Sometime last year, someone else this year
A woman, an artist, I knew because she was the neighbor of a friend of mine killed herself last night. I wrote about her a year ago because I had just seen her on the bayou cut up and bruised – she said she had taken to bare fist fighting with some young Hispanic guys – and my heart sank. She was in a world of pain. I emailed my friend to see if there was someone close to her who could reach out to her.
Another friend broke the news to me today. It was after a dear friend had called to say her uncle in Germany had taken his life. It was on the same day that another friend posted a video to YouTube from August 29, 2010 of the Release Party we held to get rid of all our angst, grievances, sadness, and despair.
I’m yelling.
This afternoon, a friend pulls up on the bayou and speaks of her pain and says shaking her head, “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” I said it’s all of us – we’re all leading lives of quiet desperation and we have to forge that into something. She said she wants to just be someone else. But who? I ask sincerely. Who?
Certainly not the woman who decided enough was enough. Or the man who gave up.