It could have been me!?
- Kenta z konce světa
- Apr 24, 2022
- 7 min read
It's been a year since one of my most important friends in life took his own life. That event shook me in an indescribable way. You'd think it would be easier for me to understand it when I "touched" a suicide myself, but my mind took a different path since then and I had to work my way up to understanding or compassion over time.
The main text of this article was written about a month after Jiřík's funeral, purely for self-therapeutic reasons, in an attempt to cope with it somehow, because I hadn't even considered starting a blog at that time. Now, on that sad anniversary, I first thought of publishing it, and then hesitated for a moment, wondering if it was too dark and subjective, if anyone could take anything from it. But then I read my own definition of the purpose of this blog, "to show people how differently or just how equally we experience things, how to care for mental health, and where all the years of not addressing it are written all over us" and I realized that this, unfortunately, belongs here more than we admit. So if you're in the mood, read about my inner dialogue and experience of a tragic situation that was both eerily familiar and eerily foreign to me. About a situation that was the final straw in my deciding whether I should embark on the path of sharing my own vulnerabilities, the destigmatization of therapy, the path of the therapist.
May 2021
That phone call on Sunday afternoon stopped the blood in my veins for a few minutes and my life for almost a month. He's gone, he killed himself....committed suicide. Believe me, in my life, I have never received information that made less sense. Bill Gates' chips in vaccines were much more believable. A dear friend of mine, who I've known for 12 years, who I've played countless concerts with, and who was supposed to walk me down the aisle one day instead of my father, took his own life. The same man who filled the entire stadium with his laughter, was very intelligent, overcame many things in life with grace, and never felt sorry for himself. The same man who our entire large collective would point the finger at as the last person if you asked who among us might reach for such a solution. But then I realized that I would have been among the last too, and I was very close to it anyway.
The funeral and (illegal) farewell party took place a week after the event. That week was a blur. I cried uncontrollably several times a day, but somehow my consciousness couldn't absorb it. I felt the absorbing pain of a thing that didn't seem real at all. The pain of losing someone I hadn't seen regularly in a long time. And so my brain, in an attempt to avoid the pain, often suggested that I would just see him later. But the truth is, we'll never see each other again.
Now I realize why it's so hard to cope with loss. The disappearance of something or someone is terribly confusing to our minds, and the full understanding of that disappearance only comes gradually in moments when you are tangibly reminded of the loss by memories from the past or situations in the present that would be different now if the loss had not happened. And these jolts to a new reality hurt like hell because, in between, the brain might be able to find moments of peace, to displace it.
In a week of fog and pain, one emotion stood out significantly. ANGER. You don't f*cking do that! Believe it or not, most of the phone calls with close friends that week contained nothing but profanity about our deceased friend, mixed with absolute incomprehension and a search for reasons and even the slightest hints. Those phone calls were something that helped us all get through those days the most. You don't even want to grieve alone. We also knew immediately that we all needed to hug each other and talk it over together, so we all tested ourselves before the funeral and gathered from all over the country in one garden. We needed it so badly that if 3 police cars had come to break it up (it was still lockdown in CZ), we probably would have hand-carried the cars elsewhere. It was bitter but extremely beautiful.
I waited for the funeral to be something that would help me say goodbye ritually and help me end my suffering. But then, as we all stood outside the ceremonial hall, which we were only allowed to walk through one by one and said goodbye in our hearts, a whole different wave of emotions and thoughts washed over me. For a few seconds, the shock I had experienced after coming out of the most critical moment of my life when I was already standing over the kitchen sink with a knife ready to end my pain came back to me. It's back with me now, just like it was then. Weakness all over my body, shivering, cold, fear, anxiety, a tunnel in the fog. But now it's accompanied by one new thought. I could have been in that funeral parlor now and it would all be terribly similar. Similar people, similar horrifying incomprehension, similar pain, and exactly the same wasted life that will never see anything beautiful again. You'd be such a stupid bitch, Kenta!
For 2 hours in the car on the way home, I was breathing it out, and there was a very intense dialogue. Dialogue between me, as a person who understands how much pain a person can feel to do such a thing, and me - the person who overcame the pain and changed her life by 1000%. I will never forgive him for that, knowing how "little" it took to make my life better. I told him everything at the time and he told me nothing about his suffering. Yet nothing in the world is unsolvable.
All of us friends agreed that if only we knew, we would help with both finances and suffering, we would just take care of him. And that's the truth. But on the other hand, we wouldn't be the ones who would have to live with all of this stuff. We wouldn't have the stress of paying off the debt hanging over us for a few years, it wouldn't be us who would be going through the feelings of getting used to life without his parents that he lost so suddenly, it wouldn't be us who would have to deal with the internal pain he would have to go through during the healing of his soul. In fact, we probably don't even know what all was going on inside him because he didn't want us to know, and he made a tremendous effort to keep us from knowing. So while I know that therapy of the soul with a professional would fix it all, we are not the ones who should have decided if he wanted to undergo it.
Until now, I'm caught between these two points of view and still don't really know what I think about it. The only thing I can think of is that if I had a chance to talk to him about it and ask him about his reasons, I would be able to clarify. But that's never going to happen and it doesn't really matter. I guess I don't have to have an opinion about it, I'll just remember the good things fondly and respect his decision. In the end, all the passing in our lives will be what we make of it in ourselves, and judging whether it was right or wrong won't shift us in any way. And so I will carry him in my heart as I have until now.
Then rest in peace, my dear friend. However, I know you won't rest, because you'll have to do it all over again till you understand it all. I'd tell you if you asked... Happy new journey, dear. I'll miss you all my life!
Edit 2022
I finally learned his real reasons. He wrote a letter. It will sound cruel, but it is a great disappointment to me, and my poisonous scorpion in me is almost disgusted. I really wish there was something more mysterious, something more complicated behind all this. That it wasn't just a series of stupid mistakes and lies that pile up, that one gets so caught up in and ashamed of that one simply doesn't ask for help and is unable to break the vicious cycle of a shitstorm.
My adult, compassionate scorpion understands very well that these stupid excesses are only presenting manifestations of a much deeper problem that goes back to early childhood, to family, to confused roles, and buried emotions. I understand that Jiřík has reached the situation the Universe pushes you into whenever you don't solve things, but push them in front of you. The Universe puts an enormous amount of stuff on you at one time and gives you the slap of a lifetime to wake you up and show you that it can't go on like this. But unfortunately, there is a certain percentage of cases where the person's inner foundation is so emotionally ill, things are played out so badly, or just extremely difficult and unfortunate circumstances come together (like an illness that takes away your sleep for a week, an unfortunate decision to take pills without therapy) that they can't get through this healing shock. Unfortunately, Jiřík was one of them.
But is there anything we can all do for people in a similar situation (even if we don't know they are in it because they hide it with all their might)? Yes. To talk more and more about how mistakes are lessons and not shame, that it's human to fail at times, that it's okay to say it out loud, that it's okay to ask for help with practical things and with your thoughts, that it's not okay to take any pills without therapy, that therapy is proof of strength, not defeat. Also, let's not be afraid to share our own true feelings and weaknesses, and to answer the question of how we are doing with more than one word. Let's put some depth back into our discussions with our friends. You never know when you might save someone's life.
Comments