On the one hand if she committed suicide when having poor mental health it makes it more bearable in that she wasn't herself, and that explains why it was so out of character, and not deliberately harmful to others. It also takes some of her active choice away, and it seems less painful that she didn't deliberately choose to leave us all behind with these complex emotions.
On the other hand, if she died not being herself, was she a victim. Someone who should have been helped, someone i failed by not noticing and forcing myself upon, to fix her. Someone mistakenly making a big statement whilst not being herself. If she wanted autonomy in death, mental health labels are erasing this.
Monday night me, Princess and Honestly were invited around to Lovely's widows house. He wanted to give account of her last few days, he wanted to explain that he had tried to help her, and he was clear that she had a mental health problem....
He painted a picture of a girl overwhelmed by a deep internal feeling of fear and dread, of an over consumption of thoughts about an inevitable demise with no respite. Someone very different from the person we knew, at least for her last two weeks. I didn't see her in those two weeks so i don't know what it looked like, and cant argue with this. But she sent me a very normal text message half an hour before she died.
My latest, very tough struggle, although perhaps it is just a sideline for me to distract myself with, is was Lovely my friend? I only saw her once in the last three months, and that was ad-hoc when she had come to London so see another friend she had recently made whilst travelling. She stopped answering the phone to me, she apparently phoned a list of people the day before she died in preparation - i wasn't one of them, she didn't once tell me how she was genuinely feeling. Without these things, what kind of friendship did we have? By the time i had found out that she'd died, another friend of hers had already flown back from Africa on an urgent flight, if i was such a good friend how did it take me so long to find out?
Were we even friends, or was i deluded? This makes me cry.
Lovely had a lot of people in her life that she tried to pacify and make happy at her own personal cost, perhaps i was just another one of these. Whilst i thought we were close friends was i actually just another rope pulling her down. Another burden to be lifted only by suicide?
2 comments:
Honey this is such a tough situation for all left to deal with Lovely's wake... the wondering and the unknown can potentially drive one crazy.
I think we have friends on different levels; we can't be best friends with everyone, for a million reasons, but there is no doubt in my mind that whatever contribution you made to her life, it was positive & happy... I know words mean very little right now but hopefully worth mentioning.
Thank you. There is a lot of wondering going on.
I think I was Lovely's friend because 1) she was my bridesmaid (who doesn't like someone who bought them a new dress?) 2) she told me about when she had to send a stool sample through the post and the post office kept asking her what it was until she eventually shouted out in frustration, "it's my poo ok, it's poo!" 3) we shared an awful lot of cups of tea around kitchen tables and a lot of kebabs late at night, and lastly 4) we both took up smoking on the same night, aged 27, to look cool. It only lasted one night.
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