bad.” Perhaps I’m overly grim by disposition (most likely true) or people really are insanely naive and think that things will just magically get better (true of that person I was delivering the news to; nice guy, though) but, really? This shouldn’t exactly have been a surprise, save coming from those who figured he lacked the guts to actually do it. His problems weren’t solvable by a pep talk, nor were they in any sense temporary.
“It’s my fault!” No, it isn’t. The last person he’d been crashing with had been the latest to reach the end of her rope (pun not intended) and told him that he had to go, but that doesn’t make it her fault so much as it made her the loser of the game of musical chairs (This is how I described it to her.). The fact is that everyone close to him at some point or another had done and tolerated what they could in attempting to help him. Some had more patience and resources than others but it invariably ended the same way: frustration and defeat before reaching some form of “I can’t do this anymore.” None of us who were in that hospital room have any reason to blame ourselves. Even in some fairytale alternate scenario where the right person in the right place got him through this bad night there was always going to be another one, and another one, and…you get the idea.
I don’t know at precisely what point our friendship became an exercise in palliative care, and I don’t know if most people think in such terms (I guess not, judging by the surprised reactions from so many.), but that’s what it was. Maybe this is going to sound weird but I find myself having grieved in advance of the event to some extent. I’m sad, but not shocked. I’ll do my part for those of us left behind and at some point the grief will subside and we’ll remember the end less and the better times we had together more. Goodbye, my friend, and damn it I’m sorry I couldn’t fix you. God knows I gave it my best shot.
Selfishly, I’m afraid the contenders for the next call are running a rapid race, and those are my father and sister. Those are going to hurt.
Oh yeah, bonus material: "Is his dog okay?" "Yes, and in fact it's been staying with a different friend for some time now." I'm pretty sure that's called foreshadowing.
Very sorry for your loss.
My father committed suicide a couple of years ago and shortly thereafter I lost my older sibling to a drug overdose, and then a close family friend and as well as my cat. Not everybody copes the same way. There was much I miss 'about' them and the capabilities they had, but I didn't miss the kind of people they were and my memory wasn't punctuated with too many good experiences of them. Losing my cat of the 4 of them put me at a low point as I've always loved animals. When I think about it though, what I wish more than anything was that I could've had a different relationship with my father and sibling. Maybe things would've turned out different if we had that opportunity.
Thank you.
The hardest part of this is watching my sister go down the same road with different details (and some invariably shitty boyfriends, one of whom shot himself dead in front of her). She's been spiraling downhill pretty badly lately (mostly because she refuses to give up on the latest shitty boyfriend, and I know it sucks to realize that you need to move out and start over from scratch again, but she was also between jobs for a few months so throw in "broke and the cards are maxed out" into the mix). I offered her a place to stay if she could find somewhere else for her dog, and she retorted that the dog is the only thing she lives for now (Guess how many times I heard that from my now dead friend about his dog.). Same story with mom (who she refuses to live with anyway) and our father (He'd probably give in she pushed hard enough, to our stepmother's fury, but she stuck them with the last dog she had the last time she stayed with them.). Her current plan is allegedly to continue staying with the shitbag boyfriend who was about to kick her out and commute 5 hours a day multiple days a week to her new job. I told her she should plan on moving there as soon as she can swing it but she says she doesn't want to live in the same city as our mother (I get not wanting to live with her but that metro area is big enough for the two of them and I'm pretty sure she's just stalling for time because she refuses to give up on the boyfriend.).
It just sucks. It's the guilt trip that never ends. Our mother was a cartoon villain of a parent and I wasn't older enough to have any chance of defending her, just older enough that I was the first to figure out to run and hide when I heard that tone in her footsteps. It wasn't my fault that I was mom's favorite and she wasn't. No amount of analyzing it to death will completely silence the part of me that feels like the sibling equivalent of a war criminal. I can't rescue her now any more than I could when we were kids. There's plenty of nice stuff you can read about "breaking the cycle", but the fact is that a lot of people don't and the odds for my sister aren't looking good.
Our stepmother is a far better wife than our father deserves and is ordinarily understanding, but she'll never totally get it. Dad will never forgive himself. It doesn't matter how outmatched in court he was. It doesn't matter how hard he did fight or how much he did spend when he could've walked away. It doesn't matter that weekend's at dad's were that much better. All that matters is that he sees his daughter in pain, doesn't know how to make it stop, and feels like it's his fault. So yeah, he'll give whatever she asks as long as he has the money. Mercifully, he made enough in crypto after Trump got elected that he can swing it.
You're welcome.
I know how that can feel. It's difficult to move in that kind of world but you always need to do your best to retain good judgment while navigating through somber circumstances and having to make hard decisions. There's no other way to make progress. The boyfriend simply sounds like a deadbeat and is a dead end. Better to cut your losses early now than come to the same conclusion after you've pissed away too much time and end up right back with the same problem.
I had a very difficult life myself growing up. I had a lot of people around me when I was young. A lot of positive and negative influences on both sides, but the latter always weighs on the mind much more than the former which we quickly subsume and take for granted. When I was in school I had a very difficult time connecting with other kids. I was usually that kid that sat all the way in the back corner of the class and stayed quiet the whole day but always did his homework, stayed in an isolated corner on the playground during recess playing with sticks in the dirt, performed well and wasn't generally a nuisance to anyone. But there wasn't a lot of opportunity there either. The other kids couldn't keep up with me and the adults didn't want to have anything to do with me, so I was usually on an island to myself most of the time. I was just there to do my jail time and leave. Outside of that, I was very active in the neighborhood, but things weren't great there either.
I spent most of my time raising myself and learned to be skeptical of the thoughts others try to impart with you. A lot of the time others aren't independent actors looking out for your self-interest. They're motivated to have you think a certain way which benefits themselves. As I always told other neighborhood kids I'd mentor as I was getting older, "Always listen with your eyes, not with your ears." Don't ever do things that go against your own best judgment.
Whether it was school, the neighborhood or the home, one was almost never a reprieve from the other; and it was like a permanent nightmare that would never end. I still have thoughts about it every day and have for 20+ years that I've never been able to shake and probably never will. But experience is only what you take from it and I've learned a considerable amount from the things I've been though. Some lessons I think I would've never learned had I not gone through difficult things. There's little sense in moping or complaining about things as I see it. I was dealt a bad hand and played it as best as I could. You do your best. It's all that can be expected. And I'll continue to do the same. All you can do is have fun and smile as life takes you for a ride. And where that’s not always enough, I sometimes like to read some of my favorite religious scriptures:
“And recite to them the news of Noah, when he said to his people, "O my people, if my residence and my reminding of the signs of God has become burdensome upon you, then know that I have relied upon God. So resolve upon your plan and call upon your associates. Then let not your plan be obscure to you. Then carry it out upon me and do not let up on your attack.”
I hope things pick up for you and your family.
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