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April 06, 2007
So many people don't know what to say
Originally a Xanga post from May 7, 2006. Reposted because we're coming up on a year since, and we can't allow ourselves to forget. Also reposted because...well, when history repeats itself, it's hard to take.
So many people don't know what to say.
And how can you, really?
Look, Shadow Robinson is a name I automatically associate with a bright, shining face, and a gloriously loud voice (and if you know me, you know how much I appreciate loud voices!), and the type of personality that puts a smile on your face regardless. She was almost the definition of an extrovert. The one thing she was not was lifeless.
But she is lifeless now.
And every sign points to suicide.
And "suicide" is a word that we all automatically associate with a person who is desperate and lonely and fearful. We can cuss and swear and moan about how selfish an act it is. We can lash out in anger, and wonder what in the world was so awful in her life that she couldn't talk to somebody. We wonder what it was we said, what it was we did, what she really thought of us behind that mask of brightness. We can say "if only she had talked to us."
But more than anything, we can't figure out how to put the person who we knew and loved with the act that we can't possibly understand.
---
Now, I'm speculating. And I'm speculating in the desperate, irrational hope that I'm completely wrong and somebody is going to discover that this really wasn't a suicide and that we will have a nice, neat description that this will fit into. I want to be wrong about what I'm proposing here.
But I know all too well how much of a front a person can put on to hide the pain that's going on underneath. Dare I say that I'm experienced in it.
When your mind goes to these dark places that make you contemplate what it would be like to end everything, you find nothing but absolute, overwhelming emotion. It's so unfair to say that "suicide is a selfish act" because it presumes that you're able to think about what somebody else would think or feel about what you're going through. What little experience I have with that territory, I can speak with absolute certainty that other people's thoughts or feelings weren't even there - they had been pushed out with the absolute intensity of the emotions I was having myself.
If you have to deal with real life, to go out and see people and be engaged in the world, what you're doing and saying and acting becomes completely disconnected with what is going on in your head. If you're skilled at pulling on that mask, you can make people believe there's nothing really wrong, even when everything is wrong. You hear so much of the time in these circumstances how important it is to remember that we're not to blame, it really isn't our fault, and that's part of the reason why - it is so difficult to really know what's wrong.
But that also speaks to why it's so important to take care of one another. Because - and this truth also comes from my own experience - the more you know another person, the more you dig into that person's life, the harder it becomes for that person to keep the mask on, and the more you get to see what it is that really makes that person tick.
Here's what's even harder: College is when that taking care of one another is easy. So many of us go to college in part to break the chains of how we were seen as we were growing up, to "find ourselves" and to experience life apart from the chains of childhood. But when we pass outside of those gates, into the "real world", we find that there aren't too many people there who are really interested in us "finding ourselves." They're far more interested in what they can take from us, in what of our talents and skills they can use for their profit or their own ends.
So, especially for those who did receive that precious piece of paper yesterday, when I type "take care of one another," it takes on a special importance for you - because this is where taking care of one another becomes a true challenge.
---
Shadow, you were loved more deeply than you ever knew.
---
If you're reading this, let us make a vow to one another - or let us renew that vow - that we always make sure we're taken care of, each one of us.
---
"If you're a depressed individual...
...if the light has gone out long ago...
...and you can't find the switch...
...for God's sake...
...and your own...
...share the burden...
...tell a friend..."
- Bill Mallonee
Posted by Chuck at April 6, 2007 03:33 PM
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