One of my colleagues killed themselves last week. Young--not yet 40--educated, well-off, and ostensibly happy. Up for a significant promotion at work, with a small child and a spouse and parents and a life. Someone I saw frequently but never felt I connected with. My boss, on a few projects. All this time, I thought it was me--that we just didn't click--but what I've been hearing from other co-workers is the same bewilderment, the sense that we didn't really connect with this person but now we realize, to our horror, there must have been hidden depths, a despair never even hinted at, that caused them to take the ultimate step.
Hey people what is this? We fight so hard to stay alive, we eat right and exercise and undergo medical interventions, we take all possible measures to elbow away the Grim Reaper. And yet this person chose to depart, planned it, I think, prepared and readied and then did it.
How do you walk the Earth one beautifully sunny late winter day, knowing you're about to commit an act that will remove you permanently from the planet, knowing that your act will make an indelible mark on your spouse and your kid and your parents, on all of us?
Who does this? A desperate person. A selfish one? A person with no other options. I can't help but think about it, to try and make sense of the unthinkable, and all I can come up with is sadness. Another human suffered and I had no idea.
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A writing night, and DJ ShmeeJay is my soundtrack.
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