Five months have passed since I got the call. "I want to make sure you're sitting down," my friend said. "I have some really bad news." What an understatement that turned out to be. Shocking, tragic, gut-wrenching news would have been a more accurate description. How else could you possibly begin to describe the suicide of a beautiful, vibrant, 17 year-old girl?
The girl she was telling me about was the daughter of a mutual friend who was my former roommate and work colleague. I hadn't seen the girl, or her mother, in a couple of years. Like so many relationships, it had become more about keeping up with each other on Facebook, family Christmas cards, and once in a blue moon phone calls. Nevertheless, they are people I care a great deal about and Jocelyn's death has shaken me deeply.
Yesterday, I spent some time perusing her Facebook wall. There have been daily postings from family members and friends telling her how much they love and miss her, how certain songs bring her to mind, and how they wish she was there to do certain things with them. My own daughter, who is the same age and just started back to school, posted how she wished Jocelyn could experience her senior year, too, and all the excitement that goes along with it.
Interestingly enough, no one seems to have expressed any anger. Yet, anger is exactly what I'm feeling at this point. I barely knew the girl, but I'm mad, even though I probably don't have any right to be. I'm mad at the people who were apparently subjecting her to cyber-bullying. I'm mad at her for what I'm betting was an impulsive decision borne from her own anger and pain. I'm mad that she didn't stop and think and pray it through. I'm mad that God didn't do something to intervene. I'm mad that her little sister doesn't have her big sister to look up to and share life with anymore. I'm mad that she didn't tell her parents about the bullying, and instead robbed them of the opportunity to watch her finish growing up, graduate, go to college, get married, be grandparents to her children. They adored her and I know they would've moved heaven and earth to help her!
There's more, but it's all wrapped up in my own junk that seems unfair to dump on her. Junk like guilt for feeling mad at a hurting, emotional, 17 year-old girl. Junk like reading her mom's blog about her own pain while I was at the beach with my family, crying my eyes out over the raw grief she was pouring out and feeling angry that she had to suffer that. Junk like the tentacles of fear that have started creeping in and tugging at my psyche when my own teenage daughters let their emotions get the best of them. "Is it just a rant? Do I need to worry? Should I check on her in her room?" Junk like the anger that has resurfaced towards my father-in-law for taking his own life 17 years ago, three months before the birth of his first grand-child, my oldest daughter. Remembering the hurt in my husband's eyes when he said "Dad's never been there for anything else in my life, I don't know why I would've thought he would be here for this," and desperately wishing I could take that pain away from him. So much junk...
I really needed to write this because writing is therapeutic for me. It's the best way I know to sort out my feelings, to name them for what they are, stare them down, and hopefully move past them. But I debated this time whether to do it in this public forum. I love this girl's family and the last thing I would ever want to do is cause them anymore pain. I pray that if my grieving friend reads this that in her own writer's heart she will understand.
I decided on the public post because I believe that sometimes we think it's wrong to feel and express anger over tragedies. Suicide, especially, leaves us all feeling awkward and helpless and unsure of how to respond or what to say. Maybe what we need is permission to acknowledge and voice those feelings, and if that's what this blog gives to someone else then I can feel good about that.
And should someone considering suicide happen to stumble across this post, know that you would be leaving a trail of pain and heartache and confusion that reaches much farther than you can even fathom. There are so many resources available...ask for help! And please, please, please remember that where there is life, there is always hope.
http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
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