containment

Just spoke to my away friend who relayed terrible, terrible news. His friend, someone I'd met years ago, hanged himself last week in a forest reserve. None of his friends had any idea there was any sort of problem, so it came as a complete shock to everyone. He seemed so together, with a great job, loads of close friends, and had recently started DJing, an enhancement of his MC work. He was 34.

My friend had his own struggles years ago. Just before the last time I saw him (the day before, in fact), he tried to commit suicide. Thankfully he got scared and got his roommate (now wife) to drive him to the hospital to pump his stomach. It's taken him about 7 years to be truly well. Talking with him about his friend, I think it finally hit him how close he was to finishing the job back then.

At a certain time, I realised how many people I knew who attempted suicide before I knew them. It was shocking, upwards of a dozen. It made me wonder why I seemed to be attracted to people who went that way, and worried me that something in me would trigger the same desire. I never really figured out the whys and pushed any feelings about suicide into a little corner of my mind, left to collect spiderwebs.

The news about Brian shook me. It brought back all the old feelings I had when my friend tried to kill himself. The guilt is the part that crushes me, that even though we were so close I didn't know how close he was to ending his life. It must be so strange for him to be in my position after his own struggles, though he now can only talk about how sad he is that his friend felt he couldn't talk to him. It is something I completely relate to. Now I just have to figure out how to contain these feelings and stow them away again.