![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebe
I'm sure most people know this by now, but well, this is more a journal entry than a bulletin board notice.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
musewoozle committed suicide on March 1st. Word around the campfire is he lost his job a few weeks before, and never recovered from the resulting depression. The news is a huge shock to me and most everyone else, mainly because I would never have pegged Ashentaine as a fellow who would have succumbed to that. He wasn't 'messed up.' He wasn't maladjusted. He never said word one about even thinking about it. As far as the rest of us know, this was completely out of the blue.
Only it wasn't, and that's the tragedy. Suicide is never an idea that just pops up into someone's head like a bolt one day. There's a progression, there's a clear path. There were events and corresponding mental states that lead to this, for who knows how long. A few weeks, a few months...there's no way of telling now. It's clear, though, that Ashentaine had been thinking about this, had been perhaps planning this, beforehand.
That leads everyone who knew him into the inevitable mire of confusion and guilt. Was there something I could have done? Was there I sign I should have seen? Would this have happened if I talked to him more? Could I have done something to let him know that he could have approached me? What could I have done to have prevented this? People ask these questions (or perhaps not), and their inability to answer them leads to more confusion, an even more vague sense of guilt, and possibly anger at him for putting us through this. (Though we'd *never* admit to that last part.)
The horrible thing about suicide is how lonely it tends to be. The pain and grief that exists is so strong that there doesn't seem to be anything else. No friends who can help you out of it, perhaps because there doesn't seem to be anyone who cares enough to. No family who understands you, no place you can turn to, just constant, unrelenting suffering that's impossible to see a way out of once you're that far in. For some, it's so terrible that the only release looks to be death. So that's the option they choose.
It saddens me more than anything to think that Ashentaine felt that way, that whatever suffering he was going through was so blinding in its weight that he didn't see the support (however tenuous) or the possibilites that were waiting for him just outside his head. The idea that he felt he was dying alone breaks my heart. It's hard to shake the feeling that I had failed him somehow, that I let him down. He needed me, and I didn't even see it. A lot of people are having those exact same feelings this morning, it seems.
There isn't an easy answer to the quandry that hindsight affords us. We'll never know whether or not we could have stopped events as they happened. Things are as they are. What we *can* do, now, is take the lesson that he gave us through this and apply it. It's important to connect with the people around you. It's important to be able to lean on someone when things get bad. And no matter how awful things get, no matter how hopeless they seem, it's only temporary. This, too, shall pass.
So...how's everyone today?
musewoozle committed suicide on March 1st. Word around the campfire is he lost his job a few weeks before, and never recovered from the resulting depression. The news is a huge shock to me and most everyone else, mainly because I would never have pegged Ashentaine as a fellow who would have succumbed to that. He wasn't 'messed up.' He wasn't maladjusted. He never said word one about even thinking about it. As far as the rest of us know, this was completely out of the blue.Only it wasn't, and that's the tragedy. Suicide is never an idea that just pops up into someone's head like a bolt one day. There's a progression, there's a clear path. There were events and corresponding mental states that lead to this, for who knows how long. A few weeks, a few months...there's no way of telling now. It's clear, though, that Ashentaine had been thinking about this, had been perhaps planning this, beforehand.
That leads everyone who knew him into the inevitable mire of confusion and guilt. Was there something I could have done? Was there I sign I should have seen? Would this have happened if I talked to him more? Could I have done something to let him know that he could have approached me? What could I have done to have prevented this? People ask these questions (or perhaps not), and their inability to answer them leads to more confusion, an even more vague sense of guilt, and possibly anger at him for putting us through this. (Though we'd *never* admit to that last part.)
The horrible thing about suicide is how lonely it tends to be. The pain and grief that exists is so strong that there doesn't seem to be anything else. No friends who can help you out of it, perhaps because there doesn't seem to be anyone who cares enough to. No family who understands you, no place you can turn to, just constant, unrelenting suffering that's impossible to see a way out of once you're that far in. For some, it's so terrible that the only release looks to be death. So that's the option they choose.
It saddens me more than anything to think that Ashentaine felt that way, that whatever suffering he was going through was so blinding in its weight that he didn't see the support (however tenuous) or the possibilites that were waiting for him just outside his head. The idea that he felt he was dying alone breaks my heart. It's hard to shake the feeling that I had failed him somehow, that I let him down. He needed me, and I didn't even see it. A lot of people are having those exact same feelings this morning, it seems.
There isn't an easy answer to the quandry that hindsight affords us. We'll never know whether or not we could have stopped events as they happened. Things are as they are. What we *can* do, now, is take the lesson that he gave us through this and apply it. It's important to connect with the people around you. It's important to be able to lean on someone when things get bad. And no matter how awful things get, no matter how hopeless they seem, it's only temporary. This, too, shall pass.
So...how's everyone today?
