Grief

This past month has been hard.

After finding out my friend had died I spent a week unable to shake my melancholy mood, I distracted my self as well as I could with the restrictions that are in place here – no job, no car, no really good friends.

When I moved out here I had a list of things I wanted to do, I planned on reading a book every month, seriously practicing yoga, maybe taking up running, learning italian, and blog about it all (for myself to look back on mainly) and all that has fallen to the wayside during this past month.

Not knowing what happened to Lucy during those final hours, being so far away from anyone else who knew her and having a lot of time to think has made everything feel a little pointless. It also fell in with my PMS and, maybe due to my grief, my period was three weeks late. Three weeks of PMS is not a fun thing for anyone under any conditions.

The funeral was at the beginning of this week. I awoke at 230am and lit a candle for when the ceremony was held in the UK. I then re-lit it at 1030am California time with plans to let it burn out throughout the day. I called friends back home who had attended the funeral to see how it had gone, and to try and find out exactly what had happened. But the family are being quite tight lipped about specifics beyond ‘she took her own life’.

I still like to think it was accidental.

After my phone calls I was ravenous, I thought about leaving the candle lit, about taking it downstairs with me and finally about blowing it out. I felt a little disappointed in myself for not being able to just leave it lit – anxiety is an awful thing. But when I blew it out I felt a weight kind of lift. This week my mood has felt lighter and brighter as the days have passed.So back to the to do list!

Suicide

My friend died, she killed herself, and it’s been horrible. It’s made worse by being 6000 miles away from it all and by being told the details on Facebook.

We worked together and she was troubled, she never opened to me directly because I’m twenty years younger and what did I know.

But I wish she had, because I’d have genuinely listened and not used it as a platform to talk about myself, I wouldn’t have encouraged the self medicated wine, I wouldn’t have asked how she was just to hear the latest gossip. I would have tried to help because she was a nice person and deserved a friend. Yet despite meeting her for coffees and going out for meals she never opened up to me.

I wish I’d poked my nose in more, and not been worried about seeming to be interfering. I wish I’d spoken up when I heard worrying snippets of conversations she was having with other members of staff. I wish I’d asked her why she was hungover yet again, and just how much had she drank. I wish I’d shouted at her for repeatedly drink driving. I wish I’d told the ones she had spoken to to try harder to help her.

If anyone you come into contact with is visibly struggling with life, if your coworker is repeatedly coming in stinking of booze, if someone is crying on the bus, if someone has cuts on their wrists, if someone is withdrawing from life, reach out to them. Because I didn’t and now my friend is dead. A mother is dead. A daughter is dead.

And if you’re struggling, if life is really hard for you right now, reach out to someone. Even if they’re younger, even if they don’t have the same issues, even if they’re always laughing. It doesn’t mean they won’t bend over backwards to help you. Because there is nothing romantic about suicide, everything just ends. And even if right now that seems like a good idea, you could not be more wrong.