In memory of Cheree

Sorry for your loss.

These are often the results when a suffering person feels their own suffering has not been sufficiently acknowledged, and believes it will not be acknowledged, before it’s too late… which is, unfortunately, often the case. Many times, it’s not that the person thinks “it’s the right answer,” but rather that there is no better one… or that it is simply not as bad as the alternatives.

A quote from someone who knew the road to a chosen end, and articulated it quite well:

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”

? David Foster Wallace

Most likely, the “jump” was not at all what she “wanted,” but was merely less terrible than enduring what she was completely certain she could not continue to endure: the flames.

Most likely she did not really think that no one would care, but that something too painful for her, could only be avoided at the cost of your grief (and the others’ as well).

Many people who complete suicide, have felt for a very long time, that even the people who probably do care the most about them, have not sufficiently acknowledged, or have perhaps denied, dismissed, minimized or even contributed to the worsening of their already unbearable problems… instead of actually helping, in response to the subtle hints and silent cries for help.

I doubt you caused it, and unless you could control her choices for her, or remove her problems for her… you probably already did the best you could have done, by realizing you should appreciate her despite petty or even intense disagreements, before she was gone.

She was burning, but no one could put out the flames; most likely did not even see them; some perhaps saw them, but did not acknowledge. Telling her “don’t jump!” is tantamount to asking her to continue burning.

The people who cause problems in this world, are usually themselves caused by problems.

You knew what you had before it was taken away. That may seem insignificant right now… but in time you will sort through your grief enough to appreciate that, and to understand that you did what you could when you could (even if it wasn’t as much or as good as what you might have thought should have been your best), to help correct a situation that was never really yours to control… and so the blame isn’t yours to take.

All you can do is all you can do; sometimes that’s less than we think it should be.